The Student Room Group

Need landlord help ASAP

I will try and keep it short but need some advice.

I signed to rent a property in 2013 with me and my mates before uni started, i failed the previous year before tenancy. So I was going to be kicked out of uni and could not reapply for full student finance. I had to change courses and reapply and pay tuition myself, but I couldn't pay for the house so I stayed with my gf for the year. During all of this the landlord has threatened to take me and my friends to court and pay the rent even though if I did I would have to leave uni since I couldn't pay the tuition making paying them irrelevant. I have not lived in the property once not paid a deposit but they have chasing me down for money I simple cannot give while studying at the same time.
Original post by luffyboy90
I will try and keep it short but need some advice.

I signed to rent a property in 2013 with me and my mates before uni started, i failed the previous year before tenancy. So I was going to be kicked out of uni and could not reapply for full student finance. I had to change courses and reapply and pay tuition myself, but I couldn't pay for the house so I stayed with my gf for the year. During all of this the landlord has threatened to take me and my friends to court and pay the rent even though if I did I would have to leave uni since I couldn't pay the tuition making paying them irrelevant. I have not lived in the property once not paid a deposit but they have chasing me down for money I simple cannot give while studying at the same time.


if you signed the contract you remained liable for the rent, regardless of whether you were a student or not
Original post by jelly1000
if you signed the contract you remained liable for the rent, regardless of whether you were a student or not


Unfortunately, Jelly1000 is right. You signed a legal, binding contract.
I'm so sorry you're dealing with such a terrible situation but at the end of the day you signed a contract to lease the property and until that lease ends you are liable for the rent even if you don't stay there.

What you should have done was explain the situation to your landlord as soon as you realised you wouldnt be able to live there, and its most likely that 1) your landlord may have agreed to charge you a fee to end your tenancy early and/or may have asked you to find another person to take your place 2) less likely, if your landlord was a kind soul they may have waived it if you explained your financial difficulty and having to leave and would have just demanded that you find a suitable tenant to replace you.

What I will say is this, mate: You're not doing yourself any favours letting them chase you around or running from their phone calls or letters. It makes your situation worse and you need to do everything in your power to stop your landlord from taking you to court because if they do, you'll be in serious trouble and will most likely be ordered to pay the complete owed amount immediately.

Call your landlord/agents and try and reason with them and talk things through. You really should not have waited a year, you should have been negotiating with your landlord since day 1 because now you have a year worth of rent owed which wouldnt have been the case if you'd just talked to the landlord and replaced yourself with a willing tenant so the landlord wouldnt lose out.

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