Anyone here know much about law? Contracts?

[Searcher]

Otherwise, you might be able to find someone to take over your lease.  Most landlords don't care who's in there so long as they're getting their rent money.

To HELL with that. Been caught waaaaaaaay too many times. Actually caught one tenant letting a supossed 'brother in law' use the address for mail. Thing is, 'brother in law' is of a VERY Muslim name (and renter is a VERY common English name), in this day and age Alarm Bells RANG loud. Renter dealt with swiftly and with no 'pussy footing'.

I meant taking over the lease in a legal way, if you can do that there.  In my own experience, you can front up to the landlord and ask if you can get out of your lease if you have someone else ready to move in, and they are usually OK with it.  there's nothing dodgy and the landlord gets to check the new tenants out just as though they were applying for the place.

You don't rent to muslims?  My wife is married to a guy from another country and her younger sister is married to a guy from yet another country.  They both have a third sister who isn't married and so has her parent's name, which is another nationality again.  Put the three sisters together and you have last names from three very, very different nationalities.  It happens.

[Dakine]

NOTHING to do with race at all.
Just DO NOT let tenants allow all and sundry to use the address for mail or whatever.
I said muslim as (due to current climate here) it was dodgy at best as I had no idea who the guy was and tenant had said nothing.
If Mr.Smith is tenant and place is full of mail for Mr.Brown I would still rip tenant a new ahole!

[Dakine]

However, due to Real Estate experienc in USA, I would prefer not to rent to certain ethnic people due to their cooking. It is VERY hard to get some smells out of a place. Bad enough when buying but renting (i.e. normally quicker turnover) quite annoying would imagine.

[LiamH]

Being a lawyer.......ahem...

You can break, but you will be liable for the loss on the contract, that is the 3 months rent that is due. You could be sued for that, it might just come down to a question of whether it is worth the agent pursuing you, or whether they are willing to write off the loss.

Often, being honset and reasonable can help. Nobody ever does as they try and pull fast ones. I would be tempted to 'fess up that the rent and out goings are killing you so as to give the agent a chance of getting a new tenant. The flip side is that if you do a bunk you have already sown a seed in the agent's mind that you are not worth suing as you do not have the corn.

If you do get sued and lose you will get a county court judgment and have to pay it over time. It will stay on your credit record for three years.

These days it is a lot easier to sue for small amounts as the court have an online system.

If you do decide to risk being sued don't let a collection/bailiff company bully you too much.

[Elliot]

I would add that if you do a bunk, service of proceedings on your last known address is legal service (i.e. where you did a runner from) so the agent could get judgment against you in default of you defending the case and you may not even know about it.

Which is why it is better to agree a surrender of the tenancy with the agent first.

[Johnny Mac]

My ex landlords agents were so incompetent that they never got the contract signed for the new term. That should have been in December and we left last May. They just could not organise the proverbial in the brewery.

The other things I remember about my last few months in the rented flat were;

Being flooded out 7 times in the bathroom to the point when the ceiling was virtually hanging down along with most of the fungal growths that go with it.

The kids putting a security chain across the door when we were at work, so it had to be kicked off. Then removed.

Police called twice over us asking them nicely to stop continuous banging and screaming. The plaster used to fall from the ceilings.

Kids unsupervised after school running riot in the back alleys, up and down the fire escape and bashing the nice kids.

Trying to pull the wool over the police's eyes by saying we were on benefits, racists and anything else she could make up on the spot.

All in the space of 4 months. Then the old man tries to take me on , on the communal stair case. I've never seen such cowardice fall apart in such a good way. They were like rats on a sinking ship. Kebab shop workers, I've since found out. Which are in a lot of cases are fronts for the H trade. We don't need a Kebab shop every few hundred yards! They can't support themselves in that kind of saturated competition. Not to mention the saturated fat!

Rant over.

 :D

[LiamH]

Johnny Mac,

All you say justifies not paying rent. However, the way the law is framed not paying rent is  (legally not morally)  the wrong thing to do.

Always remember most laws are framed by politicians......if you can't trust their answers on TV why trust what they put in print and that has the back up of an entire legal system........???

[Elliot]

If your bathroom is flooded, the ceiling is hanging down and there is mold growing then you can withold rent on the basis that the landlord is in breach of his obligation to keep the structure and exterior of the property (under s.11 Landlord and Tenant Act 1985) and you are entitled to set off the rent until he repairs the damage.

Furthermore ASBOs are available against noisy nuisance neighbours - it just takes persistant complaining to the Police.

[HTH AMPS]

+1 on witholding rent - thats what I did when I used to rent and things needed doing.  Always worked for me.

 :twisted:

[LiamH]

If your bathroom is flooded, the ceiling is hanging down and there is mold growing then you can withold rent on the basis that the landlord is in breach of his obligation to keep the structure and exterior of the property (under s.11 Landlord and Tenant Act 1985) and you are entitled to set off the rent until he repairs the damage.

Furthermore ASBOs are available against noisy nuisance neighbours - it just takes persistant complaining to the Police.

Technically no you cannot withhold rent. I am not sure why as I am not a property lawyer, but every property lawyer I know lives by the rule of always  making sure their client pays the rent.

[Elliot]

Although a guitar pickup forum isn't really the place for this, I am a property lawyer - to be pithy I was not 100% accurate in terms of the exact legal position but in essence the common law recognises that a tenant has a right of self help by witholding rent to pay for the repairs himself (i.e. you can't go down the pub with the rent) and for compensation for the loss in the value of the tenant's legal estate.  There is plenty authority on this point (e.g. Lee-Parker v. Izzet [1971] 1 WLR 1688, British Anzani Ltd v. International Marine Management [1980] QB 137), although it is important to note that the landlord's liability to repair only arises once notice of the disrepair has been given.

As almost all residential property is covered by one of the residential housing statutes the landlord's only remedy is to sue for possession and for arrears:  a breach of covenant does not entitle the landlord to evict the tenant without a possession order and the doctrine of forfeiture has no place in short term residential property lets.  

At that point the tenant defends by way of a set off of the expense of repairs and counterclaims a) for specific performance of the landlord's repairing covenant and b) general damages for the inconvenience of living in a property.

Furthermore County Court judges tend (on the basis of books full of authorities) to have in their mind a 'tariff' of general damages for a tenant living in a property in disrepair of between £500-£4000 per annum depending on the seriousness of the disrepair.

If the disrepair claim is genuine,  the Landlord often finds that he is out of pocket to the tenant and has to stomach the huge costs of his action.    

So witholding (but not spending) the rent is a permitted mechanism of forcing the landlord to get on with things.