Increase of the Rent

[Onela]

Hello, I am an international student, and we (my husband and our kid) have been living in the same apartment for 4 years since 2019. However, the agent sent us an email informing us that we have to leave the property if we do not sign the agreement to pay £ 1250 per month as the rent from June 13, 2023. They informed us to pay £288 in April to secure the property and sent us an agreement on April 18 to sign, as if not, they would give the property to new tenants.
Since I am in the final stage of writing my dissertation, I did not want to get stressed, so we signed the agreement. However, now we find it really difficult to pay the rent as it increases by £ 200 per month. Our previous rent was £ 1050 per month. So we had to sign the agreement, as they were forcing us.

Please, may I have advice on this matter? Where can I find the support available?
Can landlords or agents be allowed to increase rent per month by such an amount, forcing tenants to pay that?

Thank you so much in advance for your kind advice and information🙏, as this matter made me feel stressed, and this impacts negatively on my studies too.

Try Shelter or your student union housing officer. What was the £288 for as iirc renewal fees have been outlawed. They can however raise rent when a new contract is signed.

Definitely seek advice from shelter.

However, they gave you what sounds like reasonable notice of the rent increase (8 weeks) and a new contract for the new rent. I agree the £288 should be explained.

Is this the first increase since 2019?

Thank you so much 🙂

Dear SheilaFentiman, Thanks a lot for your information. This is not the first increase, as it was £ 900 per month earlier, and they increased rent from £150 in 2022 to £1050 per month until June 12th, 2023. This is the second increase of £200 from June 13, 2023.

Can you get a similar rental for the price you were paying? If not, then you're probably going to have to take the hit and continue paying the increased rent.

Do you have a signed tenancy agreement? What does that say about rent increases?

Are you dealing with an agent or the landlord?

To be honest those increases are not unreasonable. Rents have increased dramatically over the last couple of years. The landlord is running a business. He has his own pressures. Just as you do. You are saying this “negatively impacts on your studies”. You do not know the personal situation of the landlord and what effect this is having on him. Just as you should not need to be troubled by your landlord’s personal situation, he does not need to take into account your personal situation.
He is not forcing you to do anything. He is asking you to pay a market value rent.
You are within your rights not to agree to the increase. Equally, he is within his rights to ask you to leave if you do not want to pay, and to find someone who is willing to pay the market rent.
You can get as much support as you want from various charities, councils etc, but the reality is that if you do not want to agree to the rent he can find someone who is willing to pay.

What does you contract say about rent increases? It is normal for rent to increase annually unless the contract stipulates otherwise.

Rents have increased by a huge amount over the past few years. Is your new rent in line with similar properties locally? If not, you should have negotiated. It is also usual to negotiate with the landlord for a small discount if you are long term tenant because you are saving them marketing costs and loss of rent if the property doesn't let immediately by remaining in the property. If it is much higher than the local market rent, you can take your landlord to a rent tribunal. You have to try and negotiate with the landlord first and the rent would have to be unreasonable to do that.

I agree with the PP. What was the £288 for? You shouldn't have been charged for renewing the tenancy or to "secure the property". That is illegal.

The letting agent/landlord can't just "give the property to new tenants". If you hadn't signed the new contract, your tenancy would have become a statutory periodic tenancy. That means that the tenant and landlord can end the tenancy with 2 months notice at any time rather than being tied into a year long assured shorthold tenancy. I suspect the landlord would have given you notice straightaway but it would have given you 2 months breathing space. Also, you don't have to leave at the end of the 2 months. The best option would have been to negotiate a slightly longer leaving date if they gave you notice. Or you could make the landlord take you to court to evict you after the 2 months but that would rack up legal fees and you would struggle to rent somewhere new without a good landlord reference. They couldn't have thrown you out immediately for not agreeing to sign the contract.

Thank you so much for your information and explanations. They are really helpful. In the agreement, it says that there is an increase once a year. It's the agent that we are dealing with.

