Legal Advice For Landlords
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With time, the relation between landlords and tenants turns personal rather than just being contractual. This is the reason that landlords do not suddenly react when the tenant fails to pay rent at certain point of time.
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First, the landlord contacts the tenant and tries to learn if the tenant has any problems due to which the tenant was unable to pay the rent. There may be various reasons like redundancy, divorce, loss of job or other problems which made the tenant unable to pay the rent. In such cases, one can approach the local authority securing housing benefit payments and seek help regarding rental payments.
The landlord can also agree for a repayment plan. This involves making timescales for current payment of rent and the arrears payment. The landlord can agree to accept smaller rent payments along with adding to arrears which can be paid after certain period. Else, the owner can also agree to take a bulk amount at some time in future to compensate for the arrears. All that is needed is that the landlord and the tenant must make up a suitable plan.
Some tenants contact the landlord and discuss the issue when reminded of the missed payment. With such people, it is possible to make negotiation and agree to some later payments. But there are people, who just ignore the reminder and don’t turn up either to make payments or to discuss the issues. In such cases, going through legal process becomes a necessity.
The court procedure takes a long time, usually three to six months, to sort out the problem and regain the property. Hence, when you find it necessary to proceed legally, take an immediate action. As per the Housing Act 1988, landlord can follow two routes to force the tenant leave the house. Of the two, Accelerated Possession is popular and commonly used. As per this act, the landlord must get an accelerated possession order as soon as the tenancy term of the tenant is approaching the end. Getting an accelerated possession order does not require hearing and can be obtained from a district judge. Based on the claim and evidence, the district judge makes the acceleration possession order. This order just helps in regaining the property. This order doesn’t include any legal notice to claim for the rental arrears. For recovering arrears, the landlord must take another action through the Small Claims Procedure. This helps in recovering the rental arrears on possession of property.
To apply for accelerated possession, the landlord must provide the tenant with S21 notice. The S21 notice has a notice period of 2 months. To apply for accelerated possession form, this notice must expire. Once it expires, fill out the accelerated possession form and send the necessary documents to the court.
If you successfully get the order, you can regain the property. Sometimes, the court may even provide the order to the tenant to pay the legal costs too. Recovery of legal costs is difficult especially when the tenant has not paid rent from a long time and the deposit has been used up to cover the rent.
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