Landloard asking for water charges within rent

Howlin

Hi

I am staying in student accommodation and I received a letter from my property agent, it says: As you are aware you are liable for water charges while residing at your rental property. Water charges for this period 1st September - 31st December 2015 are now due. The amount due for this period is €86.90 [there are two people at my property]. This should be equally divided between each tenant at the property.

Please include this fee with your December rent payment.


What I want to know is, can they legally ask me for this?

Clampdown

Howlin wrote: »

Hi

I am staying in student accommodation and I received a letter from my property agent, it says: As you are aware you are liable for water charges while residing at your rental property. Water charges for this period 1st September - 31st December 2015 are now due. The amount due for this period is €86.90 [there are two people at my property]. This should be equally divided between each tenant at the property.

Please include this fee with your December rent payment.


What I want to know is, can they legally ask me for this?

It may be in your lease. So check the lease first. It's a tricky one because the way it is meant to work is the tenant registers with Irish Water and pays them directly but also can claim the 100 euro conservation grant but student accomodation is a bit of an anomaly.

In any case, you are being charged more than you would be if you were benefitting from the grant. Water charges are 260.00 euro per year under the current caps but the government gives a grant of 100 euro towards this. however, the deadline for this has passed. One of the many things that made no sense with the water charge implementation is people like yourself moving out for the first time for college etc, after the June 30 deadline, how could they register?

Still, the agency should have registered the property. They probably just didn't bother as they intended to just pass the bill onto you, or they did and are still passing the bill onto you while pocketing the 100 euro grant. Or a previous tenant claimed the grant. Because I'm assuming what they are doing is breaking it down like this: 260.00 ÷12 = 21.67 per month X 4 months = 86.68 (though they have it as 86.90, not sure why).

But anyway the bills only come quarterly and are something like 64 each time, and you are meant to be able to claim 100 euro off the yearly bill. You might want to ring Irish Water yourself and find out and also ask the agency if they registered for the 100 euro conservation grant. Because that grant would have saved 33 euro and change off of a bill for 4 months (8.33 per month).

Personally, I would just send in the rent money and nothing else until you find out why you are being charged 86.90 for 4 months when if they did their job properly and registered for the grant, the total cost of water charge for the year would be 160. They aren't going to start evicting students for water bills it would be terrible press considering they never came up with a plan that made sense for students moving in in September. If the agency were planning to add it to your rent they could have collected it monthly instead of whacking you with 4 months of bills at once. With the grant included you would have only had to split 13.33 per month between you and your housemate instead of 86.90 in one go now.

Student accomodation agencies are typically terrible, and if you don't pay they will probably just deduct it from your security deposit, welcome to the world of renting, best of luck!

Be interested to know what Irish Water have to say about this.

Howlin

Hi Clampdown,

Thanks for your reply. They worked it out as 260/365*122 (122 days between 1st September and 31st December).

The best of my knowledge, they said I had to register it myself. There was another person already living in the apartment before I moved in and due to the moving in and college work I forgot to ask if he registered already or not. He said he has not registered yet, so neither of us have registered yet and we haven't received any letter from Irish water asking us to register. I will ring up and register on Monday and I am busy today and the weekend.

What I want to know is can your landlord (potentially) register the property in your name and then ask you to pay for the water charges to then before the bill is even issued and they will pay Irish Water?

I am going to look over my lease later today/ this weekend and check what it says about it.

Irish Water: Mairead

Hi Howlin,

Thanks for your query.

Howlin wrote: »

Hi

I am staying in student accommodation and I received a letter from my property agent, it says: As you are aware you are liable for water charges while residing at your rental property. Water charges for this period 1st September - 31st December 2015 are now due. The amount due for this period is €86.90 [there are two people at my property]. This should be equally divided between each tenant at the property.

Please include this fee with your December rent payment.


What I want to know is, can they legally ask me for this?

As your arrangements for payment of your water charges are with a third party , We advise that you contact your property agent with regards to this matter.

