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What You Should Do if Your Landlord Breaks Your Agreement

What To Do if Your Landlord Breaks Your Agreement?

When renting a home from a private landlord, you should be aware of your rights to make sure your landlord does not take advantage. Always keep track of your tenancy agreement to stay informed of the details and avoid any potential problems. In the meantime, here are some tips about what you should do in the case that your rights as a tenant are breached.

Know Your Rights

Read your tenancy agreement from front to back. This will ensure that you’re aware of your rights, and therefore will leave you less likely to be taken advantage of. You may be eligible to leave the property if your landlord has broken any terms of the contract. Make sure you have made this clear before making any decisions to leave. Be aware, if they have NOT broken any legal terms, you are not eligible to leave the property without payment before the legal contract is ended. You can be held liable for any unpaid rent and potentially sued by your landlord or agency if this is the case.

Write a Letter 

Prior to a discussion, it’s good to write your landlord a letter outlining the case and points. This will also give them the opportunity to prepare for your discussion, and get the issue sorted efficiently. The letter should include:

– The property address
– The date of writing the letter
– An outline of the clauses your landlord failed to adhere to/ how you believe the landlord has broken the Tenancy Agreement
– The date of which you would like this rectified

Be sure to keep a copy of the original letter/e-mail and a reference to the date your sent it. If you don’t hear anything back from your agent or landlord, write to them again and be sure to add which date you wrote the previous letter.

Have a Face-to-Face Discussion

Hopefully, your landlord is not trying to take advantage of you and simply made a mistake regarding your contract. By having a mature discussion about the matter, there is a good chance the problem will be solved or corrected. If you end up going to court. you are obligated to prove that you’ve given your landlord a chance to rectify the issue. Therefore, this is a crucial step.

My landlord refuses to rectify the issue- What now?

Notice to Quit and Legal Involvement

You can write a letter enclosing a Notice to Quit if the issue hasn’t been rectified by your initial deadline. In this letter, notify your landlord that you are leaving the property due to their breaching of contractual obligations. The risks to this include losing your initial deposit to the landlord (you can try to reclaim this through small claims court), as well as the potential for your landlord to take you to court for unpaid rent.

What Not to do

Do not leave without giving notice to quit and expect not to pay rent. You will continue owing your landlord rent for the duration of your lease, and be held liable for rent up until the end of your tenancy.

You will then have to prove to the judge that the landlord seriously breached the tenancy agreement and failed to rectify the problem. This is when the proof of your previous letters will come in handy to defend your case.

It is then in the judges’ hands to decide whether or not your claim of breach is significant enough to render the lease void.

What if my landlord gives me a Notice to Quit?

If you have broken the terms of the tenancy agreement, your landlord can serve you a Notice to Quit. The landlord will be expected to prove to the court that you have breached the agreement.

Your landlord must give you the correct amount of notice, as required by law.

If you receive a Notice to Quit check that your landlord has given you the correct amount of notice. This varies based on the length of your tenancy.

– If you have been in the property for less than 5 years you must get at least 4 weeks’ notice
– If you’ve lived in the property for more than 5 years but less than 10 you must get at least 8 weeks’ notice
– If you’ve lived in the property for over 10 years, you are entitled to 12 weeks’ notice.

All tenants have a right to due process (the steps a landlord must take before evicting a tenant). If your landlord gives you less notice than you are legally entitled to, immediately inform an adviser at your Housing Rights agency.

Finding new accommodation

When you come to the decision to give a Notice to Quit, you should start looking at your housing options. Make the transition as easy as possible without any need for added stress.