Paying rent for house while it was damaged?

TheRealSquishy

Hi guys, just wanted a bit of advice on this if anyone has any. Living in a rented house in Galway, when we moved in it was rented privately but has since been handed over to NAMA so we're renting off of them now.

In december the ceiling in one of the bedrooms fell in, luckily nobody was here at the time. The lads I live with went into the attic and found a hole in the roof and buckets underneath it that had been collecting the rain that fell in, we obviously weren't informed of this. Anyway the weight / water from them is presumably what made the ceiling cave in.

We rang and told NAMA who told us they would have someone out to look at it asap, we said no bother as it was Obviously the previous owners fault. That was 2 and a half months ago and we hadn't seen or heard from anyone until Friday when I looked out the window to see a fella on the roof repairing the hole. None of us have paid december, january or febuarys rent as we weren't getting through to them any other way. Yerman wasn't on the roof 10 minutes when my phone started ringing with them demanding payment for the last 3 months rent, after over 2 months of waiting for them to fix it!

Soon he's coming to meet with us next week. The person that was in that room had to move out since it was uninhabitable and we haven't heard from her since. None of the rest of us could afford to move but it has effected us, the house was freezing and we had to have heaters on constantly. The smell of damp coming from the room is disgusting. I was just wondering are we still liable for the last 3 months rent, even a reduction would be fine. We have no problem with keeping on the house until may as agreed and we will start paying rent again now that the roof is fixed (the ceiling is still collapsed). Just wamt some opinions here before we meet them. Thanks!

super_furry

Say you have all been staying with parents/friends because it's been uninhabitable.

aN.Droid

TheRealSquishy wrote: »

Hi guys, just wanted a bit of advice on this if anyone has any. Living in a rented house in Galway, when we moved in it was rented privately but has since been handed over to NAMA so we're renting off of them now.

In december the ceiling in one of the bedrooms fell in, luckily nobody was here at the time. The lads I live with went into the attic and found a hole in the roof and buckets underneath it that had been collecting the rain that fell in, we obviously weren't informed of this. Anyway the weight / water from them is presumably what made the ceiling cave in.

We rang and told NAMA who told us they would have someone out to look at it asap, we said no bother as it was Obviously the previous owners fault. That was 2 and a half months ago and we hadn't seen or heard from anyone until Friday when I looked out the window to see a fella on the roof repairing the hole. None of us have paid december, january or febuarys rent as we weren't getting through to them any other way. Yerman wasn't on the roof 10 minutes when my phone started ringing with them demanding payment for the last 3 months rent, after over 2 months of waiting for them to fix it!

Soon he's coming to meet with us next week. The person that was in that room had to move out since it was uninhabitable and we haven't heard from her since. None of the rest of us could afford to move but it has effected us, the house was freezing and we had to have heaters on constantly. The smell of damp coming from the room is disgusting. I was just wondering are we still liable for the last 3 months rent, even a reduction would be fine. We have no problem with keeping on the house until may as agreed and we will start paying rent again now that the roof is fixed (the ceiling is still collapsed). Just wamt some opinions here before we meet them. Thanks!

You should not be living there in such a condition. In such a case the owner of the property has to offer you alternative living arrangements that meet the standards of that you expect from the current house. Failing that they should offer you a stay in a hotel while the house is being worked on.

Coming from recent memory of a similar situation. May not be the law.

djimi

What kind of a paper trail do you have to show how you informed them of the problem and your repeated efforts over a period of months to get them to resolve the issue?

TheRealSquishy

Well the electricity is sky high from having the heaters on all the time so if they checked that they would know we were here so I don't really want to chance that.

Yeah they told us the first time we rang that it'd be sorted within 2 days so we didn't think it'd be a problem and since it was the previous owners fault we said we'd try and be sound about it but that clearly gets you nowhere. One of my friends had a fire in the house and they put them up in a hotel while it was getting fixed so we probably should have tried that route

Almost none I'd say, any contact I had was by phone and I got a new phone last week so even the call log would be gone. One of the lads might have a few emails but he mostly contacted them by phone aswel. Sounds like we haven't much hope here