Dispute between landlord an tenant , how much to pay in rent ?

[HowMuchShouldBePaid]

For rent paid in advance , how much should the tenant pay ? ( if its £400 per month)

Tenant says £400 on May first will cover May, doesn't want to pay for March or April. Wants to move in asap.

Landlord thinks its due for 3 weeks of March then all of April and May, but is willing to only ask for April and May. Landlord had a family death so was not fully "on the ball" for a couple of weeks.

I'm looking for advice on how much rent you would expect to pay / receive ?

No contract in place.

Thanks

Communication was very poor on my part, but lodger said "I will be moving in between 3-10th march"

My mistake was not following this up when they didn't

I felt we had a verbal contract,

room is ready for you ,
Date to move in arranged (by lodger)
Keys ready for pick up anytime
"Contract" starts from that date regardless of when lodger actually moves in.

But I'll know to be clearer in future.

If there’s a dispute now, I just wouldn’t let them move in at all. Rent the room to someone else and for Goodness sake, get a contract! Then you can stipulate how much is due and when. This mess means that no-one really knows where they stand.

The keeping of the room means nothing, and both sides seem to be flakey as fuck. Lodger pays from when they move on, the fact they have both farted around the issue for months has nothing to do with the lodger. The 'keeping' of the room is on the landlord, they chose to do that, and could have rescinded the offer whenever they wanted. The tenant has cooled their heels for months, clearly didn't really care if they had the room or not. If the landlord reckons they should be paying from the date the room was available, then I would not be moving in, because this does not seem like an arrangement that's going to work

@HowMuchShouldBePaid i think you need to forget about this lodger! they sound like they could be trouble. look for another one and get things firmed up properly before they move in with a contract!

You're not being clear now.

Can you not write in proper paragraphs instead of these strange fractured sentences so people have a better idea of what's actually happened? Is this how you communicated with your potential lodger?

As you had no proper contract I would say they should pay rent when they actually move in. You could have easily advertised the room in March/April if you needed the rent money, YOU chose to save it for this new tenant so I don’t see how you could make them pay.

Unless you were explicitly clear that they needed to pay for the room to keep it available, whether they moved in or not, then there is no recourse to ask for money for the period before they moved in.

Neither of you had been particularly smart about this.
Rent should be paid from early March.
Landlord clearly had no recourse to claim this as no contract in place.
Don't start a lodging agreement with bad blood...
Find another lodger.

I would say unless you have a contract to state otherwise they pay once they move it. There should be a set date communicated though and after this the room would be re advertised.

The tenant pays from the date they signed the contract and collected keys. A contract has a start date and this is in the contract. When they decide to move in is up to them. Also from the date they signed the contract tenant will be liable for council tax and standing charges for utilities. This is the law. A tenant can ask for a contract to start at a date in the future eg 2 weeks time but that must be agreed before the tenant signs the contract and that date must be the starting date in the contract and the tenant should not have the keys before this date.

Don't let the tenant move in without a formal contract of agreed terms. If you go onto ARLS website they will probably have a template you could use. Put deposit into a government backed deposit scheme.

It doesn’t sound like a good idea for either lodger or landlord.

Lodger wants to call the shots and landlord has no balls.

I think you need to cut your losses on this one and find a new tenant. Things have gone wrong mostly due to your disorganisation and there will be bad feeling on both sides. Even if she does move in now, most likely you'll be asking her to leave soon as you had to do with the last tenant. I think you need to rethink your flaky approach as it's leading to problems.

You should always have a Tenancy Agreement, it doesn't matter how well you know their mother.

A signed TA makes everything very clear and can set out the house rules as well so that there is no misunderstanding regarding bills, cleaning, overnight guests etc.

From the messages it looks like the tenant said they would be moving in from early March and then chose to delay that. So I would say the tenant owes £761 for March and April plus £400 for May. As the landlord has said to forget March I’d take that as a win if I were the tenant and pay £800 and keep my head down.