hello,

We signed a 6 months contract for the flat we rented in end july. the contract expires end jan. However due to change in our circumstances, we need to move out of this rental property within the contract period. Our estate agent insists that in order to move out early, we must pay him the rest of the rent due till the end of the contract. Understanding that this is the only possible solution, we have agreed to pay him the next 3 months rent in advance and dissolve the contract. However, we want to find out the legal way on how such a thing should be best done on paper so that he should not be able to  trouble us after we have paid all the amount. Also, we are going to pay him the advertising fee for the property so that if he would be able to find a tenant for this place before end jan, he would reimburse the proportional amount of rent taken from us. we would like to have this clause in writing as well. kindly advice

Dear xxxxxx Agent 

Address ............ ?                                            Date ?

 

Concerning the property address ?    xxxxxxxxxxx   We (your names) are paying you the full outstanding rental amount to legally fulfill our obligations to you, in the early termination of our rental agreement up to 31st Jan 2008 the sum of £ xx xx  in full and final payment.

On the full understanding and with your signed agreement, that this amount is fully refunded to ourselves, or a proportionate part refunded for the period in which you may find another tenant to later replace our tenancy, during this time period that we have fully paid you for, the refund will be paid to us immediately upon you finding this replacement tenant. 

As a gesture of goodwill we enclose your advertising fee, in order that you can find another tenant to replace ourselves for the purpose above of £ xx xx and hope you find this acceptable.

 

                Signed ....................... Agent

                Signed.........................mylilangel                          Date ?

                Signed......................... In the prescence of (Witness)

 

You may want to treat your returnable deposit as a seperate transaction ?

Many thanks for replying so promptly. Just another query? My estate agent is new in the market and a one-man company. He himself is not very clear about all the rules, and feels very scared to do anything that is not typical of standard letting business. Even after I have promised to abide by his terms and pay him all the money, he is saying that you would still be responsible for the property for the remaining 3 months, or until a new tenant moves in. He will give me credit check clearance for my next move, but I would still have to keep the keys of this property, and be responsible for any damages such as theft or fire. All this sounds absurd! any suggestions to get out of this clause.

Hi --- It seems that your letting agent wants his bread buttered on both sides !

Once you have ended the contract legally then he is not entitled by law to add further terms into the original document, or he could keep dreaming up extra conditions and adding whatever he wanted. He must adhere to the original agreement and any deviation from that agreement cannot be forced upon you, or it will be seen as unlawful.

Unless your original agreement has a clause in the contact specifically stating that you would be responsible for the property in these circumstances, then he is not entitled to simply add his new terms to an existing written agreement.

You are in effect buying this contract out early, by paying your legal obligations upfront, that should be the end of the matter as far as any liability on your behalf goes.

 

Thanks to your advice, my estate agent understood that he can no longer take me for a ride, and has agreed to each and every word of the format you provided for early termination of contract. I am grateful to you.

Is it possible for me to add a clause saying that I have all the right to stay in the property until the date I move out, or something like 'this termination of contract is effective from the date I move out'. It might still take me 2-3 weeks for all the paper work to be processed for the new property. I would not like to be evicted from the property even after paying all the rent in advance! Kindly advice.

Hi --- mylilangel, ( love the name.) --- Likewise, in the same way the agent is not entitled to add new terms to the existing contract, neither are you entitled to add your terms unless it is with the prior letting agents agreement.

Therefore, for such a short period of time in which he has already asked you to hold the keys, you could get his verbal agreement that you are allowed to stay, on the understanding that you will vacate the premises with immediate effect in the event of another tenant wanting to move in, perhaps also maintaining goodwill by offering to show them around if you are able to ?

As you hold the keys in your possession anyway, it would take him up to three months to legally evict you from the property under any circumstances, although don't say that to him !

I give you credit where due, you have been totally fair on the handling of this by doing everything correctly, a lot of tenants from hell, would have just left in arrears once the contract had finished and thrown the keys through the letterbox. -- Fair play to you, in your decent responsible attitude in how you have handled this.

Thanks a million conmankiller -(very appropriate name I must say).

: - )  Thanks & good luck to you too.

Thanks to you, I was finally able to buy out my contract, and the estate agent was quite happy to sign the agreement that you had advised. Just a qiuck question, my estate agent agent is normally quite fussy about things, and now that we moved out, he has been inspecting the flat with probably a microscope to find traces of dirt. For things like some dry dust over the skirt board, soap stains on the shower glass, lime scale marks on the bath tub, he says that he has get the professional cleaners in, and the quotes would be in the range of £150-200 for less than an hours work! My deposit is protected by the deposit protection scheme and I have taken all the pictures of the flat after I cleaned it. Would it be advisable to go through the independent case examiner/ adjudicator route of DPS, or just agree to whatever amount I can negotiate with him and get rid of him. Kindly advice.

