Be Excellent To Each Other

There are four bedrooms in a house. There are three tenants - a woman, and a couple sharing a room.

Later, a fourth joins them, signing a rental contract for 6 months agreeing on a regular rent, plus a fixed monthly charge for all utility bills. This is basically the same agreement the others had with the landlord, so is fine.

The fourth tenant (me, obv) has been living here for a fortnight. He is happy. Everyone is happy. It is a happy, fun, pleasant and cared-for house, which just about fits all of us with no problems.

However. I then come home from work and discover that the landlord has decided to show someone else the fourth room, which is empty. He turned up with this person without giving any warning (he does this, apparently), and while three of us were not in or even aware anyone would ever be coming. He also delivers us a letter, dated the 24th (he dropped them off on the 25th), saying that he needs to put up the monthly bill charge, and that we can either pay the increased rate or he'll bring another tenant in.

An hour or so later, he comes round to the house to discuss things, and says that the new tenant is moving in next week, and we 'no longer' have a choice. Even though he gave us an offer in writing to accept an increased charge instead. The couple living in the house voluntarily offered to rent the extra room themselves to make all this unnecessary. Landlord says it's no longer an option, and we 'have no rights'.


First, I'm not happy with his just turning up and showing a stranger around our house without a hint of warning. Apparently there's a clause in the contract saying he's allowed to do this, but the idea that this would stand up in court is pretty laughable. But that's not all.

Secondly, I'm not happy with his sudden pressing need to raise the charges a mere fortnight after I've moved in. I was already stretched to my limit by moving here, which should have been patently obvious given my decision to rent the broom cupboard instead of the room that's actually bigger than an ant's nipple. If the price goes up before christmas, I can't live here. If he'd told me the price was going to go up in the very first bloody month, I wouldn't have moved in. If he needed to put his prices up he should have looked into the matter before offering me a contract. I'm not sure if he's even within his rights to do this so soon after I've moved in, as it seems incredibly unfair, since I couldn't afford to move now even if the price goes up, precisely because I've invested so much in this place.

Thirdly, I'm not happy with his decision to offer the choice, then decide that actually, it's too late to choose now. He literally gave us a deadline of 'yesterday' (although the letter doesn't state any such time limit). Given the option, we'd all take the increased charge - I'd probably just agree to do all the cooking and cleaning or whatever to make up my share if necessary. Besides which, I'm pretty sure the fact that he's offered us this choice in writing means he is legally bound to accept our choice. Surely? I mean, you can't offer someone terms and then when they accept them, thumb your nose and go "nyaaah!", can you?


I like it here. I even kind of like the landlord, even though he is an infuriatingly slow-witted gimboid. I don't want to make things unpleasant, but I have a horrible feeling this other person is going to ruin our happy little house, and there's simply not enough room for any more, and no need for it either. What would you do in this positon, chums?

Is it in the agreement that he can up your rent like that? I would've thought the rent would've been fixed for the six months?

I can confirm that he cannot just let himself in. That's actually pretty much as serious in law as a breaking and entering charge, contract or not.

I'm also pretty sure he can raise the rent, but it gives you (and I really recommend all 3 of the others) the right to break the contract and move out with no warning at all.

Also talk to the new 4th guy if you can, I doubt they'll want to move in once you explain the situation.

Failing that, don't move out, wait for the eviction order, that'll piss him off.

Landlord is being a cock, though I'm not sure what you'd expect him to do bills wise instead of putting the price up - as prices have gone up. He can either pass the cost onto you (i.e. just like if you were paying them yourself) or give you a month's notice to leave and get someone in who is happy to pay the rate which will see him at least break even, otherwise he might as well sell the place out from under you.

That said, 'clause in the contract' my arse - no contractual clause supercedes the law, which Shelter or your local council housing advice unit will be glad to wield in your honour.

No-one ever says where they are based when talking about this sort of thing - so I can never be more specific. Give him hell, but bear in mind no landlord is going to run their property at a loss because you are at the outer edges of your budget and need them to pay your bills for you.

Everyone is broke because of the energy increases, I am and all the tenants I support are too.

I am not sure about the rise in the bill at all (is this a utilities bill he is speaking of? If so why can you not all pay the bill as it arrives, all paying for your share? Do you think you are paying over the odds for utilities as you are paying through the landlord?)

Anyway, the landlord just letting himself in is 100% NOT OK. I had a landlord in my student days who used to do this and, upset as I was one day of him barging into the hose while I was standing wearing nothing but a T-shirt I ran upstairs and phoned my friend's mum, who promptly phoned the police (the same man also let himself into the house when a previous tenant was there and walked into her bedroom where she was tucked up fast asleep with her boyfriend - he phoned the girls' PARENTS to tell her that she had a boy staying over... Can you imagine? Anyway... Back to this case. The police confirmed and warned that a landlord cannot just turn up to a residence without first agreeing an appropriate time with the tenants, as such he is breaking the law.

