Residential Landlord and Tenant and Housing solicitors
Woodside Park N12, North Finchley N12, Friern Barnet N11 and Totteridge N20
We are a litigation-based firm of solicitors who are very experienced in undertaking residential landlord and tenant & housing legal work. Our offices are located close by to Woodside Park, North Finchley and Totteridge – at 212 Regents Park Road – close to Henley’s Corner on the North Circular Road, and nearby to the A1/A41.
Streetcar parking is relatively easy next to our office and in particular in Cyprus Road – opposite there is free car parking (save between 2 pm and 3 pm).
Residential landlord and tenant legal work
Examples of work which we carry out include the following:
- Acting for landlords to obtain possession of rented properties. This particularly follows rent arrears. Making use of the shorthold ground for possession as set out in section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 has become very difficult in recent times. There are several qualifying conditions which need to be satisfied and which are fairly draconian. If any of the conditions are not fully satisfied, then the section 21 procedure (which involves the case being decided upon the paperwork without the expense of a court hearing) cannot be used. The rent arrears ground involves the use of a 14 day, pre-action notice under section 8 of the Housing Act 1988. This procedure will involve a court hearing. A landlord can serve a 14-day section 8 pre-action notice on day one of the arrears and rely upon discretionary rent arrear ground. This should not be problematic if the tenant stops paying rent completely. There is a mandatory possession ground once there is two months’ rent in arrears.
- Dilapidation claims. This is a claim by tenant concerning disrepair. It is usual for such a claim to be brought against the landlord by the tenant. In particular, for residential tenancies, the landlord is under certain repair obligations set out in section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 which cannot be contracted out of by the terms of the tenancy agreement. This includes keeping repair of the structure and the central heating system and the guttering, roof and foundations etc. The help of a surveyor would be needed by the landlord in defending these claims. The landlord is only liable if the landlord has notice of the disrepair and does not carry out the relevant repair works within a reasonable period.
- Deposit claims. There have been a plethora of claims about deposits recently. They are very technical legal provisions which if broken even if absolutely no prejudice has been caused to the tenant, the tenant can apply to the court for a fine of between one and three times the amounts of deposit. The award of a fine is mandatory. So accordingly, if a deposit is protected one day late outside of the prescribed period or the prescribed information is given one day late, the landlord is liable for a fine of at least one times of the value of the deposit. A number of firms are specialising bringing these claims, and indeed the starting point is that the claims should be part 8 claims and therefore would be full costs claims where costs will also be awarded to the tenant as well as the fine. In every case, steps must be undertaken to try to prevent the claim from being conducted as a multi-track claim and to place them in a small claims track where generally each party bears their own legal costs (save for limited exceptions).
- Defence of claims for unlawful eviction.
- Our Fee Charges
Our fee charges are very competitive and reasonable and are set out in our website. In appropriate cases, we will consider a fixed fee or no win no fee arrangement.