Be Careful When Paying Rent Up Front
Renters are advised to not to pay rent up front for more than 1 month when moving into a property, unless they have proof that the landlord has not fallen behind with his mortgage payments. The number of buy-to-let investors who are in arrears, and face losing their property, has soared in the last 3 months.
Chris and Siobhan Taylor rented a five-bedroom house in Loughton, Essex, in August. They paid £48,000 upfront for the year after being offered a £6,000 discount. Now settled in, they have discovered that their landlord is already tens of thousands of pounds behind on his mortgage repayments.
‘We are feeling very vulnerable. We had no idea when we rented the property that this could happen. We just assumed that everything was OK. We face losing all our money and our deposit, or having to go to court, should the lender want to repossess during our one-year tenancy,’ says Siobhan, 39.
The Taylors have fallen into a gaping hole in the legislation covering tenants. As their rent is more than £25,000 a year, they had to sign a standard tenancy contract, not an assured shorthold tenancy contract, which would have given them a raft of protection.
It also means their initial £7,850 deposit was given directly to the landlord rather than being held by a third party under the Tenancy Deposit Protection Scheme.
Read the whole story at MailOnline.
It would normally be up to the letting agent to check that the landlord’s lender knows about the property being rented out but do not count on it - it would be wise to always ask for some sort of proof on paper.
