My Leasing Hell...

[sazz]

Right, first off, thanks heaps for adding Leasing/landlords as part of the forum. It beggars belief that landlords/leasing agencies etc are allowed to get away with things that they do and being on the receiving end is no fun... Here's my story (which is still ongoing!)

Myself & 4 flatmates were renting a 3 bedroom flat through a leasing agency based in Edinburgh. The company knew there were 5 people in the flat and were aware that we were using the living-room as another bedroom. (Students need as many flatmates as possible to make it cheap enough!)

Basically it goes like this...

1.No HMO for the whole of the duration we were leasing the flat. (legal requirement for 3 or more unrelated people in a property)

2. Repairs were undertaken by the actual owner of the property, even though we phoned the leasing agency (as we were supposed to) concerning these repairs as they're responsible. The owner also appeared unannounced to do these 'repairs', as he said 'They (leasing agency) charge too much for repairs!).

3. Contractors in for over 6 months making our home unliveable at times changing double glazing to single glazing (even though the flat's above a sauna and a pub & next door another sauna.

4. The flat was a death trap. No workable locks on wondows, the yale lock comming off the front door, no shower & dodgy boiler. the security door intercom broken for at least 3 years, which they were supposed to also fix...

5. We have £10 a day charge for unpaid rent even though it's not in the terms of contract.

BLAH BLAH... The list goes on...

 

We sent a nice letter stating that until all repairs, HMO was in place etc we would withold our rent until we could live in the flat without being scared to fall asleep in case a disaster happened in the flat. (which has happened on many occasions & reported to police etc...)

We received a letter back saying they were now pushing for eviction & taking us to court for the unpaid rent (which we've NEVER disputed we owe by the way) & fines and slapped us with our eviction notice & intentions. Apparently they were reducing the number of tenants allowed in the property to two hence no HMO (even tho we were still in the property etc at the time).

We are all students or working in minimum wage jobs so we have a Legal Aid lawyer who in my opinion isn't too sure of what he's doing.

After about 3 weeks of receiving an eviction notice from the leasing agency, we recived a letter address to the occupant (s) from Yorkshire Building society. They had been made aware that we were renting the flat, but as tthe mortgage is apparently 'Owner-Occupier' only, we were going to get eviction proceedings from them also. (We have a file the size of the Eiffel Tower with all correspondence etc kept).

There's much more to the case but basically we went to Edin sherrif court and we were advised by our lawyer to submit what's called a 'Tender' where we were prepared to pay a quarter each of the monies etc outstanding... Obviously this almost £10,000. debt is due to their unlawful punitave charges.

We were awarded a judgement as the leasing agencies 2 sets of lawyers quit representing them and they didn't defend in court. However I've since received a letter frrom my lawyer (after 6 months of the court case supposedly ending in September) saying we still hadn't paid the tender. I was of the opinion it's not enforceable due to the charges, plus the fact the leasing company had obviosly been fraudulently and deceptively leasing out an unleasable flat for almost 5 years to us. Plus the fact we were awarded judgement in the case due to no show & as said by the judge in one of our hearings 'ill-preperation & confusion of their case' etc

As I said there's more legalities that the leasing agency has done & commited but it would be a 40 page post! If you'd like any more info I'll post it but I don't want to bore people too much!

Any questions comments etc are welcome as I feel we are being pursured when in actual fact we should be bringing a criminal fraud case against the leasing agancy for leasing the flat since they obviously didn't check the terms of the mortgage before they took on the property as leasable...

Any suggestions, or any suggestions for new Legal Aid lawyers close to Edinburgh are most appreciated!

[Seminole]

Wow. I don't know a lot about Scottish law nor whether therer differences in the legal obligations between landlords and tenants north of the border so I may not be much help.

 

A couple of questions:

 

1) Do you know what sort of tenancy it is ie is it an assured shorthold or something else?

 

2) Are you still in the property?

 

3) Is the £10k the total outstanding balance. How much of this is rent/ service charge and how much is penalty charges/ interest?

[Che]

I would maybe try your local CAB I work for one in Glasgow and they will hopefully be able to give you some advice and put you in the direction of a decent lawyer!

[redbubble]

Hi,

Im sorry to hear of your problems.

 

Can i ask if any of you put the rent money aside when it was witheld in lieu of repairs?

 

Im not sure about the laws in Scotland as i live & work in England. I know that where i work (A Local Council) we are the prosecuting authority against landlords.

 

Maybe you could try the Shelter.org website, theyre really good for housing advice (As its all they do).

Good Luck!!

[cheddar]

The CAB would be the best port of call for this one I think, also see if yu have a welfare or housing rights dept as part of your Local Authority as they can often help with things like this. Also if repairs on such things as heating, plumbing etc are not being done then you can contact your local Environmental Health dept as it can become a health hazard.

[Yyates]

Have a look on this web site it may be of some use to you

 

http://www.justclaim.co.uk/bb/index.php

[sazz]

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