Tenant issue

[Rosie8880]

Hi.

Have been renting to a tenant for 2 years and also extended AST for another year ending in summer next year. All good and fine, no hassle. This week two flats below were impacted by water emanating from my flat. The lower of the two has water marks/ damage to one ceiling, the flat below water has leaked to about 3 rooms - ceilings, carpets. plumbers have reported that it’s inconclusive and would need to do further investigations but say likely cause of a bath overflow. Tenant is worried as says this did not happen and is worried about further leaks. My flat is unscathed which I find strange if thankful, considering volume of water thought to have escaped. I will face claims from both flats which will be covered by insurance.

interested to hear what others would do as next steps.

Please read the threads above - I do not want to take tenant to eviction. I’m actually trying to work through how to not do this.

Yes because you are responsible for maintaining your property. Insurance won't pay out for what is deemed to be maintenance, the same way they won't pay for you to have a new carpet when it's worn out, or to paint your living room when it needs it.

Well if you don’t want to just don’t, insurance will cover any damages just as if you were living there yourself and this had happened.

Agree - it’s been a week and do think have lost a bit of time here with investigations - some of evidence should ir have been an accident of leaving bath taps on May now have disappeared. If it’s faulty pipes etc that’s much more straightforward.

Why have you had four different plumbers?

Have they all been sent by your insurance company?

Nope a plumber for 2 flats each and then I called a plumber for a bit of 2nd opion who said the same thing

So just don’t evict them? You’re making problems when there aren’t any!

Trying to work through how not to evict? Don't be ridiculous. All you need to do is nothing. Even if it was the tenant's fault it's hardly the culmination of a worrying pattern of behaviour is it? It's one accident and it's not going to happen again is it?

You/your partner are getting far too emotional about this. It's an unfortunate incident. The insurance will deal with it and you only need to facilitate that and leave all emotion out of it.

And you must be either a very inexperienced landlord, or a very lucky one, to even fleetingly consider evicting an otherwise good tenant for this. Most landlords know just how bad tenants can be and learn to appreciate the good ones. One accident doesn't make these bad tenants.

Nope a plumber for 2 flats each and then I called a plumber for a bit of 2nd opion who said the same thing

So the plumbers organised by the flooded flats is pinning the blame very squarely on your tenants...

Did you tell the one you called what the other plumbers had said?

You/your partner are getting far too emotional about this. It's an unfortunate incident. The insurance will deal with it and you only need to facilitate that and leave all emotion out of it.

This.

Being a landlord is a business. You need to take all of the emotion out of it, and the opinions of neighbours and agents.

Deal with the repairs and remember that accidents (if it turns out to be that rather than faulty pipes) can happen to anyone. A good tenant is not one to get rid of out of drama.

I've lived in two ground floor flats in my life (ie, below other flats) and had 3 major leaks from above that needed redecoration - two were caused by poor grouting/ sealant in a shower room/ bathroom and the third was caused by a washing machine connection working loose. All were of the water pouring through the light fittings sort.

I've also lived in an upper floor flat where a slow leak from a radiator valve caused the ceiling to collapse in the flat below (all very dramatic and over Christmas so I came back to a boarded up door where the police had broken in. I was the tenant in that case and heard nothing more once I had given the details of our letting agent to the people in the flat below.

Your neighbours and you and your partner all need to get a grip. These things happen, it will dry out as long as the root cause is found and can be redecorated. You and your insurance need to make sure you know what caused it (and threatening your tenant with eviction isn't exacly going to make them fess up if it was them) and make good.

The thread is very much agreed that you shouldn’t evict the tenant but your partner might not even be able to evict her anyway. It will party depend on your contract.

You’ve just renewed the AST for another year. You can’t issue a Section 21 order until the fixed term ends, unless you have a break clause. Although the new law banning Section 21 evictions is coming into effect soon…

You could try to evict her under Section 8, ground 13 for damage to the property but you can’t do that during the fixed term of the contract (ie until next summer) unless your contract has a clause saying that you can. Even then, it’s discretionary, the court may decide that letting the bath overflow once is not sufficient grounds. You would need proof that the tenant did let the bath overflow though.

OP you claim to care about your neighbours but from what I've seen, you haven't actually had your pipes checked out or even contacted insurance, so this could happen again on your watch?

I wrote almost the exact same post a while ago, but then lost it and couldn't be bothered to do it again.

Exactly right. This in no way meets the threshold for a Section 8 eviction, and by the time the OP would be able to issue a Section 21 at the end of the new term, Section 21 will no longer exist.

But really, it's absolute madness to even think about doing it, for all the reasons everyone has already said.

Wooden floors would have both water marks and warped from the amount of water. This has to be a leak somewhere in or around your flat as water finds its own way out

Given the amount of damage caused to the flats below, have you not contacted your insurer yet? This is exactly what you pay for insurance for because the cost and hassle of putting everything right is going to be considerable. Has nothing been done yet to sort out the two flats with the water ingress? If not, you need to pull your finger out.

Does the building not have a leak detection alert system? I rent a shop below flats and have experienced several floods from various flats above me. The loss adjuster made the freeholder install an alert system as a condition of providing their building insurance. Since then any leaks we've had have caused only very minor damage, as they were detected early enough to call in a plumber.

Thanks all for comments - all is ongoing.

to add to matters rhe agents invited the tenant to sign a revised tenancy agreement based on a spelling mistake - under no instructions. There is a tenancy agreement in place signed til summer next year. tenant asked for the paragraph to be shared where mistake was with agent relaying it was on dates, with tenant then querying (rightly) that the amended new tenancy start date had a days gap btw end of existing and new which legally would mean tenant is out of agreement and could open door to section 21. Unless my partner instructed them I am livid as the tenant now probably feels rightly upset. No adduce sought but just venting.

Nope

have done

Lease agreement allows for breach of lease due to property damage and indemnified LL for this.

But you don’t WANT to evict them so just… don’t.

You mean the rental agreement? It would still come under one of the discretionary grounds of Section 8. And the judge would be likely to take the same dim view of trying to evict someone for a one-off accident as have the majority of people on this thread. The Judge would almost certainly use his/her discretion to deny the granting of a possession order.

The flat BELOW yours also will
have pipes in the floor and their ceiling for their flat so THEY should also have their insurance company trying to work out if it’s their fault!! It probably doesn’t have anything at all to do with your flat and could be just the bottom two flats! Has anyone even considered that? We had bad flood in our house and could have blamed the flat above but had decent plumbers sent out from insurance company who drilled holes in walls and ceilings everywhere - which is the BARE MINIMUM they should be doing not just making statements and accusing people of things when there’s no proof!! Turned out that actually the problem had been caused by a pipe not being attached properly to another pipe in the wall of our property and it flooded not just our floors but the other flat downstairs and it was far worse in theirs as it had been going drip drip drip for months and built up

How convenient that the door could be opened...

I think you'd find a long legal challenge in that one if they've signed a new one, one single spelling mistake is very unlikely to render the whole contract/tenancy void.

What was the spelling mistake?

Who is the landlord, you or your partner? Unless you own the property equally and both have legal responsibility the agents should only be taking instructions from the landlord.

There was no spelling mistake…
then they said it was dates…
The renewal agreement is already signed
the agency after this big water incident seemed to suddenly find a mistake in a renewal that’s been signed fir 2/3 months…

tenant rightly realised this could be a way to create a gap in btw tenancies that would create a void period ehich would mean a section 21 could be slipped in.

it’s my partners property in their name

I can’t believe this tbh it’s really sneaky