Protesters call for rent controls as 2,682 households evicted in first quarter of 2024 in England and Wales

Bailiffs are evicting more renting households than at any time in the last six years, the Ministry of Justice has said, as protesters chanted for rent controls outside the HQ of Britain’s biggest listed private landlord.

More than 100 members of the London Renters Union (LRU) set off red and blue smoke canisters as they descended on the glass and steel office of the property firm Grainger, which rents out more than 10,000 homes in the UK bringing in a 28% pretax profit margin on nearly £100m a year in rent.

For so many millions, the home-owning dream has died. Labour must protect them, and reconstruct a dysfunctional housing market

• Stephen Cowan chaired the independent private rented sector commission
  

Sarah faces daily torment. An impending rent rise means she can no longer afford to live in the home she shares with her two children. She has to downsize. That means potentially having to split up her boys. Her youngest is doing his A-levels. Her oldest, just turned 18, is struggling with mental health issues. It is an unenviable problem.

“Will I have to say that one son lives elsewhere and one lives with me,” asks Sarah (not her real name). “At best I can try to protect them and say it’s all going to be OK. But I have to say it to myself as well. But we’ve got no stability and could be thrown out in two months’ time.”

Stephen Cowan chaired the independent private rented sector commission and is leader of Hammersmith and Fulham council

When you buy something, you expect to have complete ownership over that object. If you buy a book at a bookstore, you can read it, tear the pages out and make paper airplanes with it, or use it to balance a wobbly table—and no one can stop you. If you buy a house with some property around it you expect to be able to do what you like with the walls of your home (within legal boundaries, of course)—but if your home is attached to someone else’s house (a condo or rowhouse situation), things can get a little complicated because some of the walls you just bought might be party walls.

A “party wall” isn’t a festive barrier designed for fun, but rather a wall that’s owned by two parties—you and your neighbor. As with any property owned by more than one person, things can get weird fast if you have a disagreement about how to use that property. That’s why you should consider negotiating a Party Wall Agreement (PWA) with your neighbor.

What's a Party Wall Agreement?

A Party Wall Agreement is pretty much what it sounds like: It defines how your shared wall can be used and the shared responsibilities of the mutual owners. Why do you need one? A PWA can cover a wide range of potential scenarios between you and your neighbor:

• Access to the other side of the wall (known as an easement) for necessary repairs and maintenance to the wall or other areas of your property that can only be accessed via the wall

• Allowed use of the wall (in case your neighbor wants to use your bedroom wall as a handball court)

• Defining required maintenance each owner must perform

• Defining what happens if one owner damages the party wall in some way

• How renovations that might remove, move, or otherwise transform the shared wall will be handled or negotiated

• Defining what happens if one owner fails to observe the agreement—for example, a PWA can limit monetary damages, or require arbitration instead of litigation

Once you think about it, the need for a formal agreement becomes obvious. And working one out before there are any conflicts or disagreements is a very good idea. Another benefit to having a formal agreement covering the party wall is that these agreements are filed with your local county clerk or other land-use office, so potential buyers can be reassured that there will be no nasty surprises if they buy your home (generally, these agreements remain in effect with future owners until both parties adjust or dissolve the agreement).

If you live in a home governed by a homeowners association (HOA) or other entity, it’s likely that Party Wall Agreements are baked into the HOA rules, so it’s worth investigating before deciding to try and work out your own.

Creating the agreement

If you have a shared wall, it’s a pretty simple process to create a PWA:

1. Discuss. Talk to your neighbor and work out the broad outlines of what the agreement should say. You can’t unilaterally impose a Party Wall Agreement, so you’re going to need your neighbor’s participation.

2. Create the agreement. It’s best to engage a real estate attorney with knowledge of your local laws to create the agreement, but you can find free agreements you can modify and download online. If you use a downloaded form, however, it’s still a good idea to have a lawyer review it.

3. File it. Once you and your neighbor have agreed on the terms and signed the agreement, it needs to be filed with the proper office. This will vary from municipality to municipality, but most often this will be done at the county clerk’s office, where it will be associated with the deed for the two properties.

Owning a home can be quite a learning experience. All kinds of things you never had to know about during your carefree days of paying rent suddenly become crucial knowledge, like what a roof system is, or how to identify lead pipes. Another fun term you might have to learn, especially if you have nightmarish neighbors? Something called “external obsolescence.”

External obsolescence is when the value of your property is negatively impacted by someone else’s property—like a dramatically overgrown or junky yard, or obvious damage to the roof or exterior of the home. As irritating as a slowly collapsing house is visually, it can also lower your home’s value by 5 to 10%, which can be a huge amount of money.

