Breaking a lease...

tenant100

Hey all just looking for some advice.

We were living in a council house for 18 years and never caused any problems, rent paid on time and we never had to complain to the council about anything, we're good tenants IMO. We wanted to move for various reasons and were offered a house on a rent scheme, similar to RAS (didn't qualify for RAS because we weren't renting private or something) The lease was for 4 years. We signed contractand were told we would be sent a copy - when I asked questions "theres no need to read it all, sure we'll give ya a copy!" and never got one. We were told the house would be inspected and we had a few meetings with the landlord who we knew from around the area. There were a few problems but he promised to fix them in 2-3 weeks.

This was 5 months ago and we are having problem after problem and now want to move elsewhere. Please advise if we can break the lease, i'll explain some of the problems below. Our house was never inspected before we moved in, no BER ratings, nothing - we had the health inspector out and she said she pitied us for living here and will get onto the council ASAP, however it seems like they will suggest landlord fixing the problems - at this point we would just prefer to move. I know beggars can't be choosers but one of the family members has aspergers syndrome/OCD and it has really depressed him.

- Windows are old wooden frames/single glazed/badly installed. My bedroom window smells like a dead corpse is inside it sometimes (it isn't always a noticable smell, not sure what would cause it) but theres no visible rot. Explained the smell to the landlord and that it may be the window causing the smell (we were trying to be nice about it without saying "the windows need to be changed NOW") and he replied "sure what else would it be haha". The bedroom at the back of the house, the window in there is rotted to the point theres actually chunks of the windows missing. Most of the windows are rotting but the bathroom and back bedroom are definitely the worst.

- No vents in any of the rooms.

- The back bedroom has a huge damp patch on the corner of ceiling, about 4 ft x 4 ft in the corner. This wasn't there when we moved in but the whole house was freshly painted before we moved in which seemed odd considering no other work was done with it.

- The house has built in presses in the hall, sitting room and bedrooms which all smell like rotting wood. Landlord and his staff (handymen) claimed they got no smell - health inspector got the smell without us even mentioning it to her. The presses in living room had visible mold on the shelves, he changed the one that was worst and told us to cover the rest with newspaper and use bleach to get rid of the mold (they're only chipwood so wouldn't have cost him much to replace!)

- No smoke alarms in any part of the house.

- Bug problem. I realize its expected to have the odd bug now and then but when we first moved in we had hundreds of woodlice appearing. Our landlord seemed to think it was a ridiculous thing to complain about but got in someone to spray the skirting boards for us. He said he would call back in a few weeks to do it again but never did. This was okay for a month or so but we have more woodlice again, not as many as before but usually 5-10 a day. We also have earwigs, long beetle creatures (they're about 2-3 cm and black), and these odd long slim grey bugs which curl into a ball? We find about 20 bugs or so each day. We also have "bloodsuckers" crawling inside the walls/celing in the house. I realize none of these are threatening but they are still not pleasant or welcome in our "home"!

- The walls aren't insulated. Not sure if this is a requirement but landlord has been promising to do this since we moved in but still waiting.

- Most of the light switches "sizzle" (for lack of better word) when we turn one on. The bathroom and main bedroom have those "shaving" plugs with lights above it, the lights are the kind with the pull down string, the strings are black and if you pull them you can see the top is white, you can actually scrape the mold off them which leads us to believe the house had a bad mold problem and LL just painted over everything.

- The hot press/cylinder is a weird set up..wires all over it. Health inspector was shocked at it and said how dangerous it was, especially shocked when she knew the 6 year old got a shock from it.

- Sewerage...where to start. The toilets keep blocking up every 3-4 weeks. Landlord blamed us straight away..saying we were using too much tissue. Got people in to "unblock" the pipes and all was good but the same thing happened 3 weeks later! His handymen/staff keep saying its our fault, we are using too much tissue, etc. When the toilets block up, the small bathroom floods because the water starts coming out of the pipes when you flush the toilet. Its really annoying that they keep blaming us. A family friend works in the sewerage business and said theres no way we could be doing it with tissue, but its more likely the pipes need to be changed or theres a problem further down that has nothing to do with us. His handymen were out "clearing" the pipes again. We lived in our old house 18 years and never had problems with toilets blocking up. We are certainly not using any extra tissue in this house.


- When the sewerage problem happened they had to dig up a large part of the path in the back garden and landlord said he would have his handymen fill it in but that was 2-3 months ago and still waiting. Right now its filled up with stones but it would be very easy for the youngest child (6) or her friends to get seriously injured there.


We don't want to get on bad terms with the landlord because he is a nice man but I just don't want to stay here or keep our family in this house any longer. 6 year old feels sick from the smell of the house every day she wakes up, another family member is on inhalers recently, has a chest infection and is spitting up brown fluid that doc says could be related to this house. Not 100% sure its caused by it but we are still unhappy.


