Landlord bankrupt - rent is not being paid

ionapaul

Hi all,

I live with 3 others in a big Dublin 6 house - our landlord declared bankruptcy in Britain at the start of May and asked us not to send him rent at the start of that month, to serve as our deposit back (it was nice of him to do this).

Later in May we received a letter from the receiver working for the bank in England looking for information from us, how much rent we usually pay, to who, when, details on the deposit, etc... We responded to most of the questions (we didn't tell them the last time we paid rent as they asked, instead we told them the next date rent was due, didn't want to let them know about the May non-payment as obviously our landlord doesn't have the money to pay us back so it is better if they think we paid it just before he was officially made bankrupt) and sent the letter back in the 3rd week of May.

Since then, not a word. I assume that the receiver will either a) suggest that the renting arrangement goes on as usual or b) asks us to prepare to vacate as they will sell the property. I expected b) for sure when finding out about the landlord's plans, but the letter sent asked for all the rent specifics so maybe the bank plans to continue to rent the property out.

We've been there a long time (18 months for me, over 3 years for some of the others) and the last lease we signed (a year-long lease) was up 6 months ago, so I guess we moved to a month-by-month situation.

I'm leaving the house in less than 4 weeks time to move elsewhere, while the others plan to stay unless the rent increases. We're all happy with living there without being asked for rent at the moment, and so don't particularly want to contact the bank. If they haven't contacted us by the time I move out, the lads won't even try to fill the room, it wouldn't make sense to do so. So a strange situation all around really!

My questions:

1. Can the British bank chase any of us for unpaid rent after we leave? I guess that our lease transferred with the ownership of the property
2. Do I need to inform anyone / give notice of my decision to leave? I don't want to be legally on the hook for unpaid rent after I leave - I haven't signed anything with the bank nor do I plan to!
3. Would a bank dealing with €000,000s of losses bother to chase up a few €K in unpaid rent anyhow? They literally have no details on us other than our names...

I want to both cover my ass and take advantage of this situation if I can, as do my housemates - we all believe it is quite likely the house will be put on the market in the near future.

For those interested - the house was bought for €1.2m a few years ago, it was valued at €650K at the start of the year and wouldn't get that now. It's a really nice and big 4-bed, 4-bath three-story townhouse in a nice part of Milltown, Dublin 6 and we were paying €2,100 in rent each month - I'm guessing the landlord was subsidising the mortgage massively as a result! It was originally his PPR. I don't blame him for choosing bankruptcy tourism, even though all of us may have to pay for his poor financial decisions, you only get one life to live and unless he was making €150K+ a year, he'd never realistically get out from underneath the debt burden. Likewise, I make no apologies for trying to do as well out of this strange situation as possible.

spaceHopper

I'd tell them that the land lord was in touch and in lue of deposit he gave you one months free rent, offer to pay the normal rent on a month to month basis, it would cost them more to recover 550 euro from each of you than it is worth and if you move out then there would be a gap of one month before they were able to let it again so they would be down more money in the end.