Rent increase question

[Diddums]

Thing is, the guy showed his colours months ago when he decided to up our rent by £450 a month and when I emailed him to ask him about it, he blanked me and I had an email from the agents the next day stating that I was not to contact him directly. This was almost a month to the day after he came round the house with his family, seemed really nice and told me how well we're looking after the house.

Had he simply responded to my email explaining that due to the current climate he's got no choice I'd have had a very different attitude but he's ****** us both off to the point that we're now going to dig our heels in as much as possible and make life as miserable as possible for him. It's the least we could do for him.

We don't need the money anyway, I could whistle to it and just get on with life but now I've got an axe to grind, and I'm going to love every second of it.

 

[Foghorn Leghorn]

You live in Surrey now man. Have some class. Send some goons

I'm not sure Eccles and Moriarty are up to the task anymore to be honest.....

 

[Foghorn Leghorn]

They lose nothing (I believe) and hope the renter will buckle.

There should be some penalty as many people are vulnerable, or need the deposit so will agree.

Maybe if they claim it and lose there should be ramifications.

Having to pay the value of the claim to the ex tenant as an apology would stop most in their tracks

 

[413x]

Thing is, the guy showed his colours months ago when he decided to up our rent by £450 a month and when I emailed him to ask him about it, he blanked me and I had an email from the agents the next day stating that I was not to contact him directly. This was almost a month to the day after he came round the house with his family, seemed really nice and told me how well we're looking after the house.

Had he simply responded to my email explaining that due to the current climate he's got no choice I'd have had a very different attitude but he's ****** us both off to the point that we're now going to dig our heels in as much as possible and make life as miserable as possible for him. It's the least we could do for him.

We don't need the money anyway, I could whistle to it and just get on with life but now I've got an axe to grind, and I'm going to love every second of it.

450..a month?... Increase?
You are the renting version of @dlockers

That's half my mortgage.. As a rise!

 

[Rai200]

i really dont get how these people get away with it....... we had 2 lots of awful tenants who left our flat in a terrible state, and we were still forced to give back their deposit without even fighting them.

i guess it is because we rent out through an agency, and the agency just do what ever is least work for them, which in this case is giving the tenants back their money, telling us to whistle and then giving us the bill for the repairs!.

From what i can tell the current system is rubbish for honest people both sides of the equation and fully sides with scumbags

Every single rental property I've lived at has tried to wrongly claim for damages after I/we have left. Thankfully I always take photos before moving in, after moving in and before moving out. They've never had more than 25% of what they've tried to claim for (and only then was it cleaning fee/repainting a room).

Every single time they've tried to claim for pre-existing issues, usually stuff we've reported ASAP and hasn't been fixed.

 

[dlockers]

Every single rental property I've lived at has tried to wrongly claim for damages after I/we have left. Thankfully I always take photos before moving in, after moving in and before moving out. They've never had more than 25% of what they've tried to claim for (and only then was it cleaning fee/repainting a room).

Every single time they've tried to claim for pre-existing issues, usually stuff we've reported ASAP and hasn't been fixed.

Snap - luckily one I did actually cause some damage and repaired it (poorly); so I was surprised/let them have it when they billed me £30 for a washing machine door that was already broken when we moved in (and was on the inventory).

 

[Diddums]

Surprise surprise he's just entered the same amount again and hit submit. I'll be rejecting that too then.

Side question - Shirley if he claims to have spent all the money he has, we should be able to see the invoices?

The only one he's provided is for some plumbing work and it's for some one-man-band outfit with no online presence whatsoever, no VAT number and a Gmail account.

He also reckons he spent £20 to replace a key, the same kind of key that Timpsons sells for a fiver, and which was completely redundant anyway as the existing key still worked fine.

 

[Freddie1980]

Surprise surprise he's just entered the same amount again and hit submit. I'll be rejecting that too then.

Side question - Shirley if he claims to have spent all the money he has, we should be able to see the invoices?

The only one he's provided is for some plumbing work and it's for some one-man-band outfit with no online presence whatsoever, no VAT number and a Gmail account.

He also reckons he spent £20 to replace a key, the same kind of key that Timpsons sells for a fiver, and which was completely redundant anyway as the existing key still worked fine.

