Leaving letting agency and keeping tenant

Hi Paul

With the greatest of respect you clearly need a good agent to protect your interests as it is quite obvious that you do not have a sufficient understanding of tenancy law to safely manage your own property. An AST does not simply lapse and does not require renewal, it becomes a statutory periodic tenancy.

That having been said, if you're not getting good service you can leave your agent, but do check your contract as there may well be penalties to pay for doing so. By all means challenge these in Court or with your agents professional bodies if you feel that breaking the contract was justifiable.

If you do sack your agent there is a checklist of things that you need to do here >>> http://www.property118.com/property-management-checklist/67891/

By all means contact your tenant directly to resolve the issue with the fire. The law is that you remain accountable for anything that your agent has done or should have done.
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Read OFT v FOXTON
In his judgment , Mr Justice Mann accepted that all the terms the OFT brought before the court were unfair, including Foxtons' use of terms:

requiring a landlord to pay substantial sums in commission, where a tenant continues to occupy the property after the initial fixed period of the tenancy has expired – even if Foxtons plays no part in persuading the tenant to stay, and does not collect the rent or manage the property
requiring a landlord to pay commission to Foxtons even after it had sold the property
allowing Foxtons to receive a full estate agents' commission for sale of the property to a tenant.
The ruling, following a three-day hearing in April 2009, found that the charging of repeat renewal commission by Foxtons represented a 'trap' or a 'timebomb' for consumers. The judge held that such important terms must be flagged prominently not just in the contract, but also in any sales literature and processes. He said a typical consumer would be unlikely to read standard terms with a great degree of attention and would not expect important obligations to be tucked away in the small print and not specifically brought to their attention. He also found that Foxtons had used language in its contracts which is not 'plain and intelligible'.
NEVER PLEAD THAT YOU BREACHED A CONTRACT LET THE COURT DETERMINE THAT YOU HAVE. DONT SCORE OWN GOALS

Clearly your current agent is very poor; as a good agent would have checked you understood tenancy law and if not explained to you about statutory periodic tenancy etc.

Have you personally check that the deposit has been protected by contacting the protection scheme the agent claims to use?

Assuming the deposit is protected, gas safety checks are done when needed, and the rent is being paid to you quickly, than no need to panic.

Most of the problems will not be sorted out by replacing the agent, as the damage has been done, therefore you may be better of keeping the current agent until the tenant decides to leave then finding a new agent.

In the mean time, get yourself on the NLA landlord foundation course or join the NLA and do the on-line version.

Reply to the comment left by "Ian Ringrose" at "18/11/2014 - 15:54":

"In the mean time, get yourself on the NLA landlord foundation course or join the NLA and do the on-line version."

Excellent suggestion Ian, it's only £150 and most landlords will learn more that day than they could ever imagine. For most people, the biggest realisation is how much they don't know!
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Totally agree, an NLA course will open your eyes on the numerous responsibilities required to be a good landlord.

The checkbox link from Mark is also a great starting point.

First of all I'll admit to playing Devil's Advocate to some extent, and I politely ask readers to read to the end before making up their minds about what I'm about to say.

Here's some observations from an agent (me) who is not connected to this issue in any way and only knows what's written above.

Landlords who want to keep stuff in a locked shed / loft / outbuilding / garage immediately make me roll my eyes. If you're hiring a car you don't expect the hirer to leave some of his stuff in the boot, so if you're renting a house why should you allow the landlord to leave his stuff there?

Ditto landlords who leave white goods on the basis that they won't be repaired if they fail. Either you're letting your property with white goods included or you're not. If you don't want responsibility for them take them out.

In both the above cases it's a bit disingenuous to blame the agent for getting confused because you wanted to let "most of the property and its contents" rather than all of it.

You let a property knowing the gas fire didn't work instead of getting it fixed at the outset. Now that the tenants have decided they want a gas fire instead of an ornament you're blaming the agent for not sorting it out quickly.

The tenancy hasn't lapsed. The agent has allowed it to default to a Statutory Periodic Tenancy, which is fine if he wasn't given instructions by you to the contrary.

You say the agent didn't ask you if you wanted to extend the tenancy. Hang on - you employed him to let and manage the property and he'll continue to do that until you tell him otherwise.

Granted he didn't explain the legalities to you, but you pay him to manage the property, not teach you the intricacies of the Housing Acts 1988 and 1996.

I've used deliberately provocative language here, and as I said at the start I am to some extent playing Devil's Advocate. There are certainly counter-arguments to everything I've just said and it may be that you have every right to feel let down by the service this agent has provided.

I'm simply demonstrating that there MIGHT be an alternative take on the situation.

Reply to the comment left by "Steve From Leicester" at "19/11/2014 - 11:34":

Hi,
Thanks for the reply (and to everyone else for their replies)
I'd like to comment on a few of the points you've raised
The back yard is shared and in the yard there is a few outbuilding which I assume used to be toilets, the building isn't in any way linked or associated with the house, we asked the question if we could keep it and the answer was yes.

The washing machine, we asked if we should take it or leave it and what a new tenant would likely to prefer (it made no difference to us) the reply we got was it's as it's fairly new its always easier for the tenant if there's already a washing machine but it's best if you state it's a gift and you have no responsibility for it when it breaks down

As for the fireplace, this was another point we raised with the agent and stated that it wasn't fit for use and asked if we should get it repaired, the reply was that this day and age nobody uses them so their is no point repairing it and the best thing to do is list it as decoration purposes only, as he was the expert we assumed he knew best.

And lastly, the tenancy agreement, you state he is not there to teach me but to manage, surely thats what I pay them for, if I knew the in's and out's I wouldn't be employing someone to do it for me? I'd expect them to keep all the agreements etc up to date.

Thanks
Paul

Steve,

I don’t see the problem with a locked shed that tenants don’t have access too provided they are told about it before signing the AST.

On all the other points, I would say that a good agent would not let the landlord make errors like that; therefore the agent is at fault. Part of the skill of an agent is to education their clients to the level that is needed to avoid this type of issues.

None of the issues may really matter. If the agent has not brought sufficiently to your attention the fact that you have to pay indefinite renewal fees and the initial tenancy has expired you may serve notice and manage the property yourself.

I did say I was playing Devil's Advocate and being deliberately provocative. In reality my sentiments are pretty much in line with Ian Ringrose's most recent comment.

From what has been said I think the agent was either inexperienced or simply not bold enough to tell Paul what best practice was, instead opting to take the easy way out by telling Paul what he thought he'd like to hear.

I will say though that when you're keen to win an instruction it takes guts to say to your prospective client that you want him to spend money fixing fires, carrying the risk of maintaining white goods etc, knowing that the next agent through the door might say "Nah, don't worry, that'll be fine"

The agent has also clearly not got a robust renewal policy and he allowed it to drift into periodic without communicating properly with either tenant or landlord. Its fair to criticise him for this.

Once again I have some sympathy though. My company does have a robust renewal policy, actively finding out landlord and tenants intentions and encouraging them to renew rather than drift into periodic. This takes time and costs us money so we make a charge for it . . . . and as a consequence we are sometimes accused of generating unnecessary work to enable us to take money off people. I'm not complaining, merely observing that there are times when an agent can't win either way.

Let's also not forget that Paul's agent did put what Paul himself described as "a model tenant" into the property in the first place. Does he not deserve a big dollop of credit for that?