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Student Accommodation Rent Advice Please :)

Family, children, advice, schooling, finance for children, all things kids.
GoSeigen
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Re: Student Accommodation Rent Advice Please :)

#424791

Postby GoSeigen » July 4th, 2021, 8:40 pm

Redkite wrote:I believe my first steps should be to get ahold of my final tenancy agreement, and see what is stipulated about the bills, and then go about with who and how much I should be paying. I might be wrong, but does make the most sense to me!

Katie :)


Good post from Mike4 just preceding this one.

Welcome to the Lemon Fool Katie. It might be a good idea to change your user name to something which is not your real name. Unless you are happy with people knowing who you are of course... but with the information given just in this thread I am confident within a few minutes someone could have your full name, past and future address, date of birth, mother's maiden name and a probably bunch of other stuff from social media. e.g. I'd pretty confidently say your middle name ends with e! It also exposes your parents' identity and financial information.


GS

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Re: Student Accommodation Rent Advice Please :)

#424798

Postby RedKite » July 4th, 2021, 9:06 pm

Mike4 wrote:
Redkite wrote:

Hmmm I've just looked more carefully at the estate agent listing and the plot thickens.

The three of you appear to have signed a joint tenancy agreement without reading, getting or taking a copy for yourselves. Or if you read it before signing it, you didn't amend it to make it fit the agreement you made to have "bills included" for the extra £22 offered on the website. This strikes me as a blindingly good deal given the 'bills' (presumably gas, leccy, water, council tax etc) will probably run to a four figure sum beginning with a 2 or close to a 3.

Presumably the LL actually meant £22 per week per person but the website doesn't actually say this. And I suspect you may have assumed it means £22 per month for the whole tenancy given the rent is quoted per month. So, I think you really need to open a dialogue with the LL to find out what each of you thinks "bills included" actually means and how the £22 relates to it i.e. is it per tenant per week, or what? If per tenant per week you are probably better off just paying the bills yourself rather than making waves over it.

Another point is if push comes to shove, once you take possession and move in your position strengthens considerably. Should you feel driven to withhold rent payments to force a dialogue on this, the LL will find it near impossible to evict you as the courts are clogged up for many months or years ahead for the LL to apply for a possession order, and then again for an eviction order to actually make you leave or so I hear. So you could easily have completed your degree by the time this gets resolved if it goes legal.

What Isuspet might have happened is the LL has realised the ambiguity of the "silver" offer on the website so if I were you I would grab some screenshots before they change that page!


We were all aware that it was £22 pp/pw, meaning the LL receives £66 from all of us pw… more than enough I suspect, to pay the bills. Hoping it’s just an admin error, but looking at past reviews of ARCH and HABITIO (their previous name, it could mean we could be in for a bit of a bad run :shock:
Katie

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Re: Student Accommodation Rent Advice Please :)

#424804

Postby Mike4 » July 4th, 2021, 9:31 pm

Redkite wrote:
We were all aware that it was £22 pp/pw, meaning the LL receives £66 from all of us pw… more than enough I suspect, to pay the bills. Hoping it’s just an admin error, but looking at past reviews of ARCH and HABITIO (their previous name, it could mean we could be in for a bit of a bad run :shock:
Katie


Given the massive amount of scope for LL/tenant relationships to go wrong as a tenancy proceeds, it would be a surprise if a LL of any size specialising in student lets did not have a handful of bad reviews. Tenants are more inclined to leave a bad review following a dispute than a good review after a trouble-free tenancy so there is a strong bias towards negative reviews, so I wouldn't place too much weight on the past reviews of ARCH/HABITIO.

Another point to consider, did your mums and dads sign up as guarantors? If they did, your legal position is not as strong as I first suggested. Any missed rent payments will result in recovery action against the guarantors not the students, which probably won't go down at all well with the parents! A point to beware.

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Re: Student Accommodation Rent Advice Please :)

#424860

Postby Lootman » July 5th, 2021, 8:36 am

Mike4 wrote:Another point is if push comes to shove, once you take possession and move in your position strengthens considerably. Should you feel driven to withhold rent payments to force a dialogue on this, the LL will find it near impossible to evict you as the courts are clogged up for many months or years ahead for the LL to apply for a possession order, and then again for an eviction order to actually make you leave or so I hear. So you could easily have completed your degree by the time this gets resolved if it goes legal.

I do not think it is very ethical to suggest to any tenant that he or she agrees to something purely to get possession, and then try and use that possession as some kind of leverage to change the original terms.

And even if it did take that landlord "months" to evict (and evictions for non-payment of rent are usually the fastest to enact) the unpaid rent will still be owed and the students will then have a court judgement documented against them, which may cause problems later on when applying for jobs.

