Agent refusing to refund depost - help!

MrsRidgeback

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

When did the original tenancy agreement commence?

It was a 6 monthly contract, commencing June 2008. The tenants left in October 2009.

tbs624

MrsRidgeback wrote: »

I am the landlord of a property which was let through a Letting Agency. I subsequently managed the property myself and the agents had no further involvement.

The tenants paid the agent a deposit of £560 before they moved into the property. Their contract was for six months. At the end of the six months, the agent contacted the tenants and asked for £75 to renew the contract.
They refused to pay this to the agent so I made a contract between myself and the tenants at no extra charge.

The tenants have now left the property and I am unable to contact them as their visas were not renewed and they have left the country.

I have requested the agent that the deposit be paid to me so that I can replace damaged items in the house and have the garden and outside area cleaned.

The agent originally wanted to retain £50 from the deposit for checking the house after the tenants left (he did not check it before they moved in), and £75 for renewing their contract (they refused to renew it through him because of the charge)

Because I have questioned these charges, the agent is now refusing to refund any of the deposit to me.

He says he did not need to lodge the deposit with one of the government agencies as he has indemnity insurance.

What can I do?

Assume property is in Eng/Wales.

The *LL* is ultimately responsible for the scheme-registration of a tenancy deposit. If you didn't check that your LA had done this then you are fortunate that your Ts have not yet pursued the matter with you, as you'd be looking at returning the full deposit to them, plus court costs, plus a penalty payment of 3x the original deposit.

Check whether the deposit *was* registered here

A large number of LAs are untrained, unregulated, unqualified and it sounds as though you have found a particularly bad one.
You say that the LA did not check the house before the Ts moved in - unless you have a record of how the property was at the start of the T you can't simply claim for deductions as you think fit.

The fact that the Ts visa expired does not mean that they have abandoned their tenancy deposits and that you or the LA can simply lay claim to the money.

Join a LL national LL association/local affiliate or sign up to Landlordlaw - tax deductible membership fee and reduction on LL insurances.

clutton_2

in that case the agent should have put the deposit monies into a Depost protection scheme

if he has not =- then your only course of action is to sue the agent

EagerLearner

MrsRidgeback sorry for your problems - I'd say you could start with ARLA, if your agent is registered with them? They are a bit toothless but may be able to at least wrap them on the knuckles if they are an ARLA agent.
It is illegal to not place the deposit in one of the schemes, so as others have said you will need to recover the monies from the agent, though it gets complicated if there was no check in and on top of that the tenants are not here to confirm or deny damages.
For the £80 or so it costs to log the court process, why not first try writing a letter (via Recorded Delivery) to the letting agent stating that you will be taking them to court as they did not follow the law regarding the deposit protection, and that as you were paying for their expertise and management, they whould have done this for you. Something along those lines anway.
It would work to quote some of the legal jargon relating to it all, serves to scare them a bit and show you know what you are talking about. Google, MSE and Dawn Advice may be able to help you further. On here most posts re the DPS relate to tenants though I must say. Hopefully with new tenants you will register everything fully and not have these sorts of issues again. Good luck.

chappers

As the agent acted on a let only basis they should have either lodged the deposit on behalf of the LL or handed it over to him to lodge himself. They should have deducted their fees from the deposit and first months rent, before handing it over.
This letting agent sounds like a right cowboy, the law is straight forward it says the deposit must be protected, nowhere does it give the option of taking out "indemnity insurance".
Write aletter before action, stating that unless he hands over the deposit you will be taking him to court.

MrsRidgeback

Well, what can I say! I never expected so many very helpful replies to my question this morning - thank you all so much!

I wanted to get more information before I approached the agent again. I didn't know anything about 'indemnity insurance' so I needed to be clear about this. I will write him a letter as suggested.

Thanks once again.

BitterAndTwisted

If I were the OP I'd accept the agent's deduction of fees and costs and be grateful that I'm getting anything back from them and cross my fingers that the tenants won't be able to come back to this country and start threatening legal action about the deposit not having been protected.

It could be worse: the deposit could have been protected, the tenants never log onto the sites to confirm their agreement to any deductions because they're out of the country and/or not aware of it and the money would be sitting in dispute in the deposit scheme till Doomsday. LL in those circs would have got nothing against repairs at all. Or maybe I'm missing something really obvious here.

tbs624

chappers wrote: »

As the agent acted on a let only basis they should have either lodged the deposit on behalf of the LL or handed it over to him to lodge himself. They should have deducted their fees from the deposit and first months rent, before handing it over...

As the LL is responsible for the registration of the deposit she should have checked - the moral of the tale is don't let property out if you aren't prepared to read up on your legal obligations. The LA may well have been able to deduct his fees from the first month's rent, but he certainly should not have deducted it from any tenancy deposit which should have been either registered on the LL's behalf or handed over in its entirety for the LL to sort out..

Pretty lax as a LL to let to overseas students and not have a home country address/next of kin address/sight of or photocopy of passport

BitterAndTwisted wrote: »

It could be worse: the deposit could have been protected, the tenants never log onto the sites to confirm their agreement to any deductions because they're out of the country and/or not aware of it and the money would be sitting in dispute in the deposit scheme till Doomsday. LL in those circs would have got nothing against repairs at all. Or maybe I'm missing something really obvious here.

There is a Single Claims Process which may be used by either T or LL when the other party is not contactable/failing to respond. Claimant needs to send in statutory declaration with details of claim.

The fact is though that the LL has failed to comply with the law on tenancy deposits so is hardly in a position to complain about the wrongdoings of either the dodgy sounding LA or the disappearing tenants. RLA, NLA, LandlordLaw - join, read, learn.