I think you need to speak with the agent, I assume it was them who came round and assessed the property for damage? If so they should provide you with evidence of what was damaged.

 

[willhub]

The guy down the road from me was told the landlord needed to clean the carpet and charged him for it, walking down road other week I see said carpet in the skip. Cheeky landlords.

 

[Semple]

This is the problem with having so many amateur landlords out there. They really need to make it licensable, where the landlord needs to pass some sort of exam where they can prove they understand things like the tenants rights, and the condition of the home they're providing, and most importantly the process for evicting/ending a tenancy. If all landlords were genuine and honest then I think a lot more tenants would be as well.

I was surprised when we vacated our flat before buying our house that we only got charged something like £80 for a small bit of painting repair, and a small cleaning job. It was genuine as we knew there were a couple of marks on the wall, and we'd forgotten to give the shower screen a clean so never even contested it.

 

[GreatAuk]

This is the problem with having so many amateur landlords out there. They really need to make it licensable, where the landlord needs to pass some sort of exam where they can prove they understand things like the tenants rights, and the condition of the home they're providing, and most importantly the process for evicting/ending a tenancy. If all landlords were genuine and honest then I think a lot more tenants would be as well.

I was surprised when we vacated our flat before buying our house that we only got charged something like £80 for a small bit of painting repair, and a small cleaning job. It was genuine as we knew there were a couple of marks on the wall, and we'd forgotten to give the shower screen a clean so never even contested it.

I'm not sure requiring a licence would really help... big companies can be just as bad as a malicious or negligent amateur landlords. If anything they might be worse, as they know how exactly to play the system and stay just the right side of the line that the tenant doesn't have a leg to stand on. Or if they do step over the line they can afford a bigger team of lawyers to scare the tenant.

I can think of a few people I know who had similar issues with a large company they were renting from trying on the same thing and trying to keep hold of deposits when they were completely unjustified.

 

[Rroff]

This is the problem with having so many amateur landlords out there. They really need to make it licensable, where the landlord needs to pass some sort of exam where they can prove they understand things like the tenants rights, and the condition of the home they're providing, and most importantly the process for evicting/ending a tenancy. If all landlords were genuine and honest then I think a lot more tenants would be as well.

I was surprised when we vacated our flat before buying our house that we only got charged something like £80 for a small bit of painting repair, and a small cleaning job. It was genuine as we knew there were a couple of marks on the wall, and we'd forgotten to give the shower screen a clean so never even contested it.

I was renting from a big company in London - tried to claim loads when moving out including that the bath needed deep cleaning due to "years of neglect" - they ripped out and replaced the entire bathroom about a month before I moved out so that was easy to knock back - in the end was only about £20 or something in actual genuine things. Fortunately I had detailed photos from the day of leaving.

 

[Diddums]

I think you need to speak with the agent, I assume it was them who came round and assessed the property for damage? If so they should provide you with evidence of what was damaged.

Some 3rd party company did the report, and he then decides what to do with it, which as it turns out is to try and stiff us for as much money as possible.

I don't think he's a very amateur landlord, I think he knows exactly what he's doing.

 

[jaybee]

In our first rental house the landlord was a bit of a yuppie. 25 year old rich boy driving Mercs. I think he inherited his wealth. He was annoyingly good looking and a smooth talker. Whenever we needed something doing and we dealt with him, he just got it done straight away no messing and was very generous whenever we asked for anything. A model landlord to be honest.

In the final year or so, he had so many properties that he started to do the management via a letting agent/management company. The women we dealt with reminded me of that pink lady in Harry Potter. A complete bee hatch basically. Went on and on about how they might need to take money out the deposit when we left and in the end the landlord overruled and said no, they've been good tenants etc. I went back to drop our spare key off I found a day after moving out and the entire house was absolutely ripped to shreds where they were re-doing everything as we had been there about 7 years. There was me worrying about plastering a couple of picture holes and deep cleaning on request of that women, and they gutted it anyway.

House 2: Landlord came round once to check the roof. Seemed ok ish. Everything else was via letting agent. We kept the place amazing and when we moved out, they tried to take about 80% of the deposit. They made up ridiculous charges and claimed our cleaning was not good enough because we didn't use a "professional" cleaning service. The deposit went to a dispute service thing where there was some mediator as I recall. I ended up battling it and got them down to about 30%.

