Landlord arranging rental insurance - asks us to sign a new tenancy agreement

[HerrSchade]

Hi

I'm new here but I'm looking for help as I've received an email below from my landlord:


"I got your contact info from **Name of the Agent**. Guys you will shortly receive by email from Advanced Referencing a reference request for rental insurance. To explain, I am trying to take out cover for you urgently, while it is still available. I am not asking you to pay for referencing or to help towards paying the premiums. If successful you will need to sign a new tenancy agreement, which will have 1 month’s notice either side, as current. Hence the text in the reference request "your application to rent a room". Just ignore this phrase.
The insurance would be of benefit to both you and I if we can get it. Thanks for your help with the paperwork. Please reply to Advanced Referencing as quickly as you can.

LANDLORD"

First question? Why do I need to sign a new rental agreement? I've got 7 months left (beginning of December) and I am not 100% sure if I want to stay in this property for longer - all depends on circumstances. If I understand correctly, he wants to sign an on a rolling contract, is that correct? Also, as far as I'm aware, landlords legally must give us 2 months notice not only 1 month - is that true?

Please, let me know what should I do in a current situation as I assume it benefits mainly him and new contract should reflect the existing one as he is making the change and it’s to benefit mainly him.

Thank you

[lawboy65]

I would suggest you do not sign anything. * Your tenancy agreement will give details of the insurance you would have needed at the beginning of your tenancy. You are correct that he would have to give you 2 months written notice so if you have 7 months left on your tenancy agreement, the earliest that this can happen is 5 months time providing you maintain the rent.* You are also correct that you need only give one months notice.* If you do not intend to stay in the property you will have to give one month before your tenancy ends.

[HerrSchade]

Hi lawboy65 and thank you for your reply.

I had a look at my tenancy agreement and nothing is being mentioned about landlords insurance for this apartment.

I'm just wondering if that is some kind of smokescreen so that the landlord can make changes in our contract or get rid of us earlier if he will want to. Maybe I am being too suspicious but our start with this agency wasn't very great as they weren't very transparent and I had to find temporary solutions to get rid of the furniture, that wasn't meant to be in the apartment.

I thought that landlords insurance is required for B2L property. I don't want to make it difficult for the landlord if that is better for him, but at the same time, I don't want to go through another reference checks and end up being worse off if he will actually make changes in our contract.

Does he really need to sign a new contract with us if he will get insurance?

[lawboy65]

I cannot see an advantage for you in signing a new contract. The original tenancy agreement is a contract that you agreed to sign for a period of time. For a landlord to wish to re start a tenancy with 7 months to go can only be to their advantage.

[R0b]

It sounds like the landlord is trying to obtain rent protection insurance meaning that if the tenant is unable to pay the rent, the insurance will cover it. The reason, I suspect, why he wants you to sign up to a new tenancy agreement is that the insurance is unlikely to cover him for any tenancies entered into before the insurance was taken out.

Regardless, the law is on your side and as already mentioned, you are not required to sign up to a new tenancy if you are already in a fixed term but it is not unreasonable to be suspicious and concerned about what he is trying to do. I think the first thing to do is probably have an informal conversation with him and set out your concerns and it will also be useful to do a comparison of the terms of the new tenancy and compare it with your existing to see if there is any difference.

Tenancy agreement never tend to favour the tenant other than the bare minimum legal obligations, so you could use this to try and use this opportunity to your advantage but also acting reasonably. For example, if you were to sign up to a new tenancy agreement, you might want to think about including the following points as part of the new agreement:

1. The tenancy term will be the same amount left on your existing agreement e.g. 7 months.

2. The agreement should state that the landlord has obtained and will maintain for the duration of the tenancy, rent protection insurance. If, for some reason that you cannot pay your rent in full then the landlord agrees to claim on the insurance for any unpaid rent. Sometimes the insurance will have an excess like 1 or 2 months rent in which case you could agree to pay the excess to the landlord if you get in that situation, by way of instalments if the full amount cannot be paid within a reasonable period of time.

3. An alternative to the above, is that you could seek to include a provision which says that if you aren't able to pay your rent in full for whatever reason, then the landlord will agree to the repayment of the outstanding balance by instalments and provided the instalment amounts does not cause you harship.

Those are just a couple of examples which I think are reasonable but under most circumstances would normally get rejected by the landlord - sometimes they never even reach the landlord where an agent is involved as they just make a unilateral decision themselves (rightly or wrongly), so it would be good to speak to the landlord directly if he wants you to enter into a new agreement.

Worst case scenario, the landlord can't force you to sign a new tenancy agreement and at the end of the day, if he wants you to scratch his back, then its only fair that you expect a little something in return.

[des8]

Also do be aware that while the policy will indemnify the landlord if you default, it will almost certainly authorise the insurers to pursue you for cost of the claim.
Not much advantage for the tenant!

[HerrSchade]

Thank you for your help. I really appreciate it.

I've just sent an email to my agency that we won't do any references until we will be informed on how our new contract is going to look like. I also attached these 3 points mentioned by R0b as I think that it would be fair and will see what their response will be. I don't want to be too suspicious, but it all feels a bit too rushed for us and I am not going to make any decision in a hurry. In the end, the law is on our side and he cannot force us to sign a new contract.

[R0b]

The worst thing they will say is no, and that's fine because you can refuse to sign any new agreement and don't feel pressured into doing so. If your landlord breaks the tenancy agreement then he will be responsible for losses that follow the breach.

Do bear in mind what Des mentioned around the insurance point, it's likely that the landlord's right to rent protection will involve giving up his right to payment of rent during those months and transfer the rights to the insurer who can then chase you for the non-payment.

Let us know how you get on.

[HerrSchade]

So the situation looks like this:

Suddenly landlord is not in a rush after sending an email to the agent and since then we didn't hear anything back from him (or at least the agent didn't say anything or maybe he didn't forward that email to the landlord) so I think he wasn't happy that we know we have an advantage in the current situation. that law is on our side and that legally we do not have to sign a new contract.

I'm usually not suspicious but from the beginning, there were issues with this landlord so that's why this situation was a bit odd for me.

[Crazy council]

It migh have been just his insurance agent/company changed there terms. If you manager or own a number of rentals, you usaly get a block policy, and these can have all sorts of odd sounding conditions attached but usualy that they expect the tenants to agree to, the important ones are they allow the agent/insurance to take actions against you and claim costs.

Sometime LLs are trapped into doing this when morgagee companies insist on them using insurance that garuntess payment, i have seen that more and more over the past 5 years as morgagee managers try force upselling insurance products on LLs