A Company's enforcement officers for the high court is telling landlords to be on the sharp lookout for illegal sub-letting in their properties as it is on the increase.

The Sheriff's Office are issuing warnings that honest  landlords are finding out too late that rooms in their properties are being sublet. Tenants are shocked to find out that their tenancy agreements are worthless.

David Carter put the following comments onto the company's website : “We recently repossessed two adjacent properties for a landlord in Sutton, South London. He had let them out, not realising his two new tenants were actually husband and wife, because they were using different surnames.

“Once they had signed the tenancy agreements, they proceeded to sublet every room, often with a whole family in each room. The sub tenants all thought they had legitimate tenancies and were being given receipts for the rent – always payable in cash.

 

“Once the landlord found out, he obtained possession orders for both properties, which we enforced. The actual repossession started took over eight hours, partly due to the sheer number of people living there, and also due to carloads of tenants’ friends and families turning up to try to stop what was happening, legitimately they thought.

“I feel a good deal of sympathy for the sub tenants – they had done nothing wrong but had been victims of this pair of ruthless dishonest “fake landlords”, who were already wanted by the police.”

The featured Sutton case Carter says, is only the tip of the iceberg and that throughout London sub letting is becoming a major problem due to the housing problem. Bogus landlords are renting out rooms in houses and flats and even commercial properties are being rented out as habitats without proper living facilities.