Blackmail

[brainfoggyandtired]

I am in a hellish situation. Private tenancy, multiple reports of disrepair from start and refusal to do any by the LL. Served a S21 and later accelerated possession claim which we are waiting to hear from court if it will go to hearing due to obvious retaliation and safety issues and also harrassment. Family circs were dire throughout and chicken out of school due to relocation and MH issues. It has been hideous and all of the above has severely impacted me and traumatised me and have been diagnosed with ptsd from chronic stress, anxiety and exhaustion.

Meanwhile have been actively hunting for a new home. Lots of nos due to dogs. A yes a week ago, paid holding deposit and started refs on open rent. Accountant verified income and as far as I know financially ok. They don't tell you. LL has ignored the messages from them and today emailed us to say we have to pay her legal fees for the claim if we want to stop the court process. And in not so many words get her to ref us. This is a sum in the thousands.

I've sent it all to our solicitors but I'm completely in shock that this LL could be so evil, we've been good tenants and her treatment of us has been horrendous. I'm scared that no matter what we do even if this house is a no, we will be stuck in a situation where without refs we won't pass the computer says yes test. Advice??? I'm feeling very low and desperately trying to move on from this nightmare.

@brainfoggyandtired actually you have reminded me of another situation in 2012 in a posh bit of Oxford. Beautiful £2.3k a month modernish house, not on an estate - turned up with removals to find out our unfurnished house was part furnished ( including several sofas/ dining table/all beds and more - agent had advertised as unfurnished 'in error' - their stuff was actually better than ours but we ended up having to pay for a £140 storeage unit at our expense for a couple of years and dealing with that on the day of moving in- and as we had already paid up and had a removal van on the drive- we were 'stuffed' - I hate the implication we are all some kind of scumbags for daring to criticise anyone in the landlord community -this was owned by a couple living in France- at no point was there any offer of recompense by either landlord or agent !

@brainfoggyandtired go to the agent by the way for reference- if you have been paying rent and there are no issues you should be fine- also take any correspondence in about blackmail

They can only answer questions about rent no more. Which is fucking insane when they were the last people to see the damn house, have a quick look around and report back to the LL. Never ever touching open rent again.

It's funny isn't it - very counter intuitive to what you'd expect. Our solicitor has said it's usually the more expensive properties and landlords that are the most problematic and abusive. I think it's called entitlement. She's a complete narcissist.

@brainfoggyandtired yep- we actually refuse to let anything that's 'self managed' - it's one of the first things we ask an agent

I've learnt the hard way big time.

@brainfoggyandtired yep- whilst some agents are better than others- they've all been better than the 2 or 3 self managed ones we've had a while back -

I would be very honest going forward- tell them you've had a dreadful time of it but have always paid rent - most agents are more interested in that aspect.

It is difficult to know how good tenants you were. You have dogs and a lot of landlords don't allow them so yours sounds quite accommodating. You made numerous complaints. How justified it's not clear. Then you wouldn't leave. You don't exactly sound like easy tenants.

She was under no obligation to accept our dogs. The dogs are not the issue here. We offered £300 a month over the advertised rent. Not complaints, reports of disrepair. Couldn't use broken white goods. Had to replace with my own. Paid for engineer out of own money: stored at my own cost since beginning of tenancy. Reported broken electrics, plumbing, plus major safety issues that caused us to leave the premises and could have killed us. We were all ill as a result. What sort of person comes on here to tell me I'm a liar? Posted in Legal not AIBU. So please leave me alone. I don't have to justify my post to you.

@brainfoggyandtired

One reason you are getting such random replies is that you write in a way that is very hard to decode.

Did you refuse to leave? Some places in your text it sounds like you did. In other places you say you didn't. You haven't said how long you stayed after the lease was terminated. Or even if it was terminated. You've said that the contract ended but then become a bit outraged and said the contract didn't end. You say something about selling her furniture but then when someone queries this you say 'of course you didn't'. It's just word salad in places and very had to properly follow

So please leave me alone. I don't have to justify my post to you

No, but you do have to write coherently if you want reasonable responses.

It's like you have all this stuff in your head and some of it gets typed out but you have left big chunks in your head and not explained it. So we are getting lots of disconnected fragments that contradict other bits and make little sense.

