Tenancy agreements should be watertight

A recent TV series has highlighted the importance of ensuring residential landlords have a watertight tenancy agreement in place.

The programme featured 2 tenants of a residential property who had allowed the property to fall into a state of disrepair by moving in lots of dogs that they looked after. The garden lawn was uprooted to accommodate the animals and the house was generally used for the animals. The tenants had not declared they would be moving in all of their dogs and soon the neighbours started to complain to the landlord about the noise and smell. Unfortunately the landlord encountered quite a few hurdles when trying to evict the tenants and he only got his property back because the tenants vacated voluntarily and in their own time.

The majority of tenants will pose no problems to landlords, however, there will always be a significant minority that will and when this happens the process of removing the tenants can prove time consuming and costly. It therefore makes sense to have a tenancy agreement that is as watertight as possible to help avoid problems later. Whilst there are many online services that can provide cost effective tenancy agreements, they won’t always contain the legal expertise a lawyer can provide and in fact, a saving on an online tenancy agreement could prove costly in the long run.

For information on tenancy agreements please contact Sharon Sangha at Lawson-West on 0116 212 1000.

View all