Rent Increase

[missnatalie]

My sis has just had a letter from the estate agent that she rents her house from, stating that as of the 20th Oct her rent is going up from 385.60pcm - 450.00pcm. How can they justify such a hige increase and is it legal?

Shes really stressed about is all. Shes expecting a new baby on the 14th Oct.

Thanks in advance

Nat & VERY stressed little sis

Get the estate agent round and negotiate.
Get her to spell out to the agent the benefits of having good reliable tenants (ie her!), versus the expense and hassle of having to advertise for someone else, and probability that the property will be unoccupied for a time between tenants.
That's what we did.

Hi, get her to check her contract - it will probably have a term in it allowing them to increase the rent giving a certain amount of notice. So yes, almost certainly legal.

But, as a landlord, I agree with HC - she may be able to negotiate down if she pleads poverty as the hassle of getting new tenants is probably not worth losing a little bit of rent. I suggest she works out what she could afford and put that forward.

As to why the rent has increased so much I would think it is probably because the landlord's mortgage payments have increased - perhaps they have had to remortgage, if so the terms will be much worse than their existing terms.

£385 is an extremely low rent for a house - maybe the landlord was previously charging less than the going rate? I'm a landlord, and I did put the rent on my flat up by a big chunk earlier this year because it had fallen way beyond the local market rate. BUT that was partly because I only put it up when I get a new tenant, and the last one stayed 3 years.

Agree that it would be worth negotiating if the new rent is over the odds for the area - I'd always rather have a reliable long-term tenant than people coming and going, most landlords probably feel the same.

Ditto HumphreyCushion and Zazette - I'm a landlady and would rather have reliable tenant at slightly lower rent. I'm sure there is room for negotiation if the landlord is sensible.

Thanks for all the advice. She's going to have to negotiate and see what they say. Hopefully they will see the pros of her sytaying on rather than a new tenant.

Zazette - i think the rent is so low at the moment as the house was in a real bad state when she moved in. The whole place needed re decorating, there was mould on the wall, all of which she has sorted herself. Estate agent never returned her calls when she reported a problem or if they did they said they were waiting for the landlord to get back in touch.

I'll tell her to ring them and try and nrgotiate. Thanks so much for all the advice.

in that case, she has already proved herself to be an excellent tenant, but she needs to make sure that the landlord gets to hear about all that work

If landlord manages property himself, she should have an address/tel no for him and cd try contacting direct.

I didn't put my tenants rent up this year, as I know the utilities are expensive. The quid pro quo for this is that they actually have to put the bloody heating on a couple of hours a day. They may not feel the cold, but my house does.