A Tenant Has The Power To Report His Former Landlord, But He’s Torn Over What It Would Do To The Man’s Life
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Imagine renting an apartment from a landlord. If you found out that he didn’t actually have a license he needed in order to rent out these apartments, and if you knew it would benefit you financially to report him, would you do it even if you knew it would hurt the landlord financially?
In this story, one person is in this exact situation, and he ignored the situation for quite a while. Now that he has moved out, he’s thinking about reporting the landlord, but he’s not sure if it’s the right thing to do.
Let’s read the whole story to decide.
WIBTA if I had my landlord criminally prosecuted because of his minor awfulness, but with a significant financial benefit to me?
I rent a room in a house and haven’t been there for the past seven months because COVID.
Landlord’s now selling the place and I popped back today just to pick some stuff.
Had a chat with my flatmates and it’s transpired that the landlord has been quite difficult since I left.
He moved into the studio flat quite soon after I disappeared and has been doing stuff like denying access to the garden, helping himself to food, drilling at inconvenient times of the day, wanting the rooms perpetually left unlocked for access and so on.
OP wouldn’t have put up with it.
Had I been there, this would have been firmly dealt with on the spot (I’ve got a background in property law and so am quite comfortable with enforcing my rights) but I haven’t been and so it’s caused me precisely zero problems.
However, we have quite strict property laws in the UK and the landlord should have had an HMO license to let the property. As he doesn’t, I can report him to my local council who will prosecute and fine him and, crucially, I can then apply for the last twelve months worth of rent to be repaid to all the tenants.
All in all, he’d be looking at a fine of up to £30k, plus £40k in rent repayments.
OP feels conflicted about whether or not to report the landlord.
The ethical difficulty is that I’ve known for a long time that he should have had an HMO license and I simply didn’t care.
He meets most (although not all) of the requirements and making a thing out of it would have just cost him extra money every month for no real benefit to me.
The only reason I’m considering this is because of his awful behaviour.
But £70k is a high price to pay for awful behaviour, especially when it hasn’t even affected me.
Here are some more reasons why it might be a bad idea to report the landlord.
I also understand that he’s in a fair bit of financial difficulty, which is why he’s selling the house and so he’d probably suffer severe financial hardship if I did this.
And I’m all but moved out anyway and he’s selling the house so it’s not like an ongoing thing.
And I have no personal problems with him and he’s not a bad landlord per se – just doesn’t have a great concept of boundaries
But here are reasons why it might be a good idea to report him.
The flip side is that this is a legal requirement, one ignored by lots of shady landlords and a couple of the requirements he doesn’t meet are potentially quite serious (electrical and gas safety).
And apparently it has been quite irritating for quite a long time for my other flatmates.
And it would net me the thicker part of £10k.
So, what do you think? Would I be awful for entirely legitimately ruining his life and pocketing lots of cash?
Is it worth ruining the landlord’s life financially even though the problem is no longer ongoing?
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Let’s see what Reddit suggests.
This person would let someone else decide.
Another person thinks OP should’ve brought this up a long time ago.
Here’s another suggestion to tell all the tenants.
But this person has a question.
Reporting the landlord seems like the ethical thing to do, but I like the idea of presenting the information to the other tenants so they can decide if they want to report him. Since they were the ones who had to deal with the annoying landlord, it would probably make them feel better to be the ones to report him. If they decide not to report him, then maybe let it go. If they put up with the landlord’s nonsense and don’t want revenge, it might be best just to move on.
Some decisions should be left up to someone else.
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