Landlord has stolen from us.

[boylet]

Hi there....

I recently left a flat in south london, i shared the flat with 3 other people.

We had a good relationship with our landlord ( no estate agents involved) untill he and his wife decided to divorce.

The landlord then decided to sell his house to settle his divorce with his wife.The flat was in no state to be sold, as the tennants below us had illegally knocked a wall down inside their flat, causing our lounge wall to slowly start sinking.

I brough this to the attention of the landlord who then got workers in to fix the problem.For a while we had to put up with workmen in our flat while they hid the problem rather than fixed it.
Straight after that the estate agents were asked to sell the house and we were told we would be given a months notice when someone bought the house.

well for three months, no one put in an offer for the house, and we had estate agents flowing through the property solid for this amount of time, an average of 4 to 5 apointments a day except Sundays, i would often wake up on a saturday morning with and esate agents standing in my room showing potential buyers around.
We eventually complained to the landlord, who pleaded with us to be patient as he was desperate to sell the house, he said he would compensate us with cash to make up for it.Well that was a load of bull, obviously to get us off his case.

The estate agents didnt stop coming round and no one would buy the house, as tennants we realised the only way to win, was to move out.

we all gave the landlord our final months notice at the same time.

The landlord phoned me up very annoyed when we did this, moaning at me on the phone, telling me we cant just serve notice and move, even though he told us we were now on a month to month notice till his flat got sold.

The landlord lives in Spain, and he never once bothered to come over to England during this time.Even when we moved out, we asked him when he would come and get the keys, he ignored us, we asked him when he would come and do the final inventory, he ignored us.

We eventually spent our last weekend in the flat with no site of the landlord, we scrubbed the flat down, took photos of everything and left the flat empty.

The Landlord simply refused to answer our calls or E-mails.

i kept E-mailing the landlord asking him when we would get our deposits back, till i got to the point where i threatend to get a third party involved, waallaa....he replied.
He said he would pay the money into our respective accounts the next day, an amount totalling £1230.

Well the weeks went by and no money was paid into our accounts, so i got a lawyer involved.
Our lawyer did the favour for us through a freind of a freind, hence why i still need advice from this forum.

We have sent two letters asking the landlord to pay up, he has just ignored us.

My fear is, that he no longer lives at the address in Spain ( becuase of the divorce) If he is still living there, we have no proof that hes seen our letters.

I have also since find out that he owns numerous houses in London, including the one we lived in.

Is there any other way we can get him to pay?
How else do we get him to acknowledge us??
Ive been speaking to other people about this and they seem to think i should just drop it and forget about it becuase hes got away with it.

If there is nothing i can do about my personal case, then is there not some way we can get the bigger picture looked at, becuase this is such a common case with private landlords.

Advice apreciated..

Tony.

[blacksheep1979]

You need a UK address to serve court doccuments on so you stand little chance of seeing the money back - really sorry about that. If you can find an UK address for him then I would suggest just taking him to the small claims court.

[boylet]

thanks for that, i thought as much....

ill find a UK address for him.

thanks for your reply.

Tony

[WendyN]

Hello,

we also had an overseas landlord (Overseas Landlord post for for more info).
He also decided to hold onto our deposit, for no reason whatsoever, and we didn't think we could do anything about it.

If you did not let through an estate agent based in the UK, did you use a power of attorney in the UK? Who did you pay your rent to? Here's the legal stuff you need, from someone a few months further on in the small claims process to you :o)

Residential Landlord - Landlord regulations

Section 47, Landlord and Tenant Act 1987

This legislation requires that every demand for rent carries the address of the landlord and if that address is outside England and Wales the demand for rent must also carry an address in England and Wales where notices in proceedings can be served on the landlord.

Failure to comply with section 47 means that any portion of the rent which is attributable to service charge is not lawfully due. The address of the landlord on such a written demand could be the landlord’s office address, rather than home address.

Section 48 Landlord and Tenant Act 1987

This requirement is very similar to section 47 but with a subtle difference – it requires that the tenant must be given an address in England where notice of proceedings can be served on the landlord – it follows that this address does not have to be that of the landlord.

Until section 48 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987 is complied with rent is not lawfully due.

What this basically means is that it is illegal not to have an address in the UK to pay rent to, and serve papers on. The person you pay the rent to is the person you can take to the small claims court to get your deposit back. If this isn't the case then they have taken money from you unlawfully and you can claim all of the rent you've ever paid back from them.

Good luck! Don't let him get away with it.

WendyN

[boylet]

Hey Wendy....

Thanks a mill for replying to my post.

ill forward this info on to see where i can get with it and let you know as soon as i got some news.

Tony.

[boylet]

Hi, Im back.....

I went ahead and got my lawyer to check the land registry and the landlord DOES still own the house here in the UK.
So i now have a UK address where notice on proceedings can be served.In the process i have also found out that the landlord DOES still live at the same address in Spain meaning hes just choosen to ignore our solicitors letters.

Yesterday i posted two LBA ,registered mail, to his UK and Spanish addresses.

Thanks for your bit of advice WendyN.

Ill post the final result here.