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Hi
Some advice please on our soon to be ending tenancy (private) through a Letting Agent. Apologies for the War & Peace style explanation but it does require the full background to understand properly.
So myself and my GF moved into a house on 31st August 2012 and signed a 6 month Assured Shorthold Tenancy Agreement. We paid rent on the 31st (or 30th) of every month without fail, which essentially covered us for the month after as rent is paid in advance.
Once the 6 month's was up, everyone was happy, so we signed a 12 month Tenancy agreement after the previous expired. This meant the new tenancy agreement started on 28th February (2013). Makes sense as though it's a shorter month, this is still the last day of the month as the 31st was.
Since then we've renewed the tenancy twice (2014, 2015 and paid their ridiculous renewal fees). We continued to pay rent on the last day of each month, or thereabouts.
So the time has come and we've outgrown the property and now have to move. We've agreed our last day of tenancy will be 1st April 2016.
This is my eyes, is 1 additional day we should have to pay as we've paid our rent for all of March at the end of February.
Or so I thought.
Letting Agent has emailed me to say we in fact owe 5 additional days. Why? Because apparently, when we signed the new tenancy agreement on 28th Feb, the calendar month's then started to run until the 27th of every month. So, they're saying we will owe for 28th, 29th, 30th, 31st March plus 1st April.
Now this does kind of make sense, however I can't help feeling we're being penalised purely because February is a particularly short month. And also if we look at this other scenario:
If we had signed the tenancy on 1st March, the calendar month would then run to the day prior to the 1st of every month, regardless of what number that day was. This would then mean that if we wished to move in the same circumstances as we do now, we would in fact only owe 1 day (because we'd pay up to 31st March).
In both tenancy periods they run for the same length 365 days (28/02 - 27/02 and 01/03 to 28/03). So how can we possibly be charged 4 extra days rent for signing a tenancy agreement 1 day earlier?
Let's just ignore leap years here by the way... but this does not seem fair at all. It seems that just because February is a short month we're being charged unfairly.
Where do we stand?
Many thanks
Some advice please on our soon to be ending tenancy (private) through a Letting Agent. Apologies for the War & Peace style explanation but it does require the full background to understand properly.
So myself and my GF moved into a house on 31st August 2012 and signed a 6 month Assured Shorthold Tenancy Agreement. We paid rent on the 31st (or 30th) of every month without fail, which essentially covered us for the month after as rent is paid in advance.
Once the 6 month's was up, everyone was happy, so we signed a 12 month Tenancy agreement after the previous expired. This meant the new tenancy agreement started on 28th February (2013). Makes sense as though it's a shorter month, this is still the last day of the month as the 31st was.
Since then we've renewed the tenancy twice (2014, 2015 and paid their ridiculous renewal fees). We continued to pay rent on the last day of each month, or thereabouts.
So the time has come and we've outgrown the property and now have to move. We've agreed our last day of tenancy will be 1st April 2016.
This is my eyes, is 1 additional day we should have to pay as we've paid our rent for all of March at the end of February.
Or so I thought.
Letting Agent has emailed me to say we in fact owe 5 additional days. Why? Because apparently, when we signed the new tenancy agreement on 28th Feb, the calendar month's then started to run until the 27th of every month. So, they're saying we will owe for 28th, 29th, 30th, 31st March plus 1st April.
Now this does kind of make sense, however I can't help feeling we're being penalised purely because February is a particularly short month. And also if we look at this other scenario:
If we had signed the tenancy on 1st March, the calendar month would then run to the day prior to the 1st of every month, regardless of what number that day was. This would then mean that if we wished to move in the same circumstances as we do now, we would in fact only owe 1 day (because we'd pay up to 31st March).
In both tenancy periods they run for the same length 365 days (28/02 - 27/02 and 01/03 to 28/03). So how can we possibly be charged 4 extra days rent for signing a tenancy agreement 1 day earlier?
Let's just ignore leap years here by the way... but this does not seem fair at all. It seems that just because February is a short month we're being charged unfairly.
Where do we stand?
Many thanks
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