UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hello all,

Thanks in advance for any help, am new here

We have been renting our house to a couple with 3 kids for 18 months now.  The initial contract was for 12 months, and in that 12 months, they paid late on 8 occasions.  They were also very difficult to communicate with and get hold of.  As a result, when they expressed they wanted to stay at the property, we drew up a new contract changing the break clause on the tenants' side from 1 month to 3 months. 

We sent them the new contract before the initial contract ended, but despite multiple reminders, they never signed it.  We have the email trail to showed that we tried. 

We have learnt recently that the couple have split up, and the husband has already left the property.  We want to be understanding and fair to the wife and 3 young kids, but she has just given us notice to vacate, expecting to use the original break clause of 1 month. 

Are we entitled to keep any of their deposit for this failure to comply with the new terms?  Could we argue that there was tacit agreement on their part given that they continued to stay at the property?  If it helps, they have paid late on every single month in since the contract was renewed.

Any advice appreciated!  Yee

Honestly?
I would just get them out of there.

just be very grateful she is going , let her go , get new tenant , that pays on time 

We are somewhat relieved they are going!

Unfortunately, our next door neighbour with an identical house is also looking for new tenants.  They have been looking for 2-3 months now and it is proving difficult to find a replacement.  Therefore I think if we put our house back on the market, it will be a while until we can find new tenants.  As I said, we want to understanding and fair to their situation, but we also need to cover our losses.  What is the legality of our situation, anyone know?

The tenant cannot be be breaking the terms of a contract she hasn't signed. When the original contractual term ended, in the absence of any new contract, the tenancy automatically became a Statutory Periodic Tenancy,. Under an SPT, the tenant only has to give one month's notice. Unfortunately, therefore, you don't have grounds to retain any part of the deposit for lack of notice. If you did, the tenant could raise a dispute with the deposit protection scheme's arbitration service, who would inevitably find against you.

As the others have said, wave them goodbye and move on without a backward glance.

Quote from: yeenga on September 14, 2018, 06:55:02 AMCould we argue that there was tacit agreement on their part given that they continued to stay at the property?

Absolutely not - this is, in effect, backwards - the way you have it is backwards. The Tenant is under no obligation to sign a new contract / AST. The terms of the original stand, and if that means what the Tenant is doing now [anything, not just notice period - which is absolutely fine, as it's SPT] is fine by those previous terms you're just gonna have to suck it up. You don't have a legal leg to stand on here - there's no such thing as tacit agreement in this case. But, as someone else said... you either want them out, or you want them in... you just can't have it kinda both ways.

For me, I'd swallow the headache of finding new Tenants. If there's a house close by that's struggling then you'll need to differentiate yourself somehow - either by fixtures and fittings, or rent, or terms and conditions... obviously you can't differentiate based on locality and local amenities or transports links. Just remember the true cost to you of a void period over your desire to retain the same rent level, or higher. Good luck.