Word Of Warning

[Matt Henson]

Having posted on this forum for several years now and seen all sorts of woes some justified and some quite pathetic, I now find myself wishing I had taken some of the advice offered.

In October my wife and I decided to move, we found a lovely house in the Wiltshire countryside and met the landlord who said they were moving to be near his mother because she was getting old. The house was also on the market for sale so we thought this sounded like a long term arrangement and so could be a house we could rent for 3-4 years which is what we wanted.

Moving in day comes and we get the house in a bit of mess with bags of rubbish left lying around which was annoying and only one key (the house has 4 external doors). We have a few issues like a shower pump not working/ getting hot and the LL doesn't seem to care much, of course being the mug I fix it myself because me general experience of LL's is they take ages to solve issues.

So last Saturday lots of his post falls through the letter box (no re-direct of course) and my lovely three year old daughter (I have 4 kids) rips open a big envelope of his, it was from a solicitor acting on behalf of the Natwest providing a hearing date to get a repossession order!!!

So two months into a tenancy, LL signs a 12 month AST knowing repossession action is in progress after two years of negotiations and of course the bank don't even know we exist. Rights, oooh.... Zero, as least if it’s an BTL mortgage they have to honour the fix six months. What upsets me was he had no plan to tell us about this. Also did a land registry search and found a "charging order " against the property, in other words a bankruptcy court has awarded a charging order against the house to secure a debt.

So having seen lots of advice on this site to ask for written confirmation from the LL that the lender has authorized the property to be let (preferably under a proper BTL mortgage) and to do a land registry check, I can absolutely say that you must must do it. My guess is now we know and have told the lender we exist we have about 6-8 weeks before we have to get out. If we didn't know the chances are the first we would know was when the bailiffs showed up.

The risk of this happening is very real as I have found out and to make matters worse the LA didn’t give a damn (they are a national chain as well) me thinks I should get the papers involved.