Just a little one for housing bods out there.
If a person accrues arrears on a fixed term tenancy which then expires can a LL rely on those arrears to end a new fixed term tenancy on the same property? Does rent lawfully due only relate to the new tenancy?
Answers on a postcode please.
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If they treated the rent account as rolling, so the previous arrears were subsumed into the ‘new’ tenancy rent account and payments apportioned to the oldest debt first, don’t see why not. But this wouold need to have been clear on grant of new tenancy.
Or another way of saying the same thing, if new tenancy was expressly on terms that existing arrears were ‘transferred’ to new tenancy.
Otherwise, I suppose it is arguable that the previous arrears are only recoverable as a debt, not to form the basis of possession proceedings. Assuming there are no new arrears…
Thanks NL
Quite an interesting one and reasonably common in my experience.
Lawyers seem to make money out of the landlord tenant relationship either way. I would guess most Lawyers are well housed!
Two points, firstly, unless money is given with a specific instruction for it to be used for a specific purpose, the landlord may use it to pay the oldest debt. There was a commercial case on just this point, from memory around a bankruptcy.
Secondly, and perhaps by far the most important one is the question of why would a landlord with rent arrears issue a new fixed term? I think this would not be very common as essentially granting the new fixed term could be seen as making possession options more limited.
Thanks David
Wierldy i’ve seen it happen a number of times, sometimes the agents have just been trying to get their £50 for signing a new agreement fee!
@Brian Pettinger: I’d suggest you leave grown-up conversations to the grown-ups. You might also want to revise your thoughts elsewhere on how using other people’s blogs to ‘advertise’ your market-place brand rather than relying on static websites is effective. It can be, certainly, but only if you are genuine and bring something to the table. Otherwise, it’s a cheap shot and likely to be drastically counter-productive
Good question by the way House, and interesting responses – as usual, I leave here that little bit wiser
Thanks Patrick,
I don’t blog much anymore am afraid due to time constraints but very nice to have such a well respected chap as yourself visit
Very flattered you thinking so. You’d probably be surprised how much time I spend lurking on yours and other people’s blogs when I should be getting some work done. Erm, like now