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Question Title: Garden Maintenance
| Question: 232 |
| We let a terraced house which is divided up into two flats; one on the ground floor and one on the first floor. There is a reasonably-sized garden to the rear, and a small garden in the front. Whilst the property has been let over the last couple of years, we continually have problems in getting the tenants to maintain the gardens. What do you advise ?
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| Answer: |
| This is a common problem where the accommodation has been split but the responsibility of the garden has not. There is no easy solution whilst the responsibility to maintain is joint across the dwelling due to the difficulties in ensuring co-operation between the tenants. However, one practical approach is simply to arrange in advance for a gardening contractor, the cost of which is borne by the tenants and included in the rental charge. It may be possible to bring in a gardening contractor to do remedial work and charge the cost to the tenants, but this approach often causes bad feeling and surprise when presented with an unbudgeted (and often substantial) cost. An alternative option, is to allocate the use and maintenance of garden exclusively to one of the flats (generally the ground floor flat will have greater access to the garden) This situation should then be set out as a special condition in the tenancy agreement, perhaps with one flat gaining the exclusive right to use the rear and larger garden (in this example), the other having (shared) right to use the front garden only (the exact solution adopted depends, of course, on the layout of the gardens and access).
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References:
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Pages:
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Hyperlinks:
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Letting Update Journal |
Apr 2002 page 29 |
letting-update-journal.html
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For more information, discuss on the Forum
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