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.