Help RE Ex Landlord

[daPOd]

Hi

A year ago we were private renting from a landlord, and in Dec 06 he gave us a two month notice asking us to vacate the property. We did so on the 01/02/2007 and we were housed by the local council.

However today 26/11/2007 the landlord has come to my new home address and plonked a letter on us stating that we didn't pay any rent from Nov 06 - Mar 07 leaving us now over £1500 in arrears?!

He has stated in this letter that we must pay the total ammount owed in 7 days or he will proceed with court action.

He kept our deposit and used it for the rent payment of month beginning Jan 07 and we were out of the house as i say above on the 01/02/2007.

Our rent account was completely up to date, the landlord even spoke to the council to advise them of this when we were applying for council housing.

We are totally unaware of how to proceed with this, when we had our tennancy we had no rent book just a short tennancy agreement, so we have no proof of the monies paid.

Do we have a leg to stand on, or is this man going to be able to claim back the rent we have supposedly not paid. HELP! How can they get away with this?

[Planner]

You must have some proof of moneys paid? - bank statements showing cash withdrawls? - A recipt from the landlord for the bond you paid which was used to pay Januarys rent?

[daPOd]

Yeah we have bank statements, but no actual receipts.

I'm presuming this guy is going to take me to a small claims court, and if that's the case i'll just let him ride it out and where needed i'll provide the evidence i have.

Won't ever go private again!!

[Planner]

If hes taking you to court then the onus is on him to show that you havent paid your rent to him. If you have bank statements etc showing that you withdrew a similar amount of money to your rent on or around the rent due days then you can provide that in any defence.

All this seems very odd...... is there more to this than meets the eye daPOd? for us to be any help we need the full story, if you havent already given it to us.

The moral isnt "dont rent private" but get recipts!!!

[MrShed]

I agree with Planner - there appears to be more to this one than we have been told...

[daPOd]

Right ok, full story

Rented a private property for 6 months on a shorthold assured tenancy.

All that we recieved upon moving into the house was a tenancy agreement and a hand written reciept for the total deposit amount.

After the 6th month we were placed on a rolling one month tenancy which lasted till the landlord gave us our Section 21 Notice on the 1st Dec 2006.

This then gave us till the 1st Feb 2007 to find somewhere else to live, which we did so via the local council and our landlord helped us to do so. As as the 1st Feb 2007 we had been in the property for 12 months.

He has now 24th Nov 2007 popped a letter through my door stating he did not recieve rent for the property from Nov 2006 through to March 2007. He also requests that we pay the total balance in cash within 7 days and has advised that we call his mobile to arrange collection of the said money.

We paid our rent in cash and he came to the house to collect this on the 1st of every month. We were new to private renting and never had receipts for these payments or even a rent book. We do have bank statements showing that on the 1st of every month during our tenancy we withdrew the total rent payment from our account over the counter at our local branch.

I tried to call him many times today regarding this but his wife answers and claims she does not talk very good english, and that i should call another time, hence the reason i posted here to ask for some advice.

That about sums it all up, hopefully someone can just point me in the right direction. I will be heading into town to see a solicitor in the morning anyway, but anything before then would be helpful.

[MrShed]

OK thats fine if thats the full story. Its not that we neccessarily doubt it, but just generally even bad landlords tend not to turn round and say that you havent paid rent for x months, when you have, without some ulterior motive.