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Landlord threatening to sue for damage, deposit not registered..
G'Meister
Posts: 874 Forumite
Hi
It's been a few weeks now since I moved out of a joint tenancy house rented to 5 tenants by a private landlord, the contract was for 6 months, and then another 6 months.
Upon moving in we paid a deposit of £1950; one month's rent, and we have it in writing from the landlord that we paid a deposit at this time.
I have enquired with the three companies authorized by the government to have deposits registered with them, each of them on two occasions, and checked thoroughly with them each time as to whether the deposit we paid was registered with them, and on each occasion it has been confirmed that our deposit was never registered with them. I'm also confident that we never received a letter from any of these three companies at the beginning of the contract (or any other time) to confirm that the deposit was being held with them - I understand that ordinarily this correspondence would be issued with a reference number etc.
After conversations with each of these three companies, I understand that to not register a deposit is illegal, as of July 2007 (or June, I forget; in any case we moved in around October 2009) and that as a result the landlord is liable to pay as an amount equal to 3 times the deposit paid, which would mean we can go after them for a sum total of £5,850.
To further complicate matters, or perhaps it is a separate issue entirely, they are now claiming that we owe them around £1,000, as the deductions they are claiming total around £3,000.
How should I proceed? I have sought confirmation from the landlord as to who the deposit is being held with, but have received no response.
My father was going to assist me in this matter, but unfortunately he is now on holiday and will not return til the 18th of December.
Thank you for any guidance you can give - I have not yet informed the landlord that we intend to go at them for £5,850, thinking it is best to try and reduce the deductions payable first (I believe if I go after them for this money first, they'll put more effort into keeping the deductions as close to that £3,000 figure as possible, and a judge/magistrate (or whatever the title of a person who overlooks proceedings in a small claims court) will perhaps look upon them with more favour in the knowledge we have already taken them to court for the 3x deposit figure.
EDIT: Incidentally, the house was in England (I've just read the rules are different for Scotland etc).
EDIT 2: I've just read that the 3x penalty doesn't stand up in court because it was badly written (At 0945 this morning, 11 November 2010, the Court of Appeal handed down its judgement in the two conjoined cases of Universal Estates v Tiensia and Honeysuckle Properties v Fletcher)grrrrr!I'm thinking my best recourse now is perhaps to threaten them with the 3x penalty, in exchange for handing back the original deposit, and hope they don't come across this Court of Appeals judgement in the meantime!
It's been a few weeks now since I moved out of a joint tenancy house rented to 5 tenants by a private landlord, the contract was for 6 months, and then another 6 months.
Upon moving in we paid a deposit of £1950; one month's rent, and we have it in writing from the landlord that we paid a deposit at this time.
I have enquired with the three companies authorized by the government to have deposits registered with them, each of them on two occasions, and checked thoroughly with them each time as to whether the deposit we paid was registered with them, and on each occasion it has been confirmed that our deposit was never registered with them. I'm also confident that we never received a letter from any of these three companies at the beginning of the contract (or any other time) to confirm that the deposit was being held with them - I understand that ordinarily this correspondence would be issued with a reference number etc.
After conversations with each of these three companies, I understand that to not register a deposit is illegal, as of July 2007 (or June, I forget; in any case we moved in around October 2009) and that as a result the landlord is liable to pay as an amount equal to 3 times the deposit paid, which would mean we can go after them for a sum total of £5,850.
To further complicate matters, or perhaps it is a separate issue entirely, they are now claiming that we owe them around £1,000, as the deductions they are claiming total around £3,000.
How should I proceed? I have sought confirmation from the landlord as to who the deposit is being held with, but have received no response.
My father was going to assist me in this matter, but unfortunately he is now on holiday and will not return til the 18th of December.
Thank you for any guidance you can give - I have not yet informed the landlord that we intend to go at them for £5,850, thinking it is best to try and reduce the deductions payable first (I believe if I go after them for this money first, they'll put more effort into keeping the deductions as close to that £3,000 figure as possible, and a judge/magistrate (or whatever the title of a person who overlooks proceedings in a small claims court) will perhaps look upon them with more favour in the knowledge we have already taken them to court for the 3x deposit figure.
EDIT: Incidentally, the house was in England (I've just read the rules are different for Scotland etc).
EDIT 2: I've just read that the 3x penalty doesn't stand up in court because it was badly written (At 0945 this morning, 11 November 2010, the Court of Appeal handed down its judgement in the two conjoined cases of Universal Estates v Tiensia and Honeysuckle Properties v Fletcher)grrrrr!I'm thinking my best recourse now is perhaps to threaten them with the 3x penalty, in exchange for handing back the original deposit, and hope they don't come across this Court of Appeals judgement in the meantime!
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Comments
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Have the deductions been costed fully? ie invoice from cleaning company, bill for repair by building contractor etc., or are they just figures picked out of the air by the LL?
