Changing it now need create no hassle for the landlord if they just accept informally that it will be paid on the last day of the month rather than the 29th. Nothing else needs to change.
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I really cannot understand why you would sign a contract to pay your rent on 29th of the month and then say you cannot pay until the 30th or 31st.
Try going to Tesco and saying sorry canât pay today as I donât get paid until the end of the month and see if they let you have the goods.
Your landlady is not charging you a fee she is charging you for the day or days you havenât paid. In future your rent will remain at the agreed rent for the month.
Next time please read your contract and discuss this issue beforehand. The best solution would be for you to pay 2 extra days and then change your contract to pay on the 1st of the month.
You need to have a conversation with your landlady to explain this misunderstanding.
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This statement is not correct. Free days are the days that are never paid. The situation here is clearly recognised by the law as a late payment.
Iâm not saying a late payment is a good thing though.
Wow- some of the responses here are really quite harsh. Iâve just had one of my tenants ask me if rent can be a couple of days late. I was completely fine with that as itâs a good tenant and I know that he normally pays on time. Paying a day late this month doesnât mean it will ALWAYS be late. In the past, we did come to an agreement to permanently change the date by paying for the gap as a one off payment. If itâs just a one off there is no need to do anything as itâs purely timing. If itâs going to always be late then I suggest making a one off payment to mutually agree on a date change going forward.
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I had a tenant just now phone me up and ask did I mind if she paid 2 days earlier this month ! How about that.
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Some advice here is simply wrong Let me try to help clarify the law on late payments .
- Tenancy agreements specify a payment date. Mostly this is latest date landlords expect to recieve payments in their account. You should normally pay a couple of days before this (especially before a weekend or bank holiday) Payments RECEIVED after this date are LATE payments. It is no defence in law to say you paid in on this date. It is your responsibility to allow for whatever you bank says is the processing time .
- a landlord cannot evict you or charge interest for a single late payment - but persistent late payments (eg if you consistently fail to meet the payment date ) IS grounds for eviction.
- A landlord cannot charge you interest for the first 14 days of a debt but after the 14 days if you have not repaid it are over they can legally charge you interest backdated to the original due date date at 3% above the Bank of England base rate which is at present 5.25% so they can charge you interest at 8.25% on any late rent. .
This means if is in the tenants interest to get the payment date adjusted on your contract as otherwise you will be accruing compound interest backdated to the first late payment meaning you have gradually growing arrears. To do this the landlord or landlady will need you to pay for the unpaid days, between due date . If you monthly rent is around ÂŁ1260.this would be around ÂŁ42 per day. It also likely means your landlord is prepared to adjust the agreement to a later payment day without charging you for making the adjustment which they are also entitled to do if you request a change of payment day.
Pay the ÂŁ42 and grab the opportunity!
Your Landlord pretty definitley wonât give you rent free days by accepting habitualy late payment !
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Agree - just talk to your landlady and say you will be a good long term tenant and can she please accommodate you for a day? You realise now you should have made this clear at onset in the agreementâŚhowever ÂŁ42 pound charge seems excessive can she please explain where/how this amount is calculated?
I think you are misunderstanding how Openrent works. If you and a landlord agree to a tenancy after viewing, a holding deposit equal to one weeks rent is due immediately to secure the property. This then gets offset against the first months rent. You should never pay anything before a viewing or agreeing a tenancy with the landlord.
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Thatâs good. Just one of my tenant has most of the time paid a few days since moved last year.
I wish I hope all tenants do that or just pay in time.
ÂŁ42 makes no sense at all on a day late payment of ÂŁ1250. Assuming the LL keeps her saving in the best paying instant access back account with gross interest at 5.2%, this amounts to at most 18p of lost interest for the delay in payment. As other posts have said, no interest can be charged until the rent is more than 14 days delayed and then at a maximum prescribed rate. This LL needs to go back to school for some basic maths.
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TL;DR Do NOT pay your landlord ÂŁ42 for a single day of being in arrears.
- The law states, under the Tenants Fees Act 2019, that a landlord cannot charge a late fee unless the rent has been outstanding for 14 days or more.
- The late fee will be chargeable as interest from the day the rent fell due until payment.
- The late fee can be no more than 3% above the BoE base rate (which is currently 5.25%) for each day the payment has been outstanding
- In your scenario, monthly rent is ÂŁ1250, due on the 29th, and you will be paying on the 30th.
- As the rent is only one day late, it has not exceeded the 14 day threshold and you cannot be charged a late fee.
- Letâs say you are 14 days late, what would the chargeable late fee be?
- daily interest = arrears x (base rate + 3%) / 365
- ÂŁ1250 x (5.25% + 3%) / 365 days = 1250 x 0.0825 / 365 = 0.28
- Daily interest is 28p, at 14 days late youâd be charged 14 x 0.28 = ÂŁ3.92
- Your landlord is incorrectly trying to charge you one days rent calculated as 1250 x 12 / 365 = 41.0958 rounded up to ÂŁ42. You have no obligation to pay this charge in advance before your rent is due in full on the 29th of each month.
- Explain this to your misinformed landlord as to why the charge is unlawful and you wonât be paying it.
- Kindly ask to change your due date to a date where you can pay on time. This is to prevent being in arrears often, which can become grounds for eviction.
- If you already paid the âÂŁ42 for the extra dayâ, make sure you are both clear in writing that this payment is not classified as a late fee and counts as credit towards the follow-up rent payment, and that you are under no obligation to make advance payments in the future.
I think youve misunderstood what this charge represents.
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These bullet points cover the interpretation of an extra dayâs rent as opposed to a late charge
- Your landlord is incorrectly trying to charge you one days rent calculated as 1250 x 12 / 365 = 41.0958 rounded up to ÂŁ42. You have no obligation to pay this charge in advance before your rent is due in full on the 29th of each month.
- If you already paid the âÂŁ42 for the extra dayâ, make sure you are both clear in writing that this payment is not classified as a late fee and counts as credit towards the follow-up rent payment, and that you are under no obligation to make advance payments in the future.
My post covers a lot of ground on late fees (even though I donât think thatâs necessarily what is being charged, though I see in hindsight the ambiguity) in the unlikely case it ends up being argued as a late charge if they were to further discuss and because there was misinformation on late charges in the thread. From the landlordâs perspective, I agree with you that they should simply accept rent a dayâs late as the least hassle option. In addition to that, I think the landlord should only bother chasing additional unpaid rent for an extra day at the end of the tenancy if itâs not resolved by then, as this issue will probably have worked itself out by then.
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