Worse, if your neighbor is ignoring any aspect of their home’s upkeep, it could even damage your property—a tree that should have been trimmed or removed falling on your roof, for example. You could easily lose sleep over the potential impact of a neighbor’s neglected home, but there’s one obvious problem: It’s not your property, so what can you do about it?

Gather info

Your first step in any dispute with your neighbors is to talk to your neighbors. It’s easy to imagine that someone who’s letting their house fall apart around them is doing it out of some weird malice towards you specifically—or perhaps the human race more generally—but you don’t actually know why your neighbor has decided to allow an advanced civilization of mosquitoes to breed in their green, sludgy, neglected pool, or why they’re not worried that their obviously dilapidated chimney is about to crash down on your roof. So your first step is to check in and politely ask. It’s possible that your neighbor is suffering health or financial difficulties that prevent them from doing the required maintenance, or perhaps weren’t aware of its impact on you.

If your neighbor isn’t forthcoming, or you conclude that they are unwilling to improve the situation for some reason, your next step is to research your local laws. If your neighborhood has a Homeowners Association (HOA) or other governing organization, check the bylaws to see if your neighbor is in violation. If there’s no HOA, check local laws to see if your neighbor is breaking any—for example, some areas may require a perimeter fence, so a neighbor who has allowed their fence to collapse into a rotting mess would be in violation of the law.

Finally, document any deferred maintenance that threatens your property—take photos and make notes. Hopefully, you won’t need this material, but if you wind up having to sue or make a formal complaint it will be invaluable.

Offer to help

If your neighbor is unable to make repairs or maintain their property due to physical, financial, or other limitations, you could offer to assist. You could try to rally everyone else in the neighborhood to tackle some repairs or landscaping, for example, or you could work out an arrangement with your neighbor wherein they let you perform or pay for some repairs—which might be worth it to you if it keeps your property values higher, or prevents damage to your home.

You should make any offers of assistance in writing, keep all correspondence between you and your neighbor, and make notes of any in-person discussions, however—if you wind up having to make a formal complaint or file a lawsuit, these records will be vital.

Contact authorities

If you can’t resolve the situation by being helpful or via social pressure, use the information you gathered. Start by informing your neighbor (in writing) that if they don’t resolve the problems promptly, you’ll be making a complaint to the HOA or the city—give them a clear deadline, and then follow through. An HOA will fine them, and may even have the maintenance done and then assess the costs from your neighbor. Local governments can also force your neighbor to make repairs under certain circumstances and your neighbor could be fined if they don’t comply.

Again: Know your neighbor’s deal before you potentially ruin their lives by raining down official complaints.

Legal action

If all else fails, you may have to sue your neighbor. If you’ve suffered actual damage to your property as a result of your neighbor’s lack of maintenance you can sue them in small claims court to recover the cost of the repairs.

Keep in mind that to be successful in your suit you will probably need to demonstrate that you attempted to resolve the situation amicably. That’s where all your record-keeping of your attempts to discuss the problem with your neighbor will come into play.

If you haven’t suffered actual damage to your property, you can still sue your neighbor under nuisance laws. There are two kinds of legal nuisance: Private nuisance prevents you from enjoying your property—a neighbor who throws loud parties every night and prevents you from sleeping, for example—and public nuisance, in which a group of people are affected (e.g., you and your other neighbors). You probably won’t get damages for winning a nuisance case—rather, a court might issue an injunction ordering your neighbor to resolve the problem. But to win a nuisance case you need more than just an eyesore of a house or difficult-to-prove claims of lower property values. You will usually have to demonstrate a threat to your safety or health—a dead tree that could potentially smash into your house if it falls during a storm, for example, or the aforementioned mosquito farm.

We would like to hear from home owners who purchased their property with one or more friends in the UK

While house prices have steadied in the first part of 2024, home ownership remains out of reach for many as the average cost of renting continues to increase. This has prompted some to find different ways to get onto the housing ladder.

We would like to hear from home owners who bought their house with one or more friends. Why did you choose to pool your resources? What are the pros and cons of sharing your property with someone who is not a significant other? Tell us all about it below.

There are a lot of reasons people take on roommates, but one of the most common is simple economics: Rent keeps rising, half of all tenants in the U.S. are paying more rent than they can actually afford, and they can defray those costs significantly by splitting the rent and other bills with someone else.