One thing though - I am sure your fellow housemates gave yo a chance, and you got on well. If it does turn out either way that this new tenant IS told that they can move in, then you say you: "have a horrible feeling this other person is going to ruin our happy little house". Assuming you know very little of this guy, please don't assume that, because as jovial as you might try to be, your reservations will show as dislike. You are the relative new guy to the house, if your fellow housemates had thought this of you when you moved in your happy little house might have felt like anything but. It is not the new tenant's fault that your landlord is an arse, so please don't let the feelings that your landlord is inconveniencing you so put you off the new guy.

Yes, and his sister might look like Natalie Portman - in which case you are sorted.

I waas thinking of asking for copies of the bills. I know prices have gone up, but I was paying bills in my old place too, and there's no way they should need to go up. I'm already paying £85 a month, and I'm pretty sure the others are too. For a house this size to cost £340 a month in bills is just ridiculous.

I know costs have gone up, but we were willing to make up the difference anyway, which sounds to me like a landlord's dream - extra regular income from a proven tenant instead of another person to worry about, with all the complications that can entail? I'd have expected a sane landlord to jump at the offer.

We live in stratford-upon-Avon. I get where you're coming from, Mimi, and I'm sure we'll give the new person a chance as we would anyone, but I have a lot of trust in my instincts, and they're being pretty negative right now. Even if he's alright, there's a fair chance the overcrowding will cause one or more of my friends here to leave, which would be a massive disappointment.

£340 a quarter for gas and electricity sounds about right. Not each month. Unless that includes council tax and water, and, er, oxygen tax.

Where's this extra person going to sleep?

There's an empty room - two of the people in the house are a couple and so share a room.

I don't get this bit at all. So the couple have offered to rent the 4th room (which sounds only right and proper anyway) but the landlord has said he wants someone else to move in?

If the couple are paying mroe than one set of utility bill charges and the room is given to a new tenant he also gets another set of utility bill charges, so more money. Likewise, when couples rent single rooms landlords often charge an excess as the room has two occupants, so he would get more money than renting a room to each of the members of the couple. I've seen this done before.

You mean you don't see the bills? There's not a chance I'd be paying bills I haven't seen

You need to assume that all landlords are tweed hats until proven wrong.

Very much

No, but the rent's a bit lower than it really ought to be. The bill thing is a lump sum, so I just consider the low rent plus the high bills to add up to a decent price. Or, it was, at least.

The reason he wants another person to move in instead of us renting the room is, as it turns out, that the other person has offered to pay him in advance. He claims he needs this money to fix our cooker (six months), but we'd rather wait a bit longer for the cooker, frankly, and also, he said he'd fix the cooker when our rent when in this month, and it's gone in. He's basically a greedy, fairly stupid twat. One or the other I could handle, but grrr, eh? There doesn't need to be all this nonsense, but he's being silly.

On the plus side, we may all be moving out together in a few months. If he raises the prices and it turns out we can just bugger off, we'll all bugger off at once. Hurrah!

Er... you don't pay for him to fix his own cooker. Furthermore the cooker is an essential item that must be in full working order and fixed within a very short time scale. He can no more fix it when he likes anymore than you can pay the rent when you like.

I'm just commenting to agree with the "demand copies of bills", "he should be fixing his own cooker immediately" and "you should be renting a ComicalGnomes for the next time he enters without notice or permission" bits.

Very much

the landlord has something like three days to make proper arrangements to fix or repair essential items such as the cooker. your new landlord is absolutely flouting the law on all sides and you are not getting a good deal here. You may all be enjoying each other's company and liking your new house, and your time there may be enjoyable, BUT don't let that cloud over the facts that your landlord is breaking the law - first with this cooker nonsense and also with him trespassing (for that is what it is). You need to sit down and have a house meeting and decide how you are all going to jointly deal with this landlord. between Craig and I we have had a whole gamut of crappy landlord troubles starting from University days and up until the present, and we have dealt with the long-unfixed cooker, the landlord letting himself in - all of those problems at least one of us has had, but really - the main thing is it is against the law. i will get my old laptop fired up a bit later today and try and find a few links I emailed Craig when we were having the cooker trouble etc, some kind of government landlord guidelines.

Look at these pictures, then guess how fucking long it took the landlord to sort out the flooding.

It wasn't a one off, I was having to mop for an hour every morning, then another couple of hours every night, just to try and keep things under control.

I have since moved.

I thought that was an axe in that first picture - I guess that came later.

That's terrible Rev O!

We had flooding problems with Craig's old landlord - when it rained the ante-room would fill with waer once there was a couple of inches.

He came around on a sunny day and declared that there was nothing wrong, despot ethe grea=t big hole that had formed in the ceiling.

Thankfully he at least fixed the hole in the ceiling

... by sellotaping a bit of cardboard on top of it

In my case it turned out the tenants above had a cracked shower basin thing, so every time they used the shower, all the water was coming straight through into my flat. Took ages to sort out because they didn't speak ages and didn't answer the phone or their door.

And even longer because the letting agency refused to do anything without first speaking to the landlord, who was apparently completely out of contact on a round the world trip.

Fucking idiots, the lot of them. That was a miserable time.

That sounds like a crock of horseshit, SA. Just kick him in the cunt.

