Here is a post from Sally (not her real name) who posted this on the blog clinic as she wanted to warn landlords about a situation she had experienced.
Not exactly a ‘problem’ that I need help with, more something I would like to warn other Landlords about.
A tenant approached my lettings agent with 2 other persons to rent a 2-bed as 3-bed. We agreed (no lounge) but on a later inspection we found more furniture in the property. The lead tenant explained it was his furniture, and he needed to put it somwhere (our flat was fully furnished) and there was no clause in the tenancy agreement about having ‘too much’ furniture (true!)
We had our suspicions and warned him against sub-letting as the rent was set for the 3 of them, plus I explained about a previous tenant who had sub-let and who was now repaying us £6,500 from a court judgement in 2008.
Not satisfied with his response I popped back a week or so later, knocked on the door and the unknown person who answered the door invited me in (thank you). I started chatting to people resident in there. The flat was being run as a hostel and they were paying by the room or by the bed. One person was on the phone and I asked if he was speaking to my tenant? He replied yes so I suggested he might like to come round and we can have a chat.
The tenancy was nearing it’s end date, so we agreed him vacating at the end, and he has just moved out. All the new furnishing we put in the property have really suffered, not so much wear and tear but because he constantly moved them around to accommodate different people they have been pulled apart!
But here comes the part that I would like to alert you all to. My husband has found information at the flat that this tenant has 25 flats in this area that he has rented, usually through reputable local estate agents, that he is sub-letting in this way and is preparing for the Olympics next year. He has a website that has no further information yet, but will do soon. This is in London SE16.
My concern is a) he is not being upfront about what he is doing and b) is sub-letting, not allowed in the tenancy agreement but also c) if the local authority were to be contacted, the LANDLORD (ie. you, not him) could surely get into trouble with having 8-10 people in a 2-bed flat and running it as a hostel, with no licence, nothing?
To add insult to injury, when my husband got back into the flat we couldn’t get the boiler to work. Then realised he had turned the gas OFF so that his tenants had no hot water nor heating. Eon turned up to read the neters as their records showed no gas use. He also turned the fans off in kitchen and bathroom to save electricity which has resulted in mouldy areas in the flat, made worse by lack of heating and ventilation with that number of people in there. (We have an appointment with Envirovent, recommended supplier on landlord law, to attend next week)
As access to your property can only be in agreement with a tenant, it is easy for someone to state that they just have a lot of furniture.. I had no evidence there was anyone else living there outside of the tenancy agreement as there was no-one else there when we inspected and few belongings.
I did however ask him which bedroom was his and he was vague… I knew then.
We are still sorting out the flat after his departure and are still on cordial terms with him and he is accepting deductions from his deposit as we tot them up. But my real concern is that if he ever got a tricky person in one of his ‘rental’ properties that he could just stop paying the rent and walk away from it, leaving a Landlord with a stranger in their flat and a court to case in order to evict him.
He does not own any of these flats, so he will pass credit checks as he has all utilities in his name, no problem, but we cannot prove where he actually lives, plus if ever there was a problem and you got a court order for costs, you would never get the money as he doesn’t own any of these properties.
I know plenty of Landlords in my area that are very laissez-faire about what their tenants do and are then surprised when they get themselves into a pickle over a situation they should have sorted out previously and just let drift as they were still getting their rent in every month.
I am therefore spreading the word about this as much as possible, to warn other Landlords about this practice, particularly in London and particularly in Bermondsey and Rotherhithe where he is based.
Any thoughts anyone has on this situation, please respond as this is a new one on me, after 21 years of being a landlord.
With the Olympics next year there will no doubt be quite a lot of this. Ben has written about it in at least one of his posts, and there is also some guidance on the National Landlords Association site.
Landlords will I am afraid, have to be extra vigilant until it is all over.
Unfortunately Sally is experiencing something that Landlords struggle to deal with as we have to respect a tenants right to quiet enjoyment. I have had many people try to let rooms with their friends to save money (risking overpopulation). We seem to be going back to the time when houses were overpopulated by todays standards. 21 children in one house or 8+ people living in a 3 bed house.
Unfortunately some migrant workers from Eastern block countries share beds on a shift basis and see multiple people per room the only way to make housing affordable. It’s multi lets working in reverse and without consideration of overcrowding laws.
If you rent to housing benefits the only solution I see is never to put a single person in a three bed house. Find the correct size family unit for the size if property (3 bedroom lha allowance for a 3 bedroom house.)
Otherwise inspect and only grant six month tenancies (maximum) to start with then allow the agreement to roll on to periodic (on a month to month agreement.)
Either way they get the house for at least 6 months. it’s not fair but unfortunately the law is stacked in the tenants favour.
Thanks Philip.
I suppose another solution is to let the property out yourself on a room by room basis.
Thank you Philip and Tessa.
We do not rent our flats to LHA tenants,plus we also ensure that there are adequate private tenants to the number of rooms to prevent this.
My concern is that there will be plenty of other Landlords who will have already rented out a 2-bed flat to this person, unaware of what is happening, until a problem occurs, so thought it worth circulating this information. Thank you.
This depresses me. I started doing landlord tenant law work in 1990, I have pretty much seen it all, got the T shirt etc, but lately, and I mean just this year, I am seeing more property fraud stuff coming in, particularly in relation to dodgy agents.
