Tenant in landlord repossssion

[jssandy01]

Does anyone know what the position is with rent payments if landlord has a possession order granted against them, but has since come to a repayment arrangement with lender. No eviction order has been issued and will not be but the lenders solicitors have told tenant the must pay rent to lender direct or they will have to leave immediately.

 

My undersanding is that f the lender has agreed repayment schedule then what right do he have o et the rent and if so will that go towards mortgage payment.

[Lea_HTH]

Your LL and his lender may have agreed that the rent payments go towards the mortgage - so check with your LL if it is the case that the rent must be paid to them. The strongest likelihood is that there are receivers in place, in which case they will take the rent from you on behalf of the mortgage lender. If you don't pay, you can be evicted via the usual possession proceedings.

[scouserat]

By any chance is the receiver called Walker Singleton? If so I'd seriously advise looking for another house now. My sister had fun and games with these muppets. This is just general advice regarding receivers, although it mentions WS.

 

Her LL went bankrupt at end-2011 and the mortgage company, Mortgage Express (I'll call MEx from now on), appointed Walker Singleton as receiving agents. Their job was to manage the property on be half of MEx and two guys with what sounded like Polish names. Around January 2012 sis received a letter from them informing her of what had gone on and from now on all rent payments for the flat (it was a house split into an upper and ground floor flat which she lived in) should be made to them. She naturally asked what the situation was, and should she start looking for another property as she has kids and she doesn't want to stress them out if the property was to be repossessed. WS advised her that as long as she kept paying rent nothing would happen to her and it was just a change of who the rent was paid to.

 

They did say that they'd need to send surveyors out for the state of the property and for it to be valued, but this was purely administrative. She was cooperative with them, and they even asked her to write up a list of "repairs and maintenance" that she felt needed doing.

 

The list was quite long due to the original LL dodging them, and two of the problems were inadequate heating (they were turn off/on electric wall heaters that just ate electricity) and a fault with the electric shower as guests (myself included) had reported static shocks occasionally IN the shower. They sent an electrician and plumber out who both agreed that the shower needed replacing urgently, the wiring was a cowboy job and it needed to be completely redone, and that panel heaters should also be fitted. She received a call from WS saying that they'd arrange date for the work to be done as soon as they'd had authorisation from MEx. This never happened.

 

In July the boiler went completely (it was a pathetic electric thing that wasn't really any good). For 5 weeks she made almost daily calls to WS as they were saying that the contractors were busy, putting in estimates and getting a boiler was problematic, and it was only when she got her solicitor involved that they sorted it out. If there's a plus side to this, it's that it got my sister and her kids into swimming as they started to go swimming three nights a week so they could get a shower

 

In October she received a section 21 seeking repossession of the property so it could be sold at auction, along with the couple upstairs. It gave her 60 days to find another property, after which they'd start eviction proceedings and pass the cost onto her. Now at this point she told me what was happening (she tried to handle stuff on her own out of pride more than anything) so I was able to advise her, but it was a bit late in the day to really do too much. The date to vacate was also 18 December - exactly a week before Xmas and she has two kids!

 

Now this will be an absolute shock when it happens as you'll get absolutely no prior warning before it happens. WS are also pains to negotiate with regarding this. As hers was a week before Xmas, she asked was it possible to have an extension of 28 days as she didn't want the kids disrupted over Xmas, and she also knew of a property that was becoming free straight after new year due to a LL my parents knew. WS' answer was a flat out no. She could refuse to vacate, but at that point she was told they'd start eviction proceedings and pass the cost on to her.

 

If you get this, or even when you start dealings with WS, change your rent to weekly and pay it as you go. DO NOT withhold the rent or be unnecessarily awkward with them. Most (decent) LLs will ask them for a reference and if you withhold the rent then they can claim you're not paying rent or you're a nightmare tenant.

 

If you've also paid a month up front or some sort of 'cash' deposit to the original LL then make sure you have the receipts for it. My sister paid a month up front as a deposit, and WS said they would return it as she had receipts. WS wouldn't let her go "rent free" for those 4 weeks and would only return the deposit as soon as they had the keys back (I guess due to damage as the couple upstairs did - they totally smashed the place up and had to be removed by force a few months later). What happens in regards to the bond guarantee scheme I don't know as my sister wasn't affected by that, but I guess they'll take instructions from WS.

 

DO demand that the receivers help you with moving costs. WS actually did agree to pay the moving costs of £175 for my sister as a "gesture of goodwill". What she wasn't able to get was any help towards the deposit, although she got this partly from work (as a loan) and partly from family.

 

One positive point of the S21 is that you don't have to wait out your notice period. You can just get a place, let the receivers know when it is, and then move. My sister literally saw her new place on Tuesday, viewed it Wednesday, had managed to arrange the deposit cheques for Thursday (and let WS know, while the LL fasttracked her credit checks), signed the tenancy on it on the Saturday, moved in on the Sunday and handed the keys back to WS on the Monday. This is the main reason to pay the rent as you go, as you're not trying to claim it back. Also, when you sign off on the old property, make sure you have the piece of paper that says there is no damage, or exactly what it is. This stops WS saying "oh you put a massive hole in a wall" or something at a later date.

 

As far as the financial side goes of getting money back, my sister's experience was that she had to prod WS quite a few times to get them to get around to it. It wasn't until I wrote her an "e-mail before action" that she received a call from WS to arrange a BACS transfer and it came through the Friday before Xmas. There is actually a woman that deals with this at WS, but she's hard to get hold of so e-mails work better here and make sure she has the correct account details where you want the money putting.

 

I'm guessing this specifically is WS' modus operandi as the LL owned several properties on the street and all the tenants got hit with S21 notices on exactly the same day (although one of them actually bought their property after making a deal with WS). As I've said though, I'd start looking for a new property before the mortgage company decide to repo the property.

 

Sorry for the long amount of text, but this is what to expect if you snared by WS.