Comments on: Agents letting property subject to a re-possession order

By: Net

Net — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:34:00 +0000

I agree that estate agents should do more checks to protect tenants. i rent a house which i have found out my landlord doesnt even actually own the house! And the morgage is going unpaid. its 2 weeks before xmas and i am looking for somewhere new to live before i get evicted! merry christmas ay?!

By: J

Sat, 17 May 2008 08:07:00 +0000

Well, your tenants surely have a cause of action against their landlord (derogation from grant / breach of the covenant for quiet enjoyment etc) and, whilst general damages wouldn’t be very high, the aggravated / exemplary damages would be more significant.

As for the agents – what duties do they owe a tenant though? Their fiduciary duties are to the landlord. I suppose that, if they knew of the possession order, you’d have a remedy against them for misrepresentation.

By: House

House — Wed, 14 May 2008 21:37:00 +0000

As long as the mortgage is paid I’ve never seen a mortgage company do anything just because you’ve got a tenant in. In the current economic climate I’m sure they’re thankful for the fact they are being paid at all!

I think what your doing is fine really, certainly nothing compared to LL’s reletting with possession orders which is terrible. Sadly hard to do anything about it as they probably don’t have any money to pay any breach of quiet enjoyment action.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:40:00 +0000

I let out a house, and I haven’t got a buy to let mortgage which means I’m in breach of my mortgage terms. This could be a very bad thing for my tenants, but I don’t feel I’ve an alternative. To convert my existing mortgage to buy to let would cost:
– £250 fee by my lender to convert the mortgage and approve the tenancy agreement
– 0.25% interest increase
– around 8% of my rental income to use a lettings agent as the lender stipulates I must.
In my case this means the income would barely keep pace with the interest on the mortgage. So I wouldn’t do it, and the tenants there now wouldn’t have had the chance to live there. Given that I *know* I will always be able to meet the monthly repayments, I’m not sure who’s harmed.

Views?!

By: Nearly Legal

Nearly Legal — Mon, 12 May 2008 21:32:00 +0000

Ouch - although there will be more of this going on shortly.

As to the duty of the managing agent, I would guess this is always going to be tricky as long as they are simply the landlord's agent. The argument will always be that the tenant has recourse against the landlord.

Anything else would probably require legislation to introduce a parallel duty to the tenant to ensure that the let is 'proper'. I can hear the lobbying already...

I'll add a link to your post - repossession has been getting a lot of comments on NL today and this is an important part of it.