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Flatmates from hell...
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Okay. I have just written out a massive ranty post and lost it all. So, having barely just reintroduced myself over on the "Introduce" board, I will ask very cheekily for advice, and devuldge any extra information needed.
At present, myself and my best friend share a room in a rented flat share. Neither of us are new to renting - I personally have rented privately and lived completely alone since age 18, so I have a bit of basic knowledge behind me. Flatsharing is a new domain.
In recent months, we have had repeated clashes with the "main tenant" in our flat - over various things such as our requests that he respects our shift working and doesn't make excessive noise directly outside our room at night, and is considerate of the fact that my friend is a night shift worker - however weve never asked for complete silence. (shouldn't be too difficult, we live downstairs, and the only other room down here is the kitchen, and there is another night shift worker living in the flat). This request is constantly ignored (in fact, as I type this, I am being kept awake by him bouncing a basketball off his wall upstairs, despite him knowing I am up for work at 5am.
Our main issue is currently the warmth in the flat. Despite being openly admitted by all 4 other members of the household that the flat is a cold building, and him being aware that our room is especially cold due to illfitting doors and windows and a broken radiator (!!) that we can only have on the lowest setting, he will not allow us to have the heating on. The room is constantly cold and damp, to a point that it takes 3 days to dry our washing in here, and we currently have to sleep - in MAY - with 2 blankets over our quilt, 3 hot water bottles/heat wraps and wearing our dressing gowns. This has - of course - actively affected our health, and last weekend, while main tenant was away, myself and my friend managed to make a deal with one of the other flatmates (much against his will) that as long as we turned all the shared area radiators off each time, we could have the heating on for half an hour periods "occasionally".
Tonight - a particularly cold day in the flat - we turned it on. After ten minutes, I was cornered in the kitchen by "main tenant", who proceeded to shout abuse at me, telling me that I should learn to pay a gas bill (our utilities are included in our rent), and that we werent having the heating on as he was fine. I explained (again) our previous conversations, and requested we had it on just for another ten minutes to take the edge off in our room. He continued to shout abuse, telling me that he refused to have the heating on, and that if we were that cold we should just move out, to such a point that my friend overheard the noise and came running into the kitchen to check I was okay. She luckily is a much more level headed person than me in these kind of situations, so whereas I was pretty much in tears, she firmly pointed out the facts to main tenant, who repeated again that we should get out. We pointed out that this was our plan, that we were living here temporarily as a cost saving measure while we saved a deposit for our own flat (something that has NEVER been a secret - it even came up whilst I originally viewed the room), to which he responded that he would take that as our two week notice, and continued to scream as we left the room. My friend went back and asked for our flats actual landlords name, who we have never dealt with, always just this tenant - which he refused to give, stating he only dealt with a letting agency. When asked for this, he started childishly shouting the address as he stormed upstairs - luckily, I picked up on the postcode and googled it so we could call and request the landlord look into insulating our room properly.
.... Imagine our surprise when after I called and explained who I was, where I lived, and what I needed, I was informed that they had no record of either of us living here. As far as these people are aware, it is just the three men upstairs living here - and our room is still a living room.
Now when we moved in, we did not sign a contract - we have a reciept for our deposit, but nothing else. Having researched this, as we are lodgers in a rented flat apparently this is not out of the ordinary, however according to the same information, the owner/agency letting the property should be aware of us, or at least aware the room is being let for lodging - which they are not. The agency have been fantastic and are looking into this for me but theres only so much they can now do.
Our main concern is - we are now urgently looking for a new room to let, but both working shifts full time makes this hard sometimes. Is he within his rights to just chuck us out after two weeks, as we have no contract? Are we within our rights to refuse to move until we find somewhere appropriate if he does attempt this? We don't want to stay here - however we'd orignally hoped to be here a couple more months, so cannot afford our deposit for our own flat yet, and this is the main thing holding us back. In regards to the deposit we paid for this room, do we have any legal ground to stand on getting this back if he refuses??
I'm genuinely terrified of us being thrown out with no notice as I wouldn't put it past him, and (no offence to anyone on here as I know its a stereotype)... we live in a slightly less desirable (however visibly improving!) area of East London - being turned out on the street is not advisable!