All of those benefits are predicated on one assumption, however: That your roommate will keep up their end of the bargain and, you know, actually pay their share of everything. When considering a roommate, you have to consider how it will impact you both personally and financially—and be prepared for the possibility that your roommate turns deadbeat and stops paying their rent or share of the bills. Whether it’s due to their own personal financial hardship or because you accidentally let a sociopath into your home, a deadbeat roommate can be a disaster. If your roommate stops paying their share, here’s what you can do about it.

Gather data showing they aren't paying rent

Your first step when dealing with this situation is to get the facts. If your roommate is on the lease as a cotenant, has a separate rental agreement, or if you at least have a roommate agreement of some sort in writing, review the document to see what their financial responsibilities are and what consequences, if any, are spelled out.

Next, establish evidence. Gather records of missed payments and your attempts to collect the overdue rent. If you haven’t sent your roommate any requests for overdue payments, start doing so in a way that leaves a trail—emails or written requests.

Keep paying the rent. If your roommate is a cotenant or otherwise officially on the lease you might assume they are responsible for their share of the rent, but most lease and rental agreements specify that all tenants are “jointly and severally” liable, which means the landlord can seek the full rent amount from any tenant. If you only pay your share of the rent, you can get into serious financial difficulties if the landlord goes after you for the balance.

If you don’t have any sort of written agreement (if your roommate isn’t officially listed anywhere on the lease), you can’t just kick them out. You can ask them to leave, sure, but most states grant homestead rights to anyone who has occupied a home for a period of time, meaning they often have a specific grace period before you can legally make them leave. Check the laws in your state so you know how you have to proceed.

Try a (mediated) negotiation with your roommate

Once you know where you stand in terms of a written agreement, your next step is to open a dialogue. Note the financial burden they’re putting on you, and see if you can’t come up with a way for them to contribute at least some of what they owe. Calling in a professional mediator can keep things civil and offer a neutral way to discuss your issues; many cities offer mediation services for landlords and tenants to resolve conflicts—for example, in New York, the New York Peace Institute offers mediation services. If your city doesn’t, you can contact the American Arbitration Association for mediator referrals in your area. You can also try to negotiate a portion of the back rent—sometimes half of what you’re owed is better than zero.

If talks go nowhere, you can warn your roommate that your next step is legal action. At this point you could decide to cut your losses and try to negotiate a timeline for them to leave the apartment, using the possibility of a lawsuit as motivation. You might never get your money back this way, but at least you can stem the bleeding and remove this source of stress from your life.

If necessary, exercise your legal options

If all else fails, you might need to sue your roommate to try and collect the money. This isn’t actually all that difficult, but you will need to prepare:

• Agreements. Have copies of all written agreements with your roommate—a lease, sublease, or roommate contract are best, but any sort of written agreement that spells out their financial responsibilities should be acquired. If your roommate is on a separate sublease or rental agreement, ask your landlord for a copy.

• Demand letter. Next, send your roommate a letter detailing what they owe, called a demand letter. This should lay out in detail all the payments they’ve missed and your attempts to collect, including dates when you asked for the rent or other bills to be paid. It should also include a formal request for the money by a certain date. Send the letter registered mail or through any service that provides proof of delivery.

• Sue. You can usually bring a suit like this in small claims court, which means you won’t necessarily need a lawyer. As long as you can prove that a) you had an agreement with the roommate wherein they paid rent and/or a share of the bills, b) they broke the agreement by not paying, and c) you suffered a financial loss as a result (because you had to pay all the rent), you have a very good chance of winning. This is where all the data you gathered comes in handy: If you can show a written agreement, prove that your roommate didn’t pay as agreed and that you tried to collect, prove that you gave them notice, and show that you paid the rent on their behalf, you’ll have a solid case.

Eviction is tough, but possible

If you go through all of these steps and your roommate still won’t pay—or move out—you can consider trying to evict them. This can be a much more difficult process, and you’ll likely need to hire a lawyer to navigate your state’s laws around tenancy and homestead rights. It’s not a fast process (it can take up to a year), so going this route can cost you a lot of money while your roommate remains in your home, still not paying rent.

If you have a good relationship with your landlord and the roommate is on the lease, you can enlist their help in an eviction process. Keep in mind that if you’ve violated your lease by having an off-book roommate, you might find yourself being evicted right alongside them, so proceed with caution.

And, no, you can’t engage in what’s known as a “self-help eviction,” doing things like changing the locks, throwing their stuff into the street, or making their room unlivable in some way. Even if their tenancy is off the books, these tactics are illegal and will just put you in a worse position.

In the end, if your roommate turns deadbeat, your best bet is to negotiate with them, then try to recover your money through small claims court. Whatever you decide to do, be patient, keep records, and think about how you’ll avoid this situation next time.