Its all in the contract
Tessa Shepperson of The Landlord Law Blog writes about how leases fall under contract law.
As well as being an ‘estate in land’ (looked at in part 1) a lease or tenancy is also a type of contract. So we need to take a look at contract law.
Contract law is a very important area of law which affects all of us in our lives every day.
A contract is an agreement about something which is enforceable by law. To create a contract you need to have three things:
- An offer
- Acceptance of the offer, and
- Consideration going both ways.
A lease or tenancy is created in the same way as a contract, by one party making an offer and the other party accepting it.
Normally there is a written document but not always (more on this later). The consideration, so far as the tenant is concerned, is the rent, and so far as the landlord is concerned, is the property.
The rent does not have to be a market rent. Nor does it have to be money. For example, in the past (and when spices were a lot more valuable) a peppercorn was sometimes used for rent. A ‘peppercorn rent’ is a phrase now used to indicate a payment which is of low value but sufficient to create the tenancy / lease.
Click here to read more
