Advance Rent or Deposit?? Letting Agent from Hell!

whatdowedonext

Good evening everyone,

Hope you can help on this one. Since last being on we have written to the agent to say that we would not be paying the final months rent and would like the amount owing deducted from the advance rent now held by the DPS.

We nearly fell off our chairs when he came back and said yes! We got a letter on Friday confirming that they had deducted it from the original £1000 deposit held for damages and not the £1800 advance rent which has been moved to DPS. Can he chose where it comes from?

Am I under any risk from it coming from the original deposit and not the advanced rent/deposit. I hate being suspicious of everything but unfortunately this bad experience has brought on this level of paranoia!!

L & R

whatdowedonext

In Septem ber 2009 we requested our payment date for our rent to be changed from 27th of each month to 5th basically due to my husband's pay day being changed. This was accepted and the next payment we paid the extra days rent to bring it up to 5th, basically six week's worth.

The agent advised that although our payment date is 5th our tenancy renewal date was still 27th. So when we came to hand our notice in we had to use 27th as our vacating date etc.

So we have calculated our final rent to be paid from 6th to 27th however in the LA letter stating they will be deducting the rent from our held monies they have stated a full months rent?

I've written to them to say they have made a mistake and can only hope that's what they think too.

Any thoughts can they make us pay a full month? Seems like having cake and eating it comes to mind!

R & L

Ulfar

The only way you will sort this out is to move and then lodge a dispute with whichever deposit scheme the money is in.

Did you sign a new tenancy agreement or an amendment when changing the payment date, if you didn't then your notice should end on the day before the tenancy started, ie started the 5th notice should end on the 4th. I had my payment date changed when my last LL changed between LA's but I didn't sign any changes to the tenancy so my notice date stayed as per the original contract.

I am sure there are others who are landlords who will be along shortly to provide further advice.