Someone I know had an absolute classic. I don't know if they still have the invoice, but he got done for a knob for hundreds. lol It was some stupid, plastic cooker knob on an ancient and dying free standing cooker. I swear it was for a couple of hundred quid. It had a crack in it which he swears was like it when he moved in.

 

[Diddums]

Bahahahahahahahaha


Sit on it and swivel you cancerous parasite on society


It's a small thing in the grand scheme of things but knowing I wasted a few months of his time and cost him £640 is a victory for me. I just wish he was here to see me rub it in his face constantly for being such a ****

 

[dlockers]

Well done

Can I borrow £640 pls?

 

[chrcoluk]

I havent read all 11 pages (sorry) so if any updates have been posted I missed.

The obvious question, is how long is the tenancy agreement for, the annual right to increase rent suggests its a long agreement, this is extremely important as to your rights.

The clause in the tenancy you quoted allows him to rise it in line with RPI, the state of the rental market in my personal opinion does not fall in line with that, hence my question at the top of this reply.,

If the tenancy is expiring at the end of each year, 6 months or whatever and si requiring renewal, then you are screwed. During this period a S21 can be issued for "any" reason providing some very easy to fulfil requirements are met such as appropriate notice, safety certificates, deposit put into proper scheme within the required amount of time "and" proof sent to tenant. Its not enough they do it, they also have to send you paperwork.

You have the option of S13 rent dispute, but if you in a situation where S21 is usable it doesnt mean squat sadly. S13 a fair rent will be decided by tribunal, usually they will consider market rates as fair rent, unless the property is in quite poor condition in which case they may do deductibles. Bizarrely this ruling if made only applies to the tenant rather than the property as a whole, so all a LL needs to do if they not happy with a S13 resolution is evict you with a S21 and with any new tenant the S13 ruling doesnt apply.

Sadly many landlords will aim to maximise rent income, meaning if the market will tolerate it, then they will increase even if its a big jump.

 

[EddScott]

i really dont get how these people get away with it....... we had 2 lots of awful tenants who left our flat in a terrible state, and we were still forced to give back their deposit without even fighting them.

i guess it is because we rent out through an agency, and the agency just do what ever is least work for them, which in this case is giving the tenants back their money, telling us to whistle and then giving us the bill for the repairs!.

From what i can tell the current system is rubbish for honest people both sides of the equation and fully sides with scumbags

I've never witheld the deposit. One couple left with a damaged door from the dog and an unpaid energy bill - which I paid for.

My deposits are £500 so hardly worth the bother to fight the tenant.

Re - having a license. In Wales you do have to have a license of sorts and pay a fee every 5 years and do some CPD of all things. Pages and pages of tenants rights and the odd comment for landlords. Says it all.

I've bailed on private lettings anway. 6 month notice given and fingers crossed they find somewhere in time. Very few properties available here and what is available is at completely unsustainable rates for the area.

 

[chrcoluk]

I've never witheld the deposit. One couple left with a damaged door from the dog and an unpaid energy bill - which I paid for.

My deposits are £500 so hardly worth the bother to fight the tenant.

Re - having a license. In Wales you do have to have a license of sorts and pay a fee every 5 years and do some CPD of all things. Pages and pages of tenants rights and the odd comment for landlords. Says it all.

I've bailed on private lettings anway. 6 month notice given and fingers crossed they find somewhere in time. Very few properties available here and what is available is at completely unsustainable rates for the area.

For a lot of people £500 is a lot of money. Comment seems a bit detached. Especially needed when homeless and clamouring around for somewhere to live, in a world where everything is paid up front.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

From what I can tell literally there is no worse housing position to be in right now, than a renter in London looking for somewhere to live. Assuming your flat isn’t a total dive and relatively modern and well kept, £2k/month is likely the going rate.

Only you can judge whether or not the landlord or agent has the appetite to actually evict you though, but I’d be pretty wary of it.

I can, housing in Brighton basically london prices without london wages renters are paying more than half their income on rent on average

Residents vent over 'little London' and its 'disgusting' rent prices

Residents in Brighton have expressed anger over "disgusting" rent prices in the city, which has been dubbed "little London".

www.theargus.co.uk