UK Landlord Forum / Life

I agreed to let my tenants out of their lease nine months early for compassionate reasons because they told me they had financial problems.  I have now learnt that they used the rent money they were due to pay me as a down payment on a house.  Is there anything I can do about this or have I just been duped?  THANKS!!

If the tenancy ended, i.e. the keys have been surrendered, deposits returned etc then there's nothing you can do I think. Short of taking them to court and imho losing.

Consider yourself lucky. You can read time and time again how some nightmare tenants can't be gotten rid of. If they lie that easily they'd have sooner or later screwed you over.

That's my opinion anyway...

-Armin

Hello Tigulio,

Sorry to hear of your problems.  I'm assuming they said something like "we won't be able to afford the rent in the future, so to avoid bad blood on both sides, why don't you let us walk away now.  We'll owe you nothing and you can re-market straight away".

I'm also assuming you're an English landlord of a domestic property (you say "lease" instead of "rent").  And your tenents have not had an improvment in their fortunes after leaving you which you don't know about.

In this case you're been defrauded by a willful misrepresentation.  Your legal rights include going through the Small Claims process of the High Court to recover the rent money not paid.  If you have sucessfully re-let in the meantime, you may be sensible to claim for your "net" loss.

If your discussions were verbal only, I'd guess you have only a 50:50 chance of suceeding: The court does appreciate a landlord will not normally relenquish a contractual income on a whim.  If you've kept verifyable paperwork then you should get back what you claim for.

Hope this helps, please let us know what you decide to do and how it turns out.