Made a mess of being a Landlord

puddy

well i agree actually, its not a case of the landlord suddenly finding out he has broken the law and trying to remdy it, hes pooping himself because someone has pointed out to the tenants that he has broken the law and is now worrying about the money he thought he would claim for and the money he now might have to pay out.

if the tenants had never been given the information by the clued up family member, he would now be seeking monies via the courts and rubbing his hands. i dont call that justice

benoit

I quite like the way he is seeking to recover damages estimated in the thousands for kitchen cupboards that he admits he replaced with 2nd hand ones. Will the tenant be given the 2nd hand price or the trumped up version? lol

pyueck

terryw wrote: »

OP,

You have made mistakes here. Others have pointed this out. The stuff about illegal eviction is a bit over the top. If the tenants had let this go to court, your Sec 21 would be invalid as the deposit was not registered and a possession would not have been granted.
But it was up to the tenants to raise this as a defence and allow a judge to decide if they did not wish to vacate. I am sure that they knew this as they look to be very clued up.

Your priority is, if humanly possible, to get the deposit registered.

The damages for finding a new property are a simple case of the landlord breaching a contractual clause, and the tenant sueing for damages as a result of this breach.

Ulfar

Thousands for kitchen cupboard doors and hinges which you have replaced with second hand. Even if you had replaced with new it wouldn't be thousands.

Kitchen flooring is also not hat expensive.

In addition to this before making a deduction there is depreciation, fair wear and tear to consider.

I have to agree that ignorance of the law is no excuse. I would be very surprised f any of the tenancy schemes will take the deposit now as they have moved out.

Even if you manage to get it in a scheme by being economical with the truth, once the former tenants contact the scheme any lies are very likely to come out. I don't know what the penalties for lying to the DPS services are but at the least I would expect them to return the money to the formers tenants.

Just give them the money back and hope they don't take it any further.

N79

princeofpounds wrote: »

N79 is the only person to have given you the proper advice here on the deposit.

Quick history - at first courts were unwilling to award 3x penalties when compliance was late. When it was quickly realised that was far too lenient on landlords and not in line with the law then most courts started to award the penalties. None of these were at a level high enough to set precedent.

Then a few months ago one case was appealed and a first precedent has been set. It's a bit technical, but basically it states that you can only be held to the penalty if you failed to fulfil the initial conditions of the tenancy deposit schemes themselves. Only one of the schemes, the DPS, actually made on-time compliance part of their internal conditions (mostly it was assumed this was a requirement under the law, which it turned out not to be) and they only did this after many months.

So currently most landlords will get away without the penalty if they comply late. Now this is known it is quite likely the schemes will adapt their requirements at some point - as has been pointed out one already has, so you don't want to pick that one.

There is a nice explanation of all the developments on nearlylegal.co.uk if you look up the 'tenancy deposit schemes' key phrase.

Thanks for the recommendation and an excellent summary of the reasons for my post.

This was clearly not an illegal eviction as the Ts left voluntary and also there is no evidence to suggest criminal damage by Ts. Some Ts just seem unable to open doors without ripping them off. As a future hint, good referencing will weed out a large number of these Ts as they tend to have a similar attitude to other parts of their life (eg late payments).

980233

So what happened after? Did you return their deposit to avoid a higher charge on yourself?