How Should Landlords Respond to AI-Generated Tenant Complaints?

You are a landlord with perhaps one or two properties.  You consider yourself a reasonably good landlord and have generally got on well with your tenants.

Suddenly, you receive a letter of complaint from your tenants.

It is very long, complex and seems to quote a lot of law, some of which you were not aware of, or thought had been repealed.

You are also very surprised, as the letter writing style is quite different from your tenants’ normal communications.

You are not particularly wealthy and cannot really afford to instruct solicitors to investigate this.

What should you do?

The AI letter

It’s probable that this letter has been drafted—or substantially expanded—using an AI tool. Sudden changes in style, lengthy legal arguments and confident citations of obscure legislation generally indicate AI assistance.

However, that doesn’t mean you should not take the letter seriously. Your tenant must have been unhappy about something to have consulted AI about drafting a letter to you in the first place.

But if the letter has been drafted by AI, it is likely that some parts of it are incorrect.  As AI often makes mistakes.  The question is what parts are incorrect and what should you do about it?

If you use AI yourself, you could upload a copy of the letter and ask its advice. Although before doing so, you should remove any identifying information such as names, addresses or other personal or sensitive information.

However, you need to be careful about relying on the reply, as your AI is as likely to make a mistake as your tenant’s AI! So use your AI to help you understand and organise the letter, rather than as your only source of legal advice.

What you could do, though, if you are finding the letter hard to understand, is to ask your AI to analyse it and work out what the problem is. For example, it could be asked to provide a table showing

Analysing the letter

You need to separate out

• the problem the tenants are complaining about from
• the legal rules that they are citing, and
• the redress that they are claiming.

For example, let’s assume they allege one of the following:

• The property has damp – so you must deal with this within 48 hours under Awaab’s law and pay them two months’ compensation
• You have failed to serve a gas safety certificate on them – so they have a defence to the section 8 notice based on ground 1 that you have just served
• You have failed to serve the government’s ‘How to Rent’ booklet on them – so you cannot use any of the possession grounds
• You have failed to obtain an HMO or selective license – so they are automatically entitled to be refunded two years’ worth of rent

How should you deal with these?

The property has damp

This is certainly something you should investigate and if they are correct, deal with as soon as possible.

However, Awaab’s Law does not currently apply to ordinary private sector landlords. Nor does it provide a general rule that every damp problem must be resolved within 48 hours or automatically entitle a tenant to two months’ compensation.

There are, though, other repairing and housing condition obligations on private landlords. You should inspect promptly, identify the cause, keep written records and arrange any work for which you are responsible.

The failure to serve a gas safety certificate

This is only mandatory if the property has gas, so if the property is all electric then you are not at fault!

However, if the property has gas appliances for which you are responsible, check immediately whether the required inspection has been carried out and the certificate supplied. If not, take steps to get this done as soon as possible.

Failure to provide a gas safety certificate, though, does not, by itself, provide a defence to possession proceedings brought under Ground 1.

Also, often the reason landlords have not been able to get the inspection done is that tenants have refused access! If this is the case here, make sure you have full records of this. Then write to the tenant referring to your previous attempts to arrange access, and ask them to make an appointment for your gas engineer to attend as soon as possible.

The government’s How to Rent booklet

This has now been withdrawn by the government so landlords no longer need to serve it.

It is possible though that your tenants might be confusing this with landlords’ new obligations to provide prescribed written information about their tenancy, so check that you have done this!

The failure to obtain an HMO or selective license

If you have indeed failed to obtain this, then you are in a tricky position.

However, even if you have, tenants are not automatically entitled to two years’ rent. They must apply to the Tribunal first, and the award is decided by the Tribunal, which will take various matters into account, including the behaviour of the tenants.

So proceed as follows:

• Your property may not be licensable – so check this first. Licensing schemes vary between council areas and may change over time.
• If the property is now licensable because of unauthorised occupiers brought in by the tenants, you should ask them to remove them. If they fail to do so and are in breach of the terms of their tenancy agreement, seek legal advice. You may well have a claim to evict them along with an injunction and costs. However, you may still need to get a licence.
• If you are at fault, then apply for a licence immediately – this will protect you against claims for the period after your application was made. Before speaking to your tenants, seek legal advice.

These are just a few examples.  But whatever your tenant is alleging, try to deal with it in the same way.

Your plan of action for dealing with the letter

Depending on the actual letter and what it says, here is a suggested plan of action

1. Acknowledge the letter promptly, although you don’t need to say anything else at this stage other than that you have it.
2. Ask your AI to analyse the letter as suggested above, recording the issue, the allegation, the evidence, what they want and any deadline
3. Identify any documents or other evidence you may hold that is relevant
4. Investigate the facts—including inspecting the property if appropriate.
5. Check any legal points that they may be making. For example, take a look at the current online government guidance for English landlords (which is very good). If you are a member of an organisation such as the NRLA or Landlord Law, they may be able to help (Landlord Law members can ask me questions in our Members Forum)
6. Deal with any genuine safety or repair problem without waiting for the legal argument to be resolved.
7. Obtain specialist advice where possession, licensing, serious disrepair or substantial compensation is involved.
8. Once you have thoroughly investigated the letter and know where you stand, write back giving a clear written response addressing each complaint separately.

And finally

One way to avoid this happening in the first place is to have clear procedures for reporting and dealing with common issues. These can be incorporated into your tenancy agreement.

For example, on Landlord Law we have the following procedures which our landlords can include in their tenancy agreements

• A repairs procedure
• A procedure for application to keep a pet
• Rent arrears procedure
• Tenant ending procedure

Then, if your tenant sends you a letter which touches one of these issues, you can write back asking them to complete your procedure as provided in their tenancy agreement.

Find out more about the Landlord Law procedures here.