A man spent hundreds of thousands of pounds renovating a country property and a barn so he could use them for holiday lets. However, as he had not sought legal advice he lost all of the money because he had no long- term secure tenancy.
The definition of what comprises a storey of a building was to be found in the following case heard at the High Court and landlords of Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMO’s) should heed the decision to avoid prosecution.
A Supreme Court Ruling states that property landlords cannot be held responsible for repairs that they have no knowledge of, and any consequences of them.
There is an advantage of being calm under pressure but when you are about to be evicted from your 100 acre small holding you cannot afford to delay seeking legal advice, as the daughter of a farmer discovered.
The Court of Appeal heard a case of an amateur landlord who had been found guilty of causing her tenant’s death because she had not serviced the boiler and consequently she was given a suspended prison sentence and crippling fines. The Court of Appeal did not agree that the punishment was too harsh.
Tenants who pay deposits to their landlord have legal protection as the rules for landlords are complex and the penalties for non-compliance are severe as one landlord discovered in the following case when he was given a £1,600 penalty and was denied a possession order.
We live in a society where freedom of speech is important to the media which it believes enables it to report events that could be regarded as in the public interest, however should that override a person’s right to privacy?
So called ‘shared ownership’ – by which tenants steadily build up equity in their homes by overpaying their rent – is popular with first-time buyers as a means of getting onto the property ladder.
Almost every flat lease requires tenants to avoid activities that might cause damage, or annoyance or nuisance to fellow residents. One such clause became the focus of a case in which a couple who endured a series of water and sewage leaks into their basement flat won substantial damages from their upstairs neighbours.
Local authorities and social housing providers should take note of a High Court ruling that accommodation provided to a homeless single mother became her home and that she was entitled to the full benefit of the Protection from Eviction Act 1977.
Social housing is an intensely scarce resource and its desirability can sadly make it a target for fraud. Such behaviour does not go unpunished, however.
When it comes to issuing service charge demands, landlords must stick to the letter of leases or risk recovering nothing at all – even if that results in tenants receiving an unwarranted windfall.
If you have tenants that are causing issues for you or you require possession of the property for your own use there is a procedure that must be carried out. Unfortunately you are unable to simply change the locks and remove the tenant.
The current law allows any tenant (with some exceptions) who has lived in a property for more than 3 years under a lease of more than 20 years to apply to the landlord to purchase the freehold. The purchase price is based on the open market value of the property.
As a landlord you must put any deposit received in a Government backed tenancy deposit scheme (TDS) if you rent your property on an assured shorthold tenancy that started after 6th April 2007.
Following the Deregulation Act 2015 a new section 21 form has been released. The new regulations apply to tenancies that start on or after 1st October 2015 and then to all tenancies from 1st October 2018.
The regulations introduce a new prescribed form for a notice under section 21 informing a tenant that the landlord intends to seek possession of the property let on an assured shorthold tenancy.
There is now a mandatory introduction of smoke and carbon monoxide alarms in private rented homes. This was introduced in October 2015. Carbon monoxide alarms are only required in rooms with a solid fuel appliance.
A section 21 notice is a legal notice used to regain possession of your property from a tenant. It was introduced in 1988 to ease the process for landlords by eliminating the need to establish ‘grounds’ for possession. Section 21 can only be used with assured shorthold tenancies.
There have been recent changes affecting the section 21 which landlords and agents need to be aware of. The new regulations came into force on the 1st October 2015.
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