Business lease

[tedblue]

So to follow on from my problems with my bank and now have a problem with my landlord, or rather his agents.

To cut a long story short:

1) Took on lease with landlord, he would offer rent demand, I would pay.
2) New landlord, uses agents, do not offer rent demands, simply walk in and demand payment, payments end up all over the place.
3) Switch to weekly payments as falling behind on payments due to bank issues.
4) agents have complete inability to retaing records of payments as proven when I demanded to see log of payments.
5) Revert back to quarterly payments but agents now tell me I am a quarter in arrears, when in fact I pay a qaurter in advance.
6) Receive oral threat to lock me out, without any demand notice or warning notice.

If I am locked out yet am in the right does that mean the lease is effectively terminated and the landlord has broken his side of the agreement? Will I have a legal case against him?

[carlyt123]

Hiya,

Yes absolutely, if you can prove that you are not behind with your payments and your landlord prevents access to your premises, then he is breaking the conditions of your lease agreement and can be sued. He would sue you if you didn't pay and broke the lease.
However, I will warn you lease agreements can be very flimsy and many cases can take a lot of time and be very costly. I have fought landlords in the past. Make sure you have a really good read through your agreement and are completely sure that would be the case.
If you have an actual lease though I would suggest that is definitely the case, tenancy agreements are a lot more flimsy. Usually in this situation it should be the agent helping you and the landlord find out the facts and determine who is in the right, so it sounds like you have the added problem of useless agents.

I hope I have helped you in some way and I really hope it doesn't come to that for you and that they sort out thir filing and find your payments before then

Carly

[tedblue]

Thank you so much for the advice. It does seem to be purely a problem with agents. I had a chat with the landlord who was suprised when I told him I was not in arrears. He is only working on the info given to him by the agents. I am tempted to let them lock me out and then go for them.

The original lease took months to deal with as the old landlord tried to use an off the shelf lease to save himself money and my solicitor virtually took it to pieces and started again. I think it will be fairly water tight on my behalf. Obviously I do not want it to go that way but it will be tempting to release myself from a 10 year lease i am quite fed up with.

[carlyt123]

Hi,

I completely know how you feel. I have just recently closed down my business, its tough out there and I am stuck with a 25 year lease on a property. I desperately wanted out of it some way, but have fortunately now found a buyer for completion 28th July-fingers crossed!!!
Being as the landlord is probably paying the agents 10% of your rent to deal with this stuff, it is highly surprising that he is not doing anything about it, baring in mind you have explained the situation. What is the point of paying these people?
I think you can do one of two things, go back to the Landlord and demand it is sorted and give him all your paper eveidence and let him sort it with his agents or do as you say and let it get nasty, be prepared for months of litigation, but it could well get you out of this agreement.
Sounds like you had some sort of tenancy agreement and your solicitor has rewritten it as a proper lease, which is good. Too many people rent commercial property on tenancy agreements and frankly they aren't worth the paper they are written on.
Either way it seems like you have everything on your side, so good luck with whatever you decide to do.

Carly