Based on all of this, do we have a good reason to ask to be released from the lease on this house? Any input appreciated.

needadvi

You should have checked the house before moving in to be fair. If you break the lease you will lose your deposit...that is IF you paid a deposit!

milkandsugar

Have you gone to threshold? They would be able to give you a better idea of where you stand.

tenant100

We did look at the house. We have been in our previous house since living alone, lived there for 18 years and weren't sure exactly what we should have been checking out I suppose. We do accept some of the blame but we also don't want to risk childrens health in this house any longer. It was freshly painted so we didn't notice things like mold on the light fixtures until we went to use them, there was no other visible mold. The leaking on the ceiling didn't show up straight away because that had been painted too. We didn't get the awful smell from the windows because like I said, it comes and goes throughout the day. We knew some of the windows had visible rot but LL promised they would be replaced with new windows in 3-4 weeks after we moved in, this keeps getting pushed back now to "soon". We assumed the house had been inspected and ok-d by the council because they said that would be done before we moved in.

also..no deposit. Its rented through a scheme with the county council, very similar to RAS. We wouldn't mind giving LL 30 days notice but we don't want to stay here any longer than that.

@ milk - we have not gone to them. I will see if I can get in touch with someone there,thank you.

Any other advice is welcome

needadvi

"If a tenant wants to leave before the end of the lease (and there is no break clause), the tenant needs to:

Find someone else to replace the existing tenant in the lease;

Write to the landlord, requesting permission to assign the lease to this new person.

If the landlord refuses consent, the tenant can give the landlord notice of termination and leave. The notice period is calculated by how long the tenant has lived there."

Got this information from the threshold website.

tenant100

Hi, I did see that. Also seen that if a tenant has signed a fixed term contract, they can['t give notice to leave, they have to write to the LL about the problem and give them a chance to fix it - thing is, we have been asking him every 3 weeks or so since we moved in (on the phone/in person) about the windows and he keeps saying "soon" and making excuses.

I am hoping the fact that the house was never inspected/BER ratings/etc. will mean we can get out of the lease? That should have been done before we moved in and it wasn't...

Also we didn't sign anything with the LL. The LL signed a contract with the council and we signed a contract with the council. Not sure if that makes a difference.

IrishKnight

AFAIK, if the landlord/whatever does not provide you with any of the legally required items, even if you haven't requested them, they have broken the law and therefore the letting agreement. I seem to remember reading on a landlord forum how if they don't have an energy rating for the house they are letting, as per the law, the tenants could leave whenever, with however long a notice and demand their deposit. But again, I haven't looked into it that much so threshold is the place to go methinks

tenant100

IrishKnight wrote: »

AFAIK, if the landlord/whatever does not provide you with any of the legally required items, even if you haven't requested them, they have broken the law and therefore the letting agreement. I seem to remember reading on a landlord forum how if they don't have an energy rating for the house they are letting, as per the law, the tenants could leave whenever, with however long a notice and demand their deposit. But again, I haven't looked into it that much so threshold is the place to go methinks

Thanks for this, will do some googling and fingers crossed that this is true as our LL doesn't have BER for this house. Have also dropped treshold an email, hoping to confirm we can get out of the lease before Tuesday, as that is when the council will be contacting us


EDIT: just found some information regarding the BER cert, it seems that as it was not shown to us when we agreed to rent/signed the lease, it makes the letting void so we can get out of the lease. Hopefully there is no other clause stopping us from doing so. Will mention it on Tuesday if the council tell us to stay here.

not even wrong

also..no deposit.

So why don't you just move out then? You say your landlord is a "nice man" but if he's messing you around about fixing this stuff he's not very nice!

Don't worry about the fixed term lease, any lease can be broken if the either party fails to meet their obligations under the Residential Tenancies Act 2004. In this case the landlord has failed to meet their obligation of keeping the property up the legally required standard.

tenant100

not even wrong wrote: »

So why don't you just move out then? You say your landlord is a "nice man" but if he's messing you around about fixing this stuff he's not very nice!

Don't worry about the fixed term lease, any lease can be broken if the either party fails to meet their obligations under the Residential Tenancies Act 2004. In this case the landlord has failed to meet their obligation of keeping the property up the legally required standard.

We live in a small town and our LL is probably the most liked man here, he has a few businesses and rents out many other properties, I suppose we just don't want to get on anyones bad side. He did have someone out to measure the windows about a month ago but now his excuse is that the place he was going to get them from is too expensive so he *thinks* he can get them cheaper elsewhere "very soon". I do think he would do the work required on the house when requested (health inspector/council are going to contact him next week) but we just want to get out of here asap. I really don't trust that the house can be completely fixed up in a short space of time and it will cost him a lot of money. Staying here is bad for out health.

As to why we don't just up and move..we simply can't afford rent. We have a speoial needs family member who *has* to have his own room, meaning we need a 4 bed house and rents for that are just out of our budget. The scheme we are on now, we pay the same rent we did in our council house and they pay the landlord that and some extra. We are hoping if we mention the BER cert to the council on Tuesday they will have to move us to another house.

needadvi

tenant100 wrote: »

I suppose we just don't want to get on anyones bad side.

OH PLEASE, THIS IS A RIDICULOUS THING TO SAY OR EVEN THINK SEEING AS THE PLACE IS A DANGER TO YOUR HEALTH AND POSSIBLY LIFE.

YOU NEED TO SORT YOUR OWN LIFE OUT REGARDLESS OF WHAT OTHER PEOPLE SAY OR THINK OR DO.