In our defence, we may not be the perfect flatmates - however we are clean, stick to our share of the cleaning rota, relatively quiet (being as we work opposite shift patterns, theres only about an hour a day where the two of us are in and awake, and on our days off we are normally out anyway!) - in fact the loudest I can ever remember us being is when we had a particuarly heated argument over something stupid a few months back - however it was in the middle of the day, when only one other flatmate was in (not main tenant), and it lasted 5 minutes before we burst into tears and apologised profusely to each other - we're girls living in a very confined space. It happens. Once in 6 months I don't think is bad!
So yeah. Bit ranty but I'm rather worried. Any advice, on any points?
(Failing that... anyone got a cheap temporary room to let for two charming girls in the East London area? We'll be in tomorrow given half a chance!
)
At present, myself and my best friend share a room in a rented flat share. Neither of us are new to renting - I personally have rented privately and lived completely alone since age 18, so I have a bit of basic knowledge behind me. Flatsharing is a new domain.
In recent months, we have had repeated clashes with the "main tenant" in our flat - over various things such as our requests that he respects our shift working and doesn't make excessive noise directly outside our room at night, and is considerate of the fact that my friend is a night shift worker - however weve never asked for complete silence. (shouldn't be too difficult, we live downstairs, and the only other room down here is the kitchen, and there is another night shift worker living in the flat). This request is constantly ignored (in fact, as I type this, I am being kept awake by him bouncing a basketball off his wall upstairs, despite him knowing I am up for work at 5am.
Our main issue is currently the warmth in the flat. Despite being openly admitted by all 4 other members of the household that the flat is a cold building, and him being aware that our room is especially cold due to illfitting doors and windows and a broken radiator (!!) that we can only have on the lowest setting, he will not allow us to have the heating on. The room is constantly cold and damp, to a point that it takes 3 days to dry our washing in here, and we currently have to sleep - in MAY - with 2 blankets over our quilt, 3 hot water bottles/heat wraps and wearing our dressing gowns. This has - of course - actively affected our health, and last weekend, while main tenant was away, myself and my friend managed to make a deal with one of the other flatmates (much against his will) that as long as we turned all the shared area radiators off each time, we could have the heating on for half an hour periods "occasionally".
Tonight - a particularly cold day in the flat - we turned it on. After ten minutes, I was cornered in the kitchen by "main tenant", who proceeded to shout abuse at me, telling me that I should learn to pay a gas bill (our utilities are included in our rent), and that we werent having the heating on as he was fine. I explained (again) our previous conversations, and requested we had it on just for another ten minutes to take the edge off in our room. He continued to shout abuse, telling me that he refused to have the heating on, and that if we were that cold we should just move out, to such a point that my friend overheard the noise and came running into the kitchen to check I was okay. She luckily is a much more level headed person than me in these kind of situations, so whereas I was pretty much in tears, she firmly pointed out the facts to main tenant, who repeated again that we should get out. We pointed out that this was our plan, that we were living here temporarily as a cost saving measure while we saved a deposit for our own flat (something that has NEVER been a secret - it even came up whilst I originally viewed the room), to which he responded that he would take that as our two week notice, and continued to scream as we left the room. My friend went back and asked for our flats actual landlords name, who we have never dealt with, always just this tenant - which he refused to give, stating he only dealt with a letting agency. When asked for this, he started childishly shouting the address as he stormed upstairs - luckily, I picked up on the postcode and googled it so we could call and request the landlord look into insulating our room properly.
.... Imagine our surprise when after I called and explained who I was, where I lived, and what I needed, I was informed that they had no record of either of us living here. As far as these people are aware, it is just the three men upstairs living here - and our room is still a living room.
Now when we moved in, we did not sign a contract - we have a reciept for our deposit, but nothing else. Having researched this, as we are lodgers in a rented flat apparently this is not out of the ordinary, however according to the same information, the owner/agency letting the property should be aware of us, or at least aware the room is being let for lodging - which they are not. The agency have been fantastic and are looking into this for me but theres only so much they can now do.