(Or follow the advice of all the good people in here, as I have nothing of value to add.)

just a quick comment, I am sure it is not legal for him to make a profit on the sales of utilities. So your bill should not be greater then the utilities bill.

Make that commuting distance from Ealing and I could live with that.

We'll have to have 24mbit internet of course.

The word you're looking for is "natch"

Malc

Or " ".

I don't think he can do any of that, Sinister, bar putting the rent up (as long as it is by a "reasonable" amount). He cannot, without question, come into your flat without being let in unless he has the police with him. If he does it again, call the cops.

Tax dodge? Keeping his declared rental income low, but pocketing the extra from bills? Fine so long as you agree that's what is happening, but adds to a general feeling of dodginess.

And hey, you have power as a group - 4 of you, willing to take on a pretty big space? If you have to move on you'll be fine.

As plenty of others have said:

1) you have a statutory legal right to enjoy the property you are renting in privacy that supersedes any clauses in the contract. Indeed I once made a former landlord's life very difficult by refusing to allow him access to show new tenants around until I had moved out, except to be extra evil, I would only ring and cancel the viewing an hour before it was due ("oh, I'm sorry, I have to go out now. No, I won't let you enter the property when I am not here.") I'm sure that cost him at least one month's rent as the property must have been empty a while after I moved out.

2) if you signed an Assured Shorthold Tenancy before moving in he can't vary the price within the fixed term, typically 6 or 12 months. At any other time, you can challenge the rent increase through your local council's rent department, who evaluate whether it is a "fair market rate" or not. They would likely take a dim view of the utility bill shenanigans. If you didn't sign an AST, well, that's probably (although not definitely) shady.

3) under the terms of the AST contract he will have obligations to fix things, including white goods supplied as part of the house, in a reasonably timely manner; withholding rent payments usually gets them to buck their ideas up if they are dragging their heels and will typically be upheld by a magistrate's court if it got that far as long as you can demonstrate a paper trail and other documentary evidence.

Pack your bags, yeah -- but if you're sufficiently bloody minded you can give him the run-around for months and force him to drag you through the magistrate's court at his expense, then if you play the game right and can demonstrate fault in his side (like not fixing cookers) it can take months more for any possession order to come into play. I'd go through all that just for the satisfaction.

Within the AST fixed term, you have very strong rights. In fact it's almost impossible to evict someone, to the point where most landlords will not try and simply wait out problem tenants to the end of the fixed term.

So should people just put up with this kind of thing for fear of repercussions from the landlord? I understand and agree with you Ace, but that's how these horrible landlords flout the law so wildly and mistreat their tenants and get away with it

I don't think he's actually advising you don't do it on that basis, just that ultimately it's his house and he is likely to be more able to affect your life than you his.

Oh, I know that, but what I mean is that it has people in a bind - they don't like the current situation and the know they are being mistreated and that the law is being broken but they are too scared to do anything else about it in case they find themselves suddenly homeless. I think it'd have to come to the point where you were prepared to pick up and move, it's just a shame that it happens that way. I would though, personally, insist that he knew that wandering into your house without notice was certainly NOT OKAY and against the law. that's absolutely shameful.

Solution : Break into his house.

And then burn it. Burn it all.

Repercussions? Fuck 'im if he can't take a joke.

He's probably one of these buy-to-let cunts too - see if you can't hang him out to dry properly by everyone suddenly not paying the rent. Repossession-a-gogo.

Break into his house, pick up his TV, carry it outside and throw it back in through his living room window.

It is The Landlords Way.

The genuinely for-real arrest people for the former, and as for the latter, I always put utility bills under my own name in rented accommodation.

The next time he enters your property without notice dial 999 and tell them a man has entered your property without permission.

This is what Corinna's* mum did. The police did arrive and told him - he STILL did the same thing one day, which, for some reason, panicked Corrina and I so that she ran out bare food and I ran out wearing just white silk slip and the stupidest, reddest, laciest knickers you ever saw, and it was raining, and everyone was looking. Actually I hated the man.

Crrina left as soon as her course finished because her walls were crumbling and he wouldn't fix them. She refused t pay rent unless he fixed the problems as she had been living in my room for the past four months because of the problem. He took her to court for not paying, saying she had trashed the room. The evidence of this was a single photograph of two cotton buds beneath a radiator.

Anyway, the court did not make her pay. He kept my deposit for the spotless room because 99% of landlords are hateful, evil people.




(*Corrina's mum is the person I phoned when the landlord walked in on me wearing just a t-shirt. Corrina was my housemate and best friend, but she was in class at the time and I was alone)

Heh, when I was in halls, this is what attracted me to the girl that ended up being my girlfriend for a while. She appeared wearing things like that.

<sighs>

Ah well.

It was raining though, so I was, to all intents and purposes, naked.

white silk + water = invisible.

It was black, If i recall correctly.

Anyways, Were you ever at Lancaster University?

Yes, you know that though

I once locked myself out of halls in my underwear and had to go to the porter's lodge in the rain and the dark and I stood on a frog in my bare feet

oH, SHIT. mRSa WAS AS WELL...