Are the deductions justified? If yes, agree to them. If no, then demand the return of the full deposit.
Have you requested the return of the deposit IN WRITING to the official LL's address on the contract?
Write to the LL a) demanding return of your deposit (less any deductions you agree to) within 7 days.
Point out that the deposit has never been deposited in a scheme, that this is an offence, and that 3 x the deposit amount can be claimed.
Enclose a copy of the government info on deposits here.
Say that after 7 days if you do not receive the deposit you will go to the small claims court.
Be aware that in reality getting the 3x is not guaranteed due to the poor wording of the law and the way courts are implementing it, however you don't need to tell the LL that!0 -
What are the deductions for? Do you dispute any claimed damages?
Was there an inventory done at check in? Another one at check out?
I'm not so sure about the 3x penalty, I believe that an LL can get around it by protecting it right up to the point they walk in the door of the court - also ISTR seeing something on here recently about a test case coming out in the LLs favour.0 -
Have the deductions been costed fully? ie invoice from cleaning company, bill for repair by building contractor etc., or are they just figures picked out of the air by the LL?
Yes they have, they've sent me copies of all their receipts. However the receipts are quite vague, e.g. "decorations.. repairs.. cleaning.."Are the deductions justified? If yes, agree to them. If no, then demand the return of the full deposit.
They deductions are not justified - this isn't just me taking the !!!!, they hiked the rent by £500 a month/~20% after we had a personal disagreement - one of my flatmates was dating the landlord's wife several years ago, etc.Have you requested the return of the deposit IN WRITING to the official LL's address on the contract?
Write to the LL a) demanding return of your deposit (less any deductions you agree to) within 7 days.
Point out that the deposit has never been deposited in a scheme, that this is an offence, and that 3 x the deposit amount can be claimed.
Enclose a copy of the government info on deposits here.
Say that after 7 days if you do not receive the deposit you will go to the small claims court.
Be aware that in reality getting the 3x is not guaranteed due to the poor wording of the law and the way courts are implementing it, however you don't need to tell the LL that!
Thanks, I think that will be my next course of action, I'm going to find out how long it takes for them to get a deposit registered and whether (despite the advice of those Judge's in the case I mentioned in my edit) I could ambush them anyway.What are the deductions for? Do you dispute any claimed damages?
Was there an inventory done at check in? Another one at check out?
I'm not so sure about the 3x penalty, I believe that an LL can get around it by protecting it right up to the point they walk in the door of the court - also ISTR seeing something on here recently about a test case coming out in the LLs favour.
I estimate the damages closer to £600 (which is still alot of damages I know..).
An inventory was done at check in and check out.0 -
Gnomemeister wrote: »this isn't just me taking the !!!!, they hiked the rent by £500 a month/~20% after we had a personal disagreement - one of my flatmates was dating the landlord's wife several years ago, etc.
That is irrelevant to a deposit dispute I'm afraid. All you can dispute is the actual reductions/charges they are claiming.
Demand the full deposit or move on to small claims if it's not forthcoming. They will then have to justify the deductions but you will need to provide sufficient grounds to refute them, i.e argue that the receipts are not correct, exaggerated, etc.0 -
Gnomemeister, have a read of this, its a long read though! The LL in this case puller every trick in the book, but finally the people in question got most of the money back.
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/227606
2 things immediatly i see in common between the cases, is
a) "vague reciepts", theres lot of usefull advice regarding those on there.
b) how the damages are always more than the deposit, yet LL appears to be doing a "favour" by not pursuing the excess, simple fact is if the LL was really £1k out of pocket, or anyone for that matter would they quietly let it drop and not pursue ?
Good Luck0 -
Gnomemeister, have a read of this, its a long read though!
Good Luck
I tried, but 90 pages, honestly I could spend a whole afternoon reading that, I think I'm better paying for legal advice if I'm going to start committing that much time - I've spent at least 3 hours as it is researching this tonight, and countless hours other days and nights dealing with it!! Thanks though I can see from the end posts the thread comes very highly recommended, so I've bookmarked it
.
I've just written a draft letter to the landlord, which I intend to post to the address given on the tenancy agreement, and also to the agent as a C/O address, along with copies of e-mails from the three TDS (and I've decided to print off the web addresses I've referenced - I originally considered sending this by e-mail).
What's the shortest reasonable deadline I could give them;I don't want to give them time to seek legal advice (because of that recent precedent - and no I'm not trying to be underhand; the judges themselves admit the law needs reform, that it's only down to bad wording that it works the way it does, or doesn't work as the case may be).
COPY OF PROPOSED LETTER
Thoughts, suggestions, feel free to help me word anything better if you think my choice of words or grammer etc is not quite in keeping with the style of writing.