You can also find more information regarding tenants, landlords and your Irish Water bills here.

Kind regards,
Mairead

Oddworld Inhabitant

Howlin wrote: »

Hi Clampdown,

Thanks for your reply. They worked it out as 260/365*122 (122 days between 1st September and 31st December).

The best of my knowledge, they said I had to register it myself. There was another person already living in the apartment before I moved in and due to the moving in and college work I forgot to ask if he registered already or not. He said he has not registered yet, so neither of us have registered yet and we haven't received any letter from Irish water asking us to register. I will ring up and register on Monday and I am busy today and the weekend.

What I want to know is can your landlord (potentially) register the property in your name and then ask you to pay for the water charges to then before the bill is even issued and they will pay Irish Water?

I am going to look over my lease later today/ this weekend and check what it says about it.

I would also only send in payment for the rent until the situation is clarified. It does sound a bit suspect that the landlord is asking you to pay for water charges and then to register with Irish Water directly (to the best of your knowledge). Registering with Irish Water would logically mean you would receive bills directly from them.

As to whether a landlord can register you with Irish Water, I do not believe this to be the case. Based on the quote below from the Citizens Information website. The landlord can inform Irish Water of the names of people occupying a property to prove they are not liable for water charges,

Citizens Information.ie
[font=Arial, 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif, Verdana]Rental properties[/font]
[font=Arial, 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif, Verdana]The tenant of a property is the occupier and is responsible for paying the water charges. Landlords can provide the names of their tenants in order to prove that they are not the occupier, and Irish Water will then contact the tenants..[/font]
[font=Arial, 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif, Verdana]Since 1 October 2015, property owners have to provide information to Irish Water on the occupiers of the property within 20 days of the start of a tenancy and there is to be a deemed obligation, in all new tenancy agreements except for short-term lets, for the occupier or tenant to pay water charges.[/font]

Howlin

Hi Mairead

Irish Water: Mairead wrote: »

As your arrangements for payment of your water charges are with a third party , We advise that you contact your property agent with regards to this matter.

You can also find more information regarding tenants, landlords and your Irish Water bills here.

The thing is I never agreed with them that I would pay them and they pay you for the charges. I never gave them permission to register me with Irish Water as I was informed it was my responsibility to register and they were not going to register me.

Can you confirm, if a landlord can fully register tenants for Irish Water?

Clampdown

Irish Water: Mairead wrote: »

Hi Howlin,

Thanks for your query.


As your arrangements for payment of your water charges are with a third party , We advise that you contact your property agent with regards to this matter.

You can also find more information regarding tenants, landlords and your Irish Water bills here.

Kind regards,
Mairead

Why am I not surprised by this non-helpful non-answer from Irish Water? Aren't tenants supposed to be the ones to register and pay IW? Why are you advising someone to pay through a third party? The tenant has no way of claiming the conservation grant due to moving after June 30, what should tenants such as students who move into rented accomodation in September do in this case? Do they lose the right to the grant?

This is the customer service you get from IW which is part of the reason I don't engage with them. They would love for landlords to be the de facto collectors of water bills because landlords have power over their tenants who fear evictions and also have money from tenants security deposits meanwhile Irish Water themselves can do very little to make people pay.

OP what does your lease say? Fwiw, mine has something about paying water charges but I haven't registered or paid and all they can do is try to deduct it from my security deposit when I leave. Perhaps talk to other students in your accomodation block and get together and come up with a strategy and write to the rental agency about it. You should not have to pay the rental agency for water bills you have never seen. You should have the right to register and control bill payment yourself and claim the grant if you choose to pay the charges. Right now you are just being told pay up for the full charges without seeing bills. Unless you get the bills yourself for all you know the agency could have claimed the 100 grant and is going to collect the money from you for the charge and pocket that too.

If the agency has claimed the 100.00 grant then your bill should be a good bit lower. If not, you should ask them why not.