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Comment by addicted | Hacker News Reader

I don’t know abounthe UK but I’m pretty sure I’ve had a lease agreement when I was a student that gave the landlord the right to enter at Will.

It could still have been illegal, but it was definitely in the lease.

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It's not quite that straightforward here in the UK. Well it is but the other way. The landlord has no right to enter a property outright. The property is for exclusive enjoyment by the tenant according to law. They can give 24 hours' notice and enter to do repairs etc but you can refuse that outright and they have no rights beyond that without taking you to court.

If they turn up unannounced this is actually harassment under UK law.

We had some rather unpleasant slum landlords between the 1950s and 1970s which caused a few laws to be introduced. Unfortunately the nature of being a landlord seems to attract certain people who find new and creative ways to be dicks. Not the majority of landlords I will say who are mostly pretty good, but enough to cause problems.

You might be interested in the not very good movie "Pacific Heights" about a psychopathic tenant, if you want to see a fictional telling of how bad it can get for a landlord.

I certainly understand how bad it can get for landlords. I'm not excusing any bad tenants here for sure. I will at least read the synopsis for that film :)

If you ever get stuck with another terrible landlord, it might even give you some ideas. :)

Hahaha that's never a good thing :)

> If they turn up unannounced this is actually harassment under UK law.

They probably have to do this repeatedly to meet the threshold for harassment.

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