Can you request to change the Main Tenant?

[aquaflirt]

Your answers will be very much appreciated.

My flatmates and I are in a difficult situation. Is is possible for us to request from the agent/owner to change the main tenant in our flat? We have several issues with our main tenant:

1. The past months we have been suffering from his irresponsible actions. There has been several times that our services (utilities, cable, internet) were disconnected because of non-payment even though we have been sending him our part of the payment. (Our bills are equally divided)

2. Appliances at home need repairs but has not been repaired for months.

3. Our split on the rent is not equal too. The main tenant's rent on the master's bedroom is a lot lower than the rest of us who are in the common rooms. When we asked him abt this he said that he has the right to decide how much he will ask us to pay since he is the main tenant. Although I know that we cannot do anything about this issue, it is just very unfair.

4. We live in a 4-br flat. When we moved in, he was very clear that the owner has a strict rule on only letting 5 people live in the house. When one of our flatmates went abroad, a room became vacant. He got a new tenant to rent the vacant room. Problem is, the new tenant is a family of 4 (husband+wife+kid+nanny). Now, there's 8 of us in the 4br/2bath flat. We tried to ask the agent but we were advised that the owner was informed of the new tenants but has not yet confirmed if they will be allowed to rent the room. Our main tenant decided on his own volition, without asking us nor the owner who the new renters would be.

We were under the impression that we were co-tenanting the house but we were advised by the agent that he is the main tenant since he is the only one who signed in the contract. We are just listed in the contract as "tenants". We all paid our share of the agent's fee aside from the deposits. We have a 2-yr lease in the flat and we have about 10 more months left. We cannot live with a main tenant who is irresponsible. Everyone in the house (except for the main tenant) agreed that I will handle the bills just to avoid having it disconnected. We tried talking to our main tenant but when we questioned him about the issues we ended up being kicked out.

It's either we suck it up or we leave.

Is there anything here that we can do? Is it possible to have him kicked out of the flat or at least be removed as the main tenant? I don't want to live with the thought that I kicked someone out... Any good suggestion??? TIA.

[ksl]

It's either we suck it up or we leave.

That's about it, apart from checking if it's HDB and if they have permission to sublet from HDB. There is a limit to 3 people per room if i'm not wrong in HDB. condo's I have know idea!

It's only fair the main tenant has the say on rents, as rooms may be empty for longer periods in which he must cover the rent, so no need to gripe about that, get used to it, you can do the same, you have choice!

[ev-disinfection]

Hmmmmm..... the main tenant is an As...le!
If i have the blessing of the other sub tenants, i will get all not to pay their share for the utilities, and tell the main tenant that you want to be in charge of paying the bills or try to break the lease (Tell agent to inform owner), find another place and be the main man (a fair main man)

Pray tell us, where is the main tenant from? is he local?

[aquaflirt]

The hell is over!

We moved out! We couldnt swallow the thought of our ex-main tenant's crookedness so we searched for a new place and luckily we found a bigger and better (and relatively cheap) place.

@ksi
yeah, hdb allows 3 renters/room but the property owner still has the final say on that as long as it doesnt exceed the HDB's number. In our case, the owner only allowed 5 people even if we can go up to 9 renters (I guess more bec it was a 3+1+1 converted room) per hdb rules and the owner was very strict on this number. Anyway, we did not want to suck it up, and accdg to him he cant stand living with us too so we just packed our things and left. We did not deserve that kind of treatment. We just got lucky that we were able to find a place that we can immediately move in to.

@ ev-disinfection
No he's not local, but a PR. I did handle the bills just to avoid our services from being disconnected and the whole time that I was handling the bills, he (main tenant) was not paying his share. We cannot break the lease (if we inititiate it) bec we are just "attached tenants" and we did not sign the contract ourselves. He really had the upper hand, oh well, too bad for us.

Anyway, as I said, hell is over. We packed up and left. We had some really good friends who became mediators - making sure that the situation will not worsen and that things are settled. The only funny thing is that he was so confident to kick us out of the house but he didnt have enough money to give back our deposits. we moved out 3 weeks ago but we have to wait until today to get our deposits back. Let's wait and see if he will keep his word.

Hopefully my experience will help renters to be wiser when they are put in situations when their main tenants/landlords are abusing them. Don't just sit inside your rooms and suck up, talk to them (in a proper way of course) and try to fix the issue. To the main tenants/landlords, be honest with your renters/tenants/whatever you call them and you will have a smooth 1-2 years of tenancy together.