Hello
I want to serve a Section 8 notice on grounds of rent arrears. It’s a joint tenancy but in practice, the two tenants split the rent.
Both tenants were on previous lodger agreements and there was a month’s gap between the expiry of the lodging agreements and signing a written AST. Your previous view was that there are three agreements: “First, lodger. Second, verbal AST. Third, written AST.” I want to claim for the arrears under both written and verbal ASTs.
One tenant is paying rent; the other is not so arrears are building up at half speed and I would still have wait a while to get to 8 weeks’ total arrears, unless I appropriate the initial AST rent to the previous lodging agreement arrears (as per a previous idea you offered), then I can claim 8 weeks arrears already.
My queries are:
- The lodging agreements were set up individually, i.e. there was one for each tenant. Might this confuse my right to appropriate arrears from a joint AST?
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My schedule of arrears does not include the previous several weeks’ of lodgings payments. Instead I have a figure labelled ‘previous lodging arrears’ and I add this to the AST arrears. But might anything non-standard like this confuse the court if we get there?
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It’s starting to sound complicated – should I engage a solicitor?
Thankyou.
4 Comments
That certainly does confuse the position because it implies that the verbal ASTs you have are in fact individual and only when the written agreement was done has it become a single rent jointly and severally.
As you say, this is getting very complicated now and a solicitor may be a good idea to be honest.
However, if you decide not to, the secret will be to ensure that the tenants are in the best position possible in respect of arrears. They’re unlikely to argue about the arrears too much if by arguing could mean they end up owing more than what you say.
Hi,
I seem to be unable to link to section 1.4 on this course. All links seem to go to 1.14 instead.
Could you send us a help-desk ticket (https://www.landlordsguild.com/amember/helpdesk) please with more details? I’ve not been able to recreate and 1.4 is showing (as is 1.14).
Thank you.
Yes, I’ll check again and submit a ticket if it still arises.