UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi,

We came to our end of tenancy agreement, we moved out already and were waiting on our deposit. So, the DPS emailed with landlord's note on it saying we left the property 3 days after it supposed to be and charged us £148. This is where I need some advice on. On our AST, it says that the contract was made on 14th of December but inside it says, the term from and including the 20th of December. We paid our rent on 20th of every month. The landlord even texted that the keys to be handed on 18th. So now he says that we should have left on 15th. Are we on the wrong here? Please advise 😿.

AST terms - fixed and periodic - are generally for full months (which are obviously a different number of days each month) so it wouldn't be typical to find an AST running from the 14th to the 20th. It would typically run from, say, the 14th to the 13th. There could be a simple mistake in the AST, I suppose, hangover from another version?... because otherwise you both end up pro-rating the rent required and it's just so much easier to do it in full months and be done with it. The grey area here is that you always paid closer to the 20th... so maybe it's actually the case you got some 'free' days at the beginning... who knows, but you should pay rent for the days you were in the property.

Work it out.

If your monthly rent is, say £500 - then the annual rent is £6,000 and the daily rent is approximately £16.44. If you had stayed there for exactly 1 year you'd pay £6,000. If you stayed there for 3 days more you'd reasonably expect to pay 3 x £16.44 = £49.32.

From the Landlord's request of £148 can I assume your monthly rent was £1,500?

If so, I want a Tenant like you.

Hi Hippogriff,

You are good, it is £1500 pcm. However, my question was, were we wrong to think that our AST started on 20th and to end on 19th? On the front cover of the AST contract it says that it was made on 14th and inside the contract it says that the term starts from 20th. If we knew that the period were to start from 14th then we would pay on 14th. we are no expert on this so how would we know? We do not want any sort of dispute with anyone but I just don't want to be charged extra for nothing and get bullied by anyone.

Please advise.

Also, we did get our keys on that property on 20th not on 14th. Even though the contract was made on 14th. Does it help to clarify what I'm saying?

If you got keys on the 20th, then it would normally run from a 20th to a 19th. The dates in an AST would, generally, be a few... it could have the date it was created, it could it have the date it was passed to the Tenant for review, the date it was signed, the date the AST commences from (20th) and even include things like the exact date it ends.

My ASTs do.

It certainly sounds like your AST ran from the 20th... it's a bit strange it ran until a 20th too (whichever way you look at that it's a month and a day), but that's chicken feed either way.

I would be challenging the Landlord on this... but, first, I think I would just be asking if an admin. error has been made (it's not clear if that part has been done already).

Quote from: tenant1 on August 08, 2018, 11:32:20 AM...were we wrong to think that our AST started on 20th and to end on 19th?

No. You were correct.