Regardless of what the tenancy agreement says, under a periodic tenancy, rents can be increased at any time, and by any amount by mutual agreement. You do not have to agree to it, but if you don’t, the landlord can serve notice. Btw, you only have to give 1 months notice. LL has to give 2 months.
Yes, you can make the landlord take you to court by not agreeing, and not going after he has given you notice, but he will be able to recover court costs etc from you. I am surprised this has been suggested.

I did not mention. There has been an abolition of fees for tenancies. So the fee you mention cannot be charged by the LA. That should be payable by the landlord if he wants the LA to renew the tenancy.

you can negotiate, if property is empty then landlord has no money coming in and possibly a void for a while...i have one rented house and havent increased rent in over 7 years as they look after the house and will stay until i sell it next year....its better to receive a lowish rent than nothing at all so i would negotiate if i were you. we have no limits on increases in the uk, or i dont think so...maybe during covid there was a 5% limit..?? not sure.

Myriad thanks for your information, which of course helps me in facing this difficult situation.
I got a shocking email from the agent. Please, may I have your advice to face this issue, dear all?

This CHP bill for the period 01/08/2022 to 31/01/2023

The total bill is £3,042.50 per these six months.

The agent asks us to transfer £2,442.50 to the same account that we pay our rent within 7 days.

£3042.05 – £600 = £ 2442.50 this is because our rent includes £100 to cover our utility bills.
This is the first time that we received this kind of bill, as all the time our bills were under £100, which is included in our rent (we never paid bills by ourselves as per our tendency agreement, £100 is to cover our bills).

This is shocking, as our bills were under £100 from 2019 to August 2022 and all of a sudden they went very high per month, and they have not given us monthly breakdowns.

I would be very grateful if you could kindly assist me with dealing with this situation.

Thank you so much in advance.
Have a pleasant weekend to you all.

CHP? Utility bills have risen hugely in the past year although there were government payments to offset some of the cost over the winter. What were the terms of the lease?

Be aware that once you have finished your course you no longer get council tax exemption, which presumably you are currently claiming in part ( if your dh counts as an adult it would be single person's level).

I suspect perhaps then £288 is an additional deposit in that they can ask for 5 weeks rent deposit and the deposit is currently less than that but I would ask.

Is this because the new rental agreement excludes utilities?

It doesn’t sound affordable.

CHP = central heating and power, I think.

Utility bills have gone up a lot but it would be reasonable to ask for evidence of the bills.

Thank you for the information. This bill is for August 2022 to January 2023.
This was during our previous tenancy agreement. However, our new tenancy agreement also includes £100 to cover the bills.
This bill really seems unrealistic, as price changes happened in April and October last year. But the bill is from August to January.
And also, I was shocked to see how it increased from less than £100 (from 2019 to July 2022) to more than £400 per month all of a sudden in August 2022.
I requested the monthly breakdowns from the agent, but he did not send them.
Further, they are asking us to pay this within 7 days (but they sent us the bill after 10 months).

So, can you please advise where I can get support to deal with this matter?

But the bill is not after 10 months, it would have been received after January reflecting the increases in April and October. Yes they should substantiate the charge but it is plausible especially if you had underpaid in the previous period. What is the exact wording of the lease regarding utility charges?

Reply with “I will not be providing any payment until I have seen and reviewed the bills”

I suspect that there is some past stuff they should have billed but didn’t eg April to august,

Thanks for the information. I mean that it's acceptable if they sent us the August 2022 bill in September or October, as we could have taken the necessary steps to reduce the bill thereafter. But they sent the total six-month bill together now.
Is it fair to ask us to pay it without giving breakdowns within 7 days?
In our tenancy agreement, the clause is,
"The rent to be include £100 PCM towards CPH (Heating, Electricity and water).
If the tenant/s exceed £ 100 per month the CPH, they agree to pay the excess within seven days of being aware of the charge"

However, I wonder whether they can ask us to pay this much money within seven days as it is reasonable if they ask us to pay monthly (Exceeded amount in August to pay in September etc.)

I expect the support on how to face this as we are not in a position to pay this much money within 7 days :(

Thank you so much once again.

If it is an actual charge (with meter readings) then the time frame and extra it is within your lease. Only the standing charge element can be billed upfront.