Land Lord wants to keep most of Deposit! Help!

moromir

catswhiskers4 wrote: »

Thanks Fire Fox, that's a great idea.

With the mould, the fact the agent sent round contactors twice and they asked the landlord to do work shows that they think the landlord should have been paying for it. He wouldn't so now he thinks my sister should. I think he's at it, trying to get her to pay.

That isn't necesserily what it shows.

The other side of the coin/story is that your sister possibly had a conscientious landlord gave her the benefit of the doubt and organised for two contractors at his own cost to give independent reports on what they felt to be the cause of the problem. If they said condensation it would have been sensible for the Landlord to write to her saying so but sometimes mail goes astray?

missyp123

My sister has just moved out of a property. The landlord wants £610 for:

£62 shower rail and toilet seatget copy of inventory
£34 oven knobs can you prove wear and tear? heat from the oven etc
£145 cleaning agent should have had you present on the check out
£155 front room carpet copy of inventory
£220 bathroom decoration/mould as said could prob have been sorted with opening wndows more etc...but get proof for contractors thats its something else.

I have worked in lettings and have recentley been told my a friend who still works there that she feels the schemes are always more favouring the landlords. The whole idea of them being intorduced when i worked in lettings was to protects the tenant just as much as the landlord.
Once the deposit is in these schemes the agents find it easy to just allow the scheme to decide if there are issues. It seems your agent was still managing the property as inspections were carried out ...so i would request full copies of all insepections and maintenance visits aswell as the inventory, send this along with your letter of intention to go to small claims court.
it could be that the agent had failed to report issues that were originally raised on the inventory and therefor the LL may be non the wiser.

Fire_Fox

catswhiskers4 wrote: »

Thanks Fire Fox, that's a great idea.

With the mould, the fact the agent sent round contactors twice and they asked the landlord to do work shows that they think the landlord should have been paying for it. He wouldn't so now he thinks my sister should. I think he's at it, trying to get her to pay.

I don't follow, what work? If there is a window there is the means of ventilating the room, a humidistat extractor is a nice addition but not essential. The wrong paint (?emulsion) doesn't cause damp or mould, trapping steam in the room does. Failing to apply a specific-bathroom paint does not absolve the tenant from behaving in a tenant-like manner and ventilating the room adequately.

seraphina

I posted on one of the stickies at the top of the page (all you need to know about renting? or something like that). We were in a similar situation re: unreasonable deductions.

We got every penny of our deposit back. You need to go through the tenancy deposit protection scheme - in short, get your landlord to raise the dispute and then counter argue - if you raise the dispute you won't be able to see what the landlord is saying in response to your complaints.

If this is happening through an agency, that will probably work out in your favour as the majority of them can't be arsed to do a proper dispute - ours sent the adjudicator a list of jobs needed doing - they couldn't even supply a copy of the inventory!

Point out that you had regular house inspections and at no time were any of the issues raised.