Our main concern is - we are now urgently looking for a new room to let, but both working shifts full time makes this hard sometimes. Is he within his rights to just chuck us out after two weeks, as we have no contract? Are we within our rights to refuse to move until we find somewhere appropriate if he does attempt this? We don't want to stay here - however we'd orignally hoped to be here a couple more months, so cannot afford our deposit for our own flat yet, and this is the main thing holding us back. In regards to the deposit we paid for this room, do we have any legal ground to stand on getting this back if he refuses??
I'm genuinely terrified of us being thrown out with no notice as I wouldn't put it past him, and (no offence to anyone on here as I know its a stereotype)... we live in a slightly less desirable (however visibly improving!) area of East London - being turned out on the street is not advisable!
In our defence, we may not be the perfect flatmates - however we are clean, stick to our share of the cleaning rota, relatively quiet (being as we work opposite shift patterns, theres only about an hour a day where the two of us are in and awake, and on our days off we are normally out anyway!) - in fact the loudest I can ever remember us being is when we had a particuarly heated argument over something stupid a few months back - however it was in the middle of the day, when only one other flatmate was in (not main tenant), and it lasted 5 minutes before we burst into tears and apologised profusely to each other - we're girls living in a very confined space. It happens. Once in 6 months I don't think is bad!
So yeah. Bit ranty but I'm rather worried. Any advice, on any points?
(Failing that... anyone got a cheap temporary room to let for two charming girls in the East London area? We'll be in tomorrow given half a chance!
) 0
Comments
He'd decided to start hoovering right outside our room (despite the fact that its my week on the shared cleaning rota, there is no need with the layout of our flat to go near our bedroom door unless coming into our room, and knowing she was asleep as - at his request - we put a sign up when we are sleeping as I work various shifts and she is a night worker, of which there are two in the flat). So when she asked him to stop, he went mental, and started demanding to know how long she had been asleep, informed her she could get up now as he wanted to hoover and she didn't need to sleep. When she explained this wasn't exactly fair, he went ballistic, to a point all the other flatmates got involved trying to calm him down, however he has now told her - and me when I literally ran home to find out what the hell was going on - that we have 20 days to get out as we weren't getting along - "or else".
Now don't get me wrong, we are searching like crazy for a new room, but from a legal stand point - he can't do this right? I've tried ringing Citizens Advice but no answer, I plan to go down there on Monday. But from what I've googled, no matter what the situation with the lack of contract etc etc - legally he cannot kick us out just because he doesn't like us? Our rent and bills are all up to date, and we have never "caused trouble" - in fact we've accomodated all his requests in regards to any issues that have arisen prior to all of this.
Clever law people, any help? Urgently?
Our rent is paid monthly (to him), 20 days is the next time it's due. We are trying our best to be out by the end of this week if we can, but the threat hanging over us is making us both very nervous.
Welcome back to the boards.
This sounds so stressful, confusing and complicated.
It seems as though the tenants have sublet you the living room, probably without permission to do so by the main landlord/lettings agency. You would have to have a look at their tenancy agreement to confirm this though.
Also, you say you are a 'lodger' but this might not be the case. You might be a tenant and your landlord would be the 'main tenant'. Have a look at this page for more info - http://england.shelter.org.uk/get_advice/renting_and_leasehold/sharing_and_subletting/subtenants
The main distinguishing feature is whether you and your friend have exclusive possession of the living room and who you pay your rent to is also relevant.
If you are a tenant, your landlord (the main tenant) cannot evict you without a court order. You would have rights to have your deposit protected and returned.
However, the main landlord/lettings agency could take possession proceedings against you too (to evict you) and may well include you in any possession claim against the main tenant (I assume they'd want to get rid of him now they know what he is doing).
In any event, this is very complicated and there are so many 'ifs' so it's really hard to give you proper advice without knowing all the facts.
You could try calling Shelter's advice line - 0808 800 4444 - who would be able to give you more guidance.
Hope this all gets sorted soon.
Luckily (as my best mate is a legend, and we managed to hurriedly borrow a deposit) - we've actually managed to find a new place, with a proper landlord, that seems to be a million times better, and we can move in by their "kicking out" deadline, so we have landed on our feet this time!