Ready to take landlord to court

[Drederick Tatum]

Hi everyone.

 

After 6 weeks of attempting contact with our former landlord and one bounced cheque to show for our efforts we are now ready to move on to court action.

 

Some background...

 

We moved into the house last May and at the time everything seemed fine, we rented it through an estate agent who were there to basically set it up and then the landlord would be left to manage it himself, he seemed a nice guy and told us how he was spending more time at his girlfriends not far away than living here so after spending 6 months attempting to sell the place he wanted to rent it out to cover the mortgage.

 

Things were fine until the turn of the year when we received a letter address to the tenant from a solicitor saying that they were working on behalf of his mortgage company and that they would apply to repossess the house if payments were not met in the next 7 days, he assured us it was a mix up and that he had changed mortgages but with us having a new born baby it was a worry we didn't need and that was when things went down hill.

 

About a month or so afterwards he called us to say that he had decided to sell again, this was followed the next day by a call saying he had found someone privately and within a week they had viewed it and apparently agreed to buy it so we were handed our 2 months notice.

 

On the day we left he came around to look at the place and pointed out some damage to the carpet upstairs due to our cat which I didn't have a problem with, he said to us that he would go away and speak to the person he bought the carpet off and see if he could get a small piece to replace it which was fine.

 

2 weeks went by without hearing from him which is when we attempted to make phone contact however from that point until now all phone calls have been ignored, we then checked and found out it wasn't in a DPS so we started the process of sending a letter taken from the Shelter website asking for our deposit back and a week later dated 2 weeks prior claiming a few deduction that we didn't agree with and a cheque for just over half the deposit, our plan was to cash the cheque and write a letter disputing the difference however the cheque bounced and the landlord is refusing to sign for any more recorded delivery letters.

 

I've even gone into the local pub where I know he drinks and have given the owner my name and number asking him to call me but despite him passing it on he still refuses to contact us, we are now about to send the final letter before action so I've got a few questions about what I do from now.

 

1) Should we send copies of all documents we plan to send to the court to him with the LBA?

 

2) How do we proceed if he is refusing to sign for our letters?

 

3) The owner of the pub has told me he's renting the property to someone different rather than selling it, which makes me think he might have audacity to move us on just to keep our deposit, so how long does it take for land registry to process on their website and would it be worth sending the letter to that address too?

 

Sorry if I've waffled on a bit but as you can imagine it's a situation that's aggravated me greatly.

 

Many thanks for any help.

[mariner51]

1.No LBA will suffice. Court will provide both sides with evidence & response when Court action progresses

2 Send letters to reqd AST address for Service of Notices by First Class post, obtaining free Cert of Posting from PO counter at time.

DO NOT use registered, signed for delivery.

3. What has Land Registry got to do with it?

[ashmk]

Also I wouldn't cash any cheque's until I was happy with the amount on it.

[Drederick Tatum]

Thanks for the replies...

 

Mariner - Is there a reason not to send it recorded? Can he not claim it was lost in the post?

 

Ashmk - Knowing his poor credit history and the period of him ignoring us we were thinking we were lucky to see any of it again and would have chased the rest after.

[Drederick Tatum]

Mariner - In reply to your question about land registry, he told us he wanted us to leave as he was selling it and it was going through June 1st but we've been told since that he is renting the property back out, now since he had post still delivered there when we lived there that he collected I wondered if we would he better off sending a copy there too, so I wondered how often the land registry updated their site so to check if he still owns it.

[mariner51]

Registered-signed for delivery requires someone to sign for letter. occupant can refuse or if postie gets no response he will return it to sorting office to await collection by recipient. If not collected after ~14 days it will be returned to sender - so no service of Notice.

Normal mail is delivered (served) by sticking it through the letterbox of address property.

If you mail to correct address by pre-paid First Class post, from at least one post office (not post box) and obtain a free Cert of Posting from each PO counter then you can rely on the Interpretation Act for presumed delivery (service) 2 PO working days later (exc w/e & bank hols)

 

LR records can take several weeks to record a change of ownership. It is not relevant to your claim whether sold or re-let property after you vacated. So LL may have told you a porky pie, but I assume you vacated voluntarily before a Court repo Order was granted?

[Drederick Tatum]

Yes, we vacated voluntarily.

 

I will send the LBA first class and get a receipt and see how this goes.

 

I appreciate the help.