Far better to work this out during the contract negotiation than to rely on dirty tricks down the road. And as noted by others any landlord would want a lot to compensate for the risk of the tenants being extravagant with utilities.

Also, whilst having the heat on all the time might suppress mould and damp, it can also dry out the walls causing cracks and movement. Ideally you do not want a house to be either over-heated nor under-heated.

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Re: Student Accommodation Rent Advice Please :)

#424871

Postby Mike4 » July 5th, 2021, 9:03 am

Lootman wrote:I do not think it is very ethical to suggest to any tenant that he or she agrees to something purely to get possession, and then try and use that possession as some kind of leverage to change the original terms.


That's rich from someone who used to pick locks and set up squats, then negotiate with the 'landlord' from the same position of strength having gained possession.

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Re: Student Accommodation Rent Advice Please :)

#424872

Postby Lootman » July 5th, 2021, 9:05 am

Mike4 wrote:
Lootman wrote:I do not think it is very ethical to suggest to any tenant that he or she agrees to something purely to get possession, and then try and use that possession as some kind of leverage to change the original terms.

That's rich from someone who used to pick locks and set up squats, then negotiate with the 'landlord' from the same position of strength having gained possession.

What happened to "play the ball, not the man"?

But yes, I have seen such situations from both sides, which has informed my views on such matters.

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Re: Student Accommodation Rent Advice Please :)

#424880

Postby Mike4 » July 5th, 2021, 9:17 am

Lootman wrote:
Mike4 wrote:
Lootman wrote:I do not think it is very ethical to suggest to any tenant that he or she agrees to something purely to get possession, and then try and use that possession as some kind of leverage to change the original terms.

That's rich from someone who used to pick locks and set up squats, then negotiate with the 'landlord' from the same position of strength having gained possession.

What happened to "play the ball, not the man"?

But yes, I have seen such situations from both sides, which has informed my views on such matters.



Good point and I apologise. I took your post as personal criticism and responded in kind. I mde no such suggestion, just pointed out it was an option.

The point is, not all landlords (or tenants) deal with a straight bat. And it looks as though Katie might have one of these on her hands so should she need to play dirty too, then she needs to know how or at least recognise when someone is playing dirty with her. Don't you agree?

Going to uni is a stage in one's life one learns all sorts of 'life lessons' beyond the subject of the degree. This episode is a great example.

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Re: Student Accommodation Rent Advice Please :)

#426735

Postby RedKite » July 11th, 2021, 4:25 pm

Got an update for you all,
Received the signed tenancy agreement, and it said we were paying the bills, as well as paying the LL to pay the bills for us! After calling the LL he realised what had gone wrong and admitted to it being his f*ck up. We are currently in the process of getting the tenancy agreement rewritten, so hopefully it is all sorted soon!
Thankyou so much for all of your help :)
Katie

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Re: Student Accommodation Rent Advice Please :)

#427262

Postby modellingman » July 13th, 2021, 8:37 am

RedKite wrote:Got an update for you all,
Received the signed tenancy agreement, and it said we were paying the bills, as well as paying the LL to pay the bills for us! After calling the LL he realised what had gone wrong and admitted to it being his f*ck up. We are currently in the process of getting the tenancy agreement rewritten, so hopefully it is all sorted soon!
Thankyou so much for all of your help :)
Katie


I'm a bit late to this but as someone who has been letting to students for 20 years (Durham not Leicester), I'll add my two'pennorth.

Bills included (or bill free as one operator in Durham puts it) is popular with landlords in the student market because pricing is always set to more than recover costs and it helps avoid the scourge of landlording - damp and black mould caused by condensation through lack of heating and ventilation. Pricing in £pppw (£ per person per week) is pretty universal in the student market and the figure of £85pppw is shown for the rent in the estate agent's pictures.

Joint tenancies are also fairly normal in this market. If the tenants fall out and one decides to leave or someone gets chucked out of uni for failing exams it puts the onus on the joint tenants to sort the matter out and find a replacement tenant. This is rare and the main advantage of joint tenancies from the LL perspective is it adds a bit of peer pressure when it comes to paying the rent since all are jointly liable for the full amount. It also greatly simplifies the landlord's position on Council Tax.

To RedKite, please read the tenancy agreement before you sign it and make sure you are happy with it before signing. Unless you get into a dispute with your landlord you'll probably never need to read it again. But if things do get sticky then you will want the legal contract (for that is what it is) to be correct and not reliant on half-remembered text messages from six or nine months ago. If there's anything you don't understand about the agreement, ask the landlord, agent or whoever else has put it in front of you to sign. Any decent student landlord should be more than willing to answer any questions you might have. Like me, s/he will have heard them all before.

And enjoy your experience of living out.


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