In the last 2 weeks I have been getting loads of complaints about a local character who is putting cards in newsagent’s windows, taking rent up front and deposits and when the new tenant turns up to move in, the property is already let to people who know nothing of what is going on.
I have one agent that I wrote about on Landlord Law blog who has a dedicated office to do the same thing.
In 21 years I have not seen the kinds of property fraud I am seeing at the moment.
I recently attended Woolwich County Court users group, where we get to chat with the judges off duty and they said they are seeing more cases where people rent a property and sub let pretending to be the lawful landlords. How do you stop this?
How do you stop it? Really, only by legislation – and then you risk accusations of the ‘nanny state’ 🙁
If landlords had to provide proof of ownership/permission to sublet in the same way as they have to provide EPCs then it would be a step in the right direction. Unfortunately there are more pressing issues for Mr Shapps to ignore before he gets round to this.
Absolutely David.
The troubel is a huge number of cases I see where the landlord is legit are doing it without the knowledge of the mortgage lender. If they had to get clearance from the lender a lot of properties would go.
We placed a homeless family in temporary accomodation that we had leased from a local housing association for that very purpose and the guy got a temp job in the midlands and moved up there, letting his temp accommodation out through a local letting agent who didnt bother to verify anything.
In London there are so many lettings done on a wing and prayer that I wonder if having to get some sort of authorisation certificate would actually result in properties being lost.
Sometimes you have to deal deals with the devil.
There is a notorious Rogue landlord around the Bournemouth area whose reputation has even reached London. I was training a homeless charity down there recently and mentioned him and although they acknowledged he was less than decent they said he was the only landlord who lets to their clients so they actually need him.
I don’t think legislation would in and of itself work. Subletting is already unlawful, more legislation would simply be overegging the pudding. To my mind, the onus is on landlords to check this sort of thing; put a clause in the tenancy agreement for, say, a trimestrial inspection of the premises and if access won’t be provided, be prepared to injunct and/or possess.
A wise tenant could always run a land registry check for ownership which is public information. They charge us £4 because we have an account but I think it is £8 if you dont
I downloaded a couple of title registers recently and they cost £4 each. I think I had to register to get access to this facility but there was no charge for registration.
What a great insight, with some brilliant advice. If tenants are illegally subletting their property, then they probably should be made to pay the amount they make to their landlord.
Sophie Hobson, deputy editor, LondonLovesBusiness
‘A wise tenant’, I don’t seem to meet those in the properties I rent in London. They tend to be immigrants or perhaps students from elsewhere who have rented once or twice before. The stories I am told of their previous experiences of renting, yet no-one seems to do anything about the landlords who treat their tenants in this way, not in London, though I realise it is often the legal system that lets you down eg. petty fines for Landlords in Court and a long wait for court dates.
When we spoke to tho tenants who had rented from our tenant, they seemed to know he didn’t own the place but they didn’t have anywhere else to go. We pointed out to them that what they were paying, between 3 of them they could have rented the whole flat from us, there are properties like ours around that are cheaper, but they said they could not pass the credit checks that the agency requires. Ben, we are in the same area, so I am sure you have met similar types of people.
What I have noticed though is that often it is our foreign born tenants who sub-let to people from their own country who make the worst landlords! When we had this before, our tenant was even taking deposits which she would not refund, yet they were all from the same country.
It’s a bit sad really.
Message in response to Sophie Hobson: We tried that approach! Our tenant complained he ‘didn’t make enough’ to be able to pay us anything! Whilst we could have pressed him on it, as his tenancy was ending it seemed wiser to move on particularly as his rent had been late in recent months. Apparently this is the first of his rented flats he has had to give back. His deposit is rapidly being eroded by the damages we are finding at the flat, so perhaps he will go off the idea of sub-letting. So many people think it is an easy role, being a landlord!
Yes Sally I have to agree with you there. I think I have written elsewhere on landlord law blog a few months back about the abuse of illegal immigrants by those in their own community which is quite widespread.Because the tenants dont have recourse to public funds they cant complain to the council for fear of being deported, so in many ways they suffer more than most.
I honestly think some of it is down to cultural ways transferring with them. I always ask people from abroad how renting is conducted in their home countries and rarely hear of the strict laws we have here, apart from I think Georgia I seem to recall where eviction without due process is illegal.
With Nigerian lettings a lot of it is done through the churches they are often members of and everything seems to be done on a handshake, sometimes with the Pastor attempting to broker an agreement between landlords and tenants in a dispute in very creative ways that dont adhere to the UK laws, so trying to untangle the mess is often a nightmare for me and tenants usually dont want the kinds of assistance I can offer.
Sub-letting and overcrowding are widespread and property conditions often very poor as is property fraud. I have one tenant who the police raided and seized 20 black bin liners full of passports, marriage certificates, birth certificates etc
Oh, and sorry to double post but this was prompted reading JS’s comments. Yeah legislation is hard and all but pointless to the devoted scammer but one thing several councils and housing associations do to avoid sub letting is to keep photo of the tenant on file.
We now photo all clients we place in temporary accommodation because we had so many cases where the homeless applicant whose documents we thoroughly checked and verified often wasnt the person who turned up at the hostel or B&B