New lease required after being dumped by agent?

The tenancy is between you as owner and the tenant so changing letting agent should not require a new AST. having said that a new letting agent may have things in their AST which are not in your current one so i would discuss the situation with them,

I believe some agents use an AST whereby the parties are the tenant and the agent. So if it’s one of these you will need a new AST between yourself and tenant.

Hi Lesley,

Providing the tenancy agreement is between the landlord and tenant, you would be fine to continue on this basis. The tenancy agreement may however have the agents address rather than your own and you would need to serve the tenant with a Section 48 notice informing them of the new address for any notices that they wish to serve on you.

If appointing a new agent they should take care of this and may well prefer to sign a new tenancy agreement with their address.

Sanjiv

Reply to the comment left by Dylan Morris at 24/12/2018 – 11:03
If they do that, then they are naughty.

Of more concern is sorting out the deposit.

Many thanks for the comments. The tenancy agreement does have the name and address of the letting agent in the section “Landlords contact details” my name and contact details do not appear anywhere in the agreement. I would not want to change anything in the tenancy agreement so I think I will just issue a notification of change of contact details.

Reply to the comment left by Lesley Clarke at 29/12/2018 – 11:41
Hi Lesley,

Your name should be stated under the heading Landlord(s) as a minimum. If your name is not to be seen on the agreement then you will need to do a new tenancy agreement.

Did the tenants pay a deposit when they signed up, as this is also an area that will need you attention, as mentioned by Michael.

Sanjiv

Reply to the comment left by Sanjiv (Priya Properties) at 29/12/2018 – 12:13
Hi Sanjiv.
Thanks for your advice.
My name is nowhere on the tenancy agreement so I think I will need to do another one. I have downloaded a template from the YouGov website and so I will use that. With regard to the deposit – none was taken. I know this is very risky indeed but the letting agent persuaded me that my flat would be very difficult to rent out if I asked for a deposit. As it had been on the market for over three months I agreed to the plan and sure enough a tenant was found very quickly. So far he has paid the rent on time and looked after the flat (he’s been living in the flat for approx. two years).

The YouGov model agreement has a number of deficiencies (e.g. it only allows for rent increase on anniversary of tenancy, so if you miss it you have to wait another year).

You would do better finding a good agent who can provide an acceptable agreement (or join a LL association and use theirs).

Don’t forget to add a schedule containing all restrictions in your lease and a clause requiring T to observe them, otherwise you cannot enforce them against T and leave yourself in a difficult position with the freeholder.

Reply to the comment left by Michael Barnes at 29/12/2018 – 13:53
Thanks for the advice Michael. I have made sure the tenancy agreement is the same as the current agreement. I will look for another letting agent once the holiday period is over,