Hi mylilangel ---- Glad it has worked out for you................Now the normal household cleanliness that you menton above can only be reasonably expected, there is no way they can expect you to pay that much to put professional cleaners in at such an expense.

Tell them you will leave the premises in exactly the same state of cleanliness as you found when you moved in, if needs be offer to get someone who does cleaning jobs out of the local paper to help give it a good fettle and leave it as you found it, or make him a generous offer of £20 which would pay for a cleaner for two hours +.

The DPS is meant for damage and expenses to the fabric of the building caused by your negligence or abuse, not fair wear and reasonable tear. So as long as you have not damaged any fittings your deposit is fully protected.

Thank you for the quick reply. I have already moved out of the property 3 days ago and handed over the keys to him. He says that you have no right to access the property. It's only him who has the right to let anybody in. Even if I send my cleaners with his permission, he is going to inspect the flat again to his satisfaction. On the contrary, if I agree to the quote given by his cleaners, he would be happy to sign the deposit repayement form minus deductions without any further inspection.

 I think he is just interested in making some more money out of my deposit as well, even after I paid him 3 months rent in advance for buying out my contract. What is the stand of DPS with regards to cleaning? Does lime scaling, or some condensation marks on the walls behind furniture count as normal wear or tear, or damage.

He is trying to screw the last breath out of you for his profit, the condensation on the walls could be down to a damp problem and is not damage.

Lime scale is due to the water in your area, for which you have no control and are not accountable, tell him to sue the water board. !!

Tell him £20 is more than adequate, you have been more than reasonable in all respects of this matter. I bet every landlord wishes they had a tenant like you have been. !!!

The deposit protection scheme... I thought you had to have entered into when you took over the tenancy, if you have that protection then as long as you have not damaged the building you are entitled to your deposit back in full.

 http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/TenancyDeposit/DG_066383

 

Sorry for not writing back for such a long time. I hope you had a nice christmas. Yes, you were right, his intentions were to screw the last breath out of me. He initially quoted me 290£, then came down to 135£ the next day, that too only for general cleaning, cleaning the damp, and resealing the bath. Everything was fine as I told him that that he would have to go through the adjudication process of Deposit protection scheme, for which he will have to send all the photographic evidence. I asked to him to start the DPS repayement process, with 135£ pound as disputed to be decided by the adjudicator of DPS. But he was very clever, he made the best use of the loopholes in the DPS system. He initiated the repayement online, with 135£ pounds as not disputed, but 'to be paid to landlord',a nd the remaining 390£ to the tenant. There was an option for me not to agree with the above, and start 'ALternative Dispute resolution (ADR)'. But for that to happen, there was a loophole that both the parties have to sign to agree to go through DPS dispute resolution process. If any of the parties opt not to agree, the money would be kept 'safe' with DPS, and the tenant has to approach the small courts. My estate agent said that he would not agree to go through the ADR, because he may end up losing money, and can't be bothered to send photographic evidence. So he wouldn't sign that form for a relatively small amount of money, and then you would have to go the courts to get your money back. So better agree to whatever money (390£) you are getting, otherwise you have to run to the courts to even get that money back. DPS were most unhelpful with that, they just wanted to shrug off their responsibility, so they advised me to do the same if I wanted my money now, or else they can't release the money until they get a court order. At the end I agreed to the above to get my 390£ back ,and forgot the 135£.

I wrote to DPS, and only when I threatened to put these deficiencies on internet forums, and write to my MP, somebody called back, and said that these are company policies regulated by FSA, and they can't do anything about it. My landlord chose DPS out of all tenancy deposit schemes, because it is free of charge, and probably because he knew of these loopholes, and that the company just want to shrug off their responsibility. They are just interested in keeping the money for 6 months, earning interest, paying a fraction of that interest to the tenant, and walking away from any disputes. I have lost whatever I had to, but I want everybody to be aware of these loopholes of the DPS, before they sign for a tenancy deposit scheme.

Hi --- At least you got the original bill reduced down to £135 which still seems a little excessive but it's more realistic than the first amount.

They were simply trying it on to get as much as they could out of you for themselves, seeing as it's a new year shortly it's probably best to accept so that you can move forward now and have a fresh start, rather than tying up lots of your time and money in a lengthy hassle filled court dispute, the final outcome was not too bad considering you have got most of your money returned. !!

Good luck for the new year.

CMK.

Hi MyLilAngel,

I've stumbled upon this a bit late, but this might help people having the same problem in future...

If your landlord agrees, you could transfer your lease to a new tenant, it means having to advertise for a new tenant but would save you the 3 months rent in advance that you've paid. There's an example of this type of agreement here:

http://www.contractstore.com/assignment_of_lease and I'm sure there are other templates around that you could use.

To be honest, I'm not sure this would have worked in your case, because your estate agent sounds like an absolute nightmare!

Best of luck in future.