Question about rent after eviction's stay of execution

[Stathis]

Hello,

I will start by saying that we are a group of three international students who share a property. It turned out our landlord did not pay his mortgage and we received an eviction notice on late April as the property was to be repossessed. The landlord of course "went missing" and did not answer to any phone calls or emails.

 

We (the tenants) applied for a stay of execution and we got one until the end of our tenancy (30th of June 2014). We already paid the 1st month following the court's decision (May) and we are left to pay the final month of our rent (June).

The mother of one of my flatmates is a Cypriot lawyer and she told us that given the circumstances we are not obliged to pay June's rent if none of us stays in the property on June, but she might not be very familiar with UK's laws. Under any other circumstances we would pay June as normal.

 

So my questions are:

 

a) Is the contract valid until the end of our tenancy, even though the flat was supposed to be repossessed on May and we delayed the process by getting a stay of execution?

b) Do we have to pay June's rent even though no one of us occupied the property on June?

[mariner51]

Yes & Yes IMO

The Lender will already have repo Order against LL and is entitled to all income from that date.

YOU 3 applied for Stay, presumably for time to finish your courses. Academic courses normally run to end of June, hence you were granted 1 month 'stay'. If you did not want 1 months you should have said this.

As we say here many times, Ts may leave at any time after service of Notice or end of fixed term, but remain liable for rent & property until T is legally ended by Bailiffs, not Court Order, but Judges are not well disposed to Ts who ignore their Order.

Lenders will comply with stay date, so you have delayed them re-selling until after end of June.

IMO your Cypriot solicitor is in error with her advice.