If you read your posts you'll probably think it all makes sense because you will be filling in the gaps with the knowledge in your head. But we don't have that. We just have this garbled scattered text

@biglipslittlehips I haven't misled or been confusing. I'm posting here for advice from people who understand tenancy law. Which you don't. Nothing is terminated until we mutually agree with LL or a court orders it. We have tried since she served a surprise s21 no fault claim (not order) on us. We had two months during which we were under extreme pressure to find schools for our children and also housing which since that point we have been unable to do for many reasons that are not our fault. We have continued to hunt and tried to mediate and keep this out of a frightening and expensive legal process. But we never had a response. Instead we had harrassment and intimidation and I was terrified she would turn up and try to access our house at the end of the fixed term - NOT tenancy - despite all my emails to say we had not secured a new home. Subsequently I fell apart. Badly. And then she issued accelerated possession and we are waiting on court to issue a date for eviction or a hearing. In the meantime we found a house accepted our offer and we moved on to refs all on OpenRent. Finances fine: but she didn't answer the reference even tho she wasn't obliged to lie. Just answer. And instead sent us an email demanding we pay all her legal fees.

We've been told she wants to sell - fine. Then work with us as a family of vulnerable children to make it happen. Instead of dragging us into legal battles that have now cost us upward of £3k and more in losses we have had to bear. Instead of being a reasonable and pragmatic person, we've been blackmailed about monies that are nothing to do with us .we are not at fault. If she rhinks we owe her fine take us to small claims court later but don't LIE and tell us it's all to sell and then refuse a reference and make it nigh impossible. It's all bollocks and shows that the S21 was retaliation for disrepair.

Op
The advice on Mumsnet is always to make landlords go to court to evict rather than leave at the end of the section 21. I totally understand the reasons why people do this as they can't make themselves homeless but one of the consequences of this is a poor or non reference from the landlord who has had to spend thousands to get a court order to get their property back. It's a trade off unfortunately .

We are more than happy and ready to go. There was no need to take this as far as it has. She has actively impeded our ability to leave. It makes no sense for someone who accused us of being obstructive! We want to get the f&&k out!

I was with you until you said you sold her property and dismantled other items. That's never going to help matters.

Your Local Authority housing department may be able to assist you, as they have experienced in dealing with retaliatory evictions. If it comes down to it and they are unable to resolve the situation in your favour (have you obtained a Notice of improvement, for example?), you may be eligible for accommodation help through presenting as homeless once you are evicted.

To be clear - I did none of those things. We arrived to a house with furniture she hadn't bothered to move. She then decided to sell it on gumtree for a grand and I had to facilitate the sale and removal. And paid a handyman to take the beds apart that she had contractually agreed to remove and had to sort it myself whilst trying to also work out how to fix ten year old white goods that were not useable.

To be clear I do not need opinion on the validity of my posts. Only helpful comments regarding my situation.

It doesn't matter that it cane out of nowhere. That is the nature of a section 21 notice. They exercised their legal right to give notice. You have illegally held over after the date and hence that leads to the court process to remove you.

Hi, I have recently posted about a similar situation and I received lots of helpful advice which I know can help you. I am not sure how to attach the thread here but it's called Landlords request feels unfair

Use the link below and contact these guys as soon as you can. It's a newly introduced scheme to prevent homelessness. We had an appointment with a solicitor hours after contacting them who supported us using Legal Aid. It's not means tested. Our ordeal isn't quite over yet, but it's reassuring to understand our legal rights. Good luck

www.gov.uk/government/publications/housing-loss-prevention-advice-service-hlpas

@Spirallingdownwards wrong. You said "they were forced to issue a s21". They were not. That was their choice.

Also we are not living here illegally nor does notice mean the contact has ended: please stop commenting bc you don't know what you're talking about!

Thank you so much

Do you have the contract and your bank statements to prove to a new landlord you'll pay rent on time? Getting angry with current ll isn't really productive if you want to alleviate anxiety for your dc.
I'd visit the council anyway, they may be able to find a way around the reference to get you into private rental.

Served a S21 and later accelerated possession claim

Do you know why she wants you to leave? Does she want new tennants or to sell or to move back in?

According to Gov.uk

Accelerated possession orders
You can apply for an accelerated possession order if your tenants have not left by the date specified in your Section 21 notice and you’re not claiming rent arrears.
This is sometimes quicker than applying for a standard possession order and there’s usually no court hearing. It costs £391.
Fixed-term tenants cannot be evicted until their tenancy ends.

What happens next
Once your application is approved, the court will send your tenants a copy of the application.
Your tenants have 14 days to challenge the application, from the date they receive it.
A judge will decide either to:

• issue a possession order that states your tenants must leave the property (this is normally the case)
• have a court hearing (this usually only happens if the paperwork is not in order or your tenants raise an important issue)

Even if there’s a hearing, the court can still decide to issue a possession order. If your tenants are in an exceptionally difficult situation the judge may give them up to 6 weeks.