please empty your brain below

How strange that so many of these people need to start their message by saying what their name is. I keep thinking of contestants on the old Blind Date show: Hello Cilla, I'm Lianne and I'm from Goole... Maybe the correspondents rightly suspect that the recipients aren't going to be reading as far as their signature/sign-off.
Good luck on your revised rent demand DG, lets hope your landlord realises that a good trustworthy tenant is worth far more than getting more money just because everyone else has put their rents up.
i'd offer £70 per month more rent. a landlord will always want a regular reliable tenant rather than people that move on every year. if the flat is empty for just one month it will cost him about £700
Do you have an address for your landlord? If so I would write directly to him or her and let them know about the email. My experience is that letting agents very often decide to increase rent without consulting the landlord;one example-my neighbours downstairs had this happen to them last year. Their landlord, who I know personally, was not at all pleased.

Market rent is your area may be going up-it's going up most places in London, but raising rent for that reason is pure greed. Your landlord's outgoings for that flat must be going down, not up, so the push for the increase is most likely the agent.
I have to say that one of the main selling points on moving to East Village (aka Olympic Athletes Village) is that the rent is fixed at inflation for three years, topped with no redecoration fees if you stay for three years or more.
Quite agree with HoosierSands - bleedin cheek and outrageous greed on behalf of the git wot thinks it's ok to waltz into your place, cost it above what you're currently paying and go behind everyone's back to raise his commission. I presume, then, the aforementioned git would offer your landlord a new tenant prepared to pay the new rate and perhaps then boot you out. Lovely.
I particularly enjoyed your earthquake email, because I had one of those, and a follow up when I ignored it.

Indeed it seems to be quite prevalent that people write to you asking for links to be updated because either something has changed, or more likely, they're being penalised by Google for something (e.g. comment spam on blogs).

I tend towards doing nothing as well.
I preferred when it ended with an in-bread cat.

You should really own DG towers after so many years!
ONe of the 'joys' of writing such a popular blog, I suspect, is that other people will want to use it for their own publicity. Darn them, let them write an excellent blog of their own, for years, and build up their own following!

Hope the rent thing gets sorted to your satisfaction DG.
I guess you could say you showed the <Two People> <two fingers>.

Apart from the bizarre earthquakes/fish oil connection, it seems your spam is becoming a bit tamer. I kind of miss the desperate, self-deprecating Heather.
Possibly harsh to call the landlord greedy when we have no idea of his financial position.
Messiah, neither "B" nor I are calling the *landlord* greedy.
He owns at least one spare property to be rented out a huge cost to others. I think we can infer his financial position quite clearly.
I hate to generalise, but all landlords are greedy.
One landlord I had expected me to grateful that he put my rent up by half the rate of inflation, twice a year....
Maybe are doing a double bluff? Ask you to remove a link, knowing you will blog about it, thus giving them free publicity :-)
I'm sorry to hear about your rent increase DG.

I find it very strange the manner of which you were informed about this, worded in such a way that you are discouraged from negotiating a more reasonable figure.

I agree with HoosierSands, if you are able to, contact the landlord directly to discuss this. The others are correct - a reliable, trustworthy tenant is much more valuable than a rent increase (at a time when the expenses should be reducing anyway).

I do hope you are able to negotiate on the rent DG. Please let us know how it goes.
Actually Chris, my landlord isn't greedy, just happy to get a reasonable return and enough to decently maintain the house that's been in his family for generations - and neither is my son's, who owns a whole street of commercial property but would rather (in her words) have happy tenants. Neither of them are in London, mind...
Simon. If he sold the flat then what would happen to the rent?
If the Landlord wants to get more Money and you have been living there for so long I would suggest to cut out the Agent. The Fees he paid them over the years must be quite a sum as well and my experience is that they are useless. Especially as you are probably a "low maintenace tenant".
It turns out, if you wait a week without responding to <Well Known High Street Sex Shop>'s link removal email, they write back and offer you $10.
This business with your landlord wanting to put the rent up and his agent's curious visit a bit back all seem a bit odd and he could be in danger of not following the proper processes. Presumably your present tenancy is coming to an end, as rent rises can only take place at a renewal. Presumably your landlord has formally asked you if you want to renew at the end of your present tenancy, which isn't mentioned in your rent rise email. If you don't agree to the rent rise and your landlord wants you to leave he must give you two months' notice in a specific manner, and even then you can stay on while he takes the issue through the courts. This can take many weeks and isn't something a sensible landlord wants to get involved with.

It's a fact that rents for new tenancies in London have gone up nearly 9% over the past year, but they are levelling off now there's more government help for home buyers. Also there are a lot of fancy new flats being built in Bow at the moment so your man's agent is probably being optimistic about what he can get for what for some reason I assume is an older property - unless you haven't had a rent rise for some years.

As has been said elsewhere, a long standing reliable tenant is well worth keeping even at a lower than market rent. Your landlord must know that if he has a three week gap before he gets a new tenant, he's lost about £100 a month for the rest of the year, plus several hundred more to upgrade the property for new tenants. With our tenants on about £1400 a month we usually settle for a rise of £50 at renewal, which is just under 4%, while your guy is asking for nearer 15%!










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