The importance of a landlord’s address when demanding rent

Landlords need to ensure they include their name and address when sending demands for rent to tenants.

Failure to do so could result in tenants refusing to pay, as happened in a recent case that ended in legal proceedings.

It involved a landlord who asked his agent to serve demands for payment of outstanding service charges. The address given on the demand was the business address of the agent.

The case went before a Leasehold Valuation Tribunal which concluded that the charges were not payable because the landlord had not given his own address, as required by the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987.

The landlord appealed but the decision was upheld by the Upper Tribunal. It held that the law required that the landlord’s own address, either business or residential, should be given. This was necessary to enable the tenant to communicate directly with the landlord.

However, the Tribunal added that it would be inappropriate for the merits and justice of the case to be thwarted by a purely technical point of law. Nor was there any evidence to suggest that the tenant had been concerned to establish the landlord’s address.

Therefore, if the landlord served a demand giving the correct address, the service charges would be payable.

Please contact Hugh Beeley if you would like more information about the issues raised in this article or any aspect of commercial property law.