Incidentally I'd be happy to offer my ex-landlord a few hundred pounds worth of deductions; the deductions which I know ARE reasonable, but don't want to give them any reason to doubt that the law is completely on my side, and I think making any better an offer to them might introduce these doubts - I think the fact I'm making them an offer at all might already be raising doubts in their mind... further this:
One idea I've had is to ask one of my former housemates; the one who previously dated the landlady, to write the out of court settlement offer on a bit of paper (instead of it being included in the main letter threatening court action) and put it in the envelope (complete with countersignatures of all 5 joint ex-tenants) perhaps saying that he doesn't really want all this, taking her to court etc, he's managed to talk the rest of us round - she has a 4 year old kid, etc, make it sound like we're just being abit soft. I know I'm sounding quite manipulative now but really, this whole thing makes me so angry; my stupidity in paying the last months rent, and then the stupidity of the Housing Act 2004, the fact that the ADR is so appalling and that I'll probably end up going through the courts to get my money back - I know that this is a personal vendetta against us and nothing to do with the condition of the house (I had a nasty row with the landlady near our moving out date, gave her a piece of my mind etc - completely out of character but I'd been driven to it!).
Of course, if they do their homework (or indeed find this thread..) we'll be forced to fight the deductions out in court.
There's a few more things I think would swing events strongly into our favour, if there's any way of using them.
* The key meter is frozen ~£250 in debt since we moved in, yet we never received a bill or any correspondence whatsoever, never even had the key to top up the electric, leaving us with the understanding the electrics is rigged... however there's a possibility that I've got this all wrong, that the bill was actually mistakenly paid by direct debit by the landlord or perhaps even an ex-tenant for the duration of our stay, and in that case I'd be opening up a hole new can of worms!
* Three out of five of us on different occasions were almost electrocuted by a faulty plug socket in the kitchen at the back of the counter, which would shoot sparks the breadth of the room if used. This was reported to the landlord the first time it happened (the second and third times it was used were accidental, our own stupidity I must admit) but unfortunately it was only ever reported verbally, only resolved whilst we were moving out and they were getting the place ready for the next tenants, and to add insult to injury we're being billed for it!
* We moved in during October and quite shortly afterwards, having decided to use the basement for storage (it had newly laid laminate flooring and we were told it could be used for storage), it flooded, causing hundreds of pounds worth of damage to one of my flatmates property.
We decided at the time it wasn't really anyone's fault - we reported it and were told it would be dealt with but it never was, and to the best of my knowledge still floods (with the recent weather it's probably flooded right now).
EDIT: I have placed the letter off-site, and via a !!!!!! link, so it cannot be linked back to this thread if they google any of my wording, just to be safe..
EDIT 2: Define "almost electrocuted".. ok there's either electrocuted or not electrocuted, could it not be argued this has something to do with attempted manslaughter/gross negligence that sort of thing.0 -
Gnomemeister wrote: »
To further complicate matters, or perhaps it is a separate issue entirely, they are now claiming that we owe them around £1,000, as the deductions they are claiming total around £3,000.
So they claim damages of £3000, of which you agree about £2600 is correct. What did you do?!
So now you think it is fair that instead of paying for your damages, he should just accept £2600 to £3000 worth of damages?
Maybe he didn't do the right thing, but on the face of it I have limited sympathy for you...0 -
So they claim damages of £3000, of which you agree about £2600 is correct. What did you do?!
So now you think it is fair that instead of paying for your damages, he should just accept £2600 to £3000 worth of damages?
Maybe he didn't do the right thing, but on the face of it I have limited sympathy for you...
Sorry I should've been more clear. I accept £600 of the damages, total, not £2600!! And honestly, I'm being generous (well, that and I'm considering how much I might be able to prove is not my responsibility in court, and admitting that we simply don't have the evidence to get the total deductions any lower).0 -
Gnomemeister wrote: »
* The key meter is frozen ~£250 in debt since we moved in, yet we never received a bill or any correspondence whatsoever, never even had the key to top up the electric, leaving us with the understanding the electrics is rigged... however there's a possibility that I've got this all wrong, that the bill was actually mistakenly paid by direct debit by the landlord or perhaps even an ex-tenant for the duration of our stay, and in that case I'd be opening up a hole new can of worms!
.
Deffo rigged, had a LL do this aswell, same thing had a key meter, no key for it and it was frozen on a large debt. LL told me not to worry about it, but a routing about in the loft I found where he had rewired things to bypass the meter.
In terms of leverage, its a big one, not only is the LL liable for the bill for your term in the flat, he has commited a whole host of criminal offences which will certainly be prosecuted should they come to light.
Although I would urge you to be careful if using this for leverage, remember you never questioned having free electricity!0 -
no doubt this LL might claim that the OP and fellow tenants rigged the meter..... i am nOT saying you did....
Why did you not contact the utility company yourself when you knew you were not paying for your power ?
did you take photographs on leaving ?0
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