Leaving letting agency and keeping tenant

Leaving letting agency and keeping tenant

8:51 AM, 18th November 2014, About 10 years ago 13

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Leaving letting agency and keeping tenantWe are new to the letting game and have a nice tenant in the property, the issue we have is with the agent.
The tenant has live there for just over 6 months and the agreement was for 6 months, 2 working days before the end of the agreement we still had not heard anything about renewing. We called and the agent said they’d sent a letter out to the tenant, that was 3 weeks ago and the agreement has lapsed.

There have been many issues with the agent, it’s taken 4 weeks to try to sort out a gas fire which we were advised to list as decoration purposes when letting the house. The tenant now wants it working and the agents take weeks to get quotes then we have to call to find out what’s happening. They sent an engineer round to look at the gas fire and took a week to tell us it needed replacing.

It’s got to the point were we are going to take over the issue with the fire as it’ll drag on for months left to them. We asked the agent over a week ago to ask the tenant if he would be happy with an electric fire instead of gas and still not heard back.

As it stands we have no paperwork for the renewal, we weren’t asked if we would like to continue letting or if we wanted to increase the rent etc.

We sent a letter to highlight all the issues we’ve had since joining them and we were fobbed off and called liars. We agreed before letting (with the director of the company) that we could keep the small out building for storage of paints/ladders etc. We were told in the reply to the letter that he never agreed to it, also he told us that we could leave the washing machine and tell the tenant that it’s there if he wants it but its not our responsibility if it fails. He also stated in the same letter that he never said it, their was 2 of us in the room when he told us these things!

Now we have come to the end of the 6 months term we decided to leave the agency as its not working out, we aren’t getting things done quick enough and the tenant is suffering.

The problem being, when we signed up we were told that when the tenant moves in for the term we can’t cancel, we were ok with that. We thought we’d give it 6 months until the end of the contract and take over the management ourselves if we were happy, this we have since been told is not possible. We have now been told that we can’t leave the agency until the tenant vacates the property, this means we are stuck with the agent who doesn’t care and a model tenant.

Is there anything that can be done to get out of this situation?

What would happen if we told the tenant to pay us directly?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Paul Chambers


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Comments

Ian Ringrose

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16:57 PM, 20th November 2014, About 10 years ago

Steve,

What is wrong with "drift into periodic" provided that both the landlord and the tenant understands what it means?

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13:05 PM, 21st November 2014, About 10 years ago

Ian,

In most cases we think the certainty of a new fixed term is in our client's (i.e. the landlord's) best interest. However, if periodic is the better or more pragmatic solution in a particular case and both landlord and tenant are happy then that's fine.

It's not so good (though its not usually the end of the world) if it just defaulted to periodic through lack of action by the agent, and that's what I meant by "drifting into periodic"

Ian Ringrose

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13:22 PM, 21st November 2014, About 10 years ago

Steve,

I don’t see a fixed term as giving the landlord any real certainty, as it is very hard to force a tenant to keep to it; it just removes the option of the landlord using a S21 if there are problems.

(Unless you are in a student area etc where the letting market only operates at a few times of year.)

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