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Quick guide on how not to get ripped off by landlords
helpthetenant
Posts: 47 Forumite
I have been ripped off so many times, so I thought this will help you and save you months or years of pain. If you find this helpful just let know anyone, thanks to internet we tenants we can finally know what happens in this world. These problems they will pop up at night especially, or during the summer, or you will find out about them after a few weeks, so you won't see them when you pay for the rent. So before paying ask the neighbours, don't be shy, ask them what they think, if you ask the landlord or agents they will assure you there is no problem at all with the property and they will ripp you off with a big smile on their faces. After you sign the contract you might want to escape from the property (mice, insects, neighbours shouting, etc) but if you decide to run away you are going to lose the money of your deposit, this and all sort of problems happened to me, so be careful.
1) Make sure you sign the Tenancy agreement and receipts, many landlords avoid contracts so they don't have to declare anything and don't have to pay taxes.
2) If you see an old carpet or an old shower without a single tap for mixing hot and cold water it's always a bad sign. When the property looks old it's usually a rip off, the landlord should take care of it, he's responsible for it and there is no excuses to save some money without refurbishing everything.
3) Take only wooden floor or tiles, it's much more hygienic and easier to clean. Carpet actracts insects, they thrive on it. Carpet might be ok only if you change it often but you need a lot of money for it.
4) Ask if there were any mice, insects, rats or any sort of pest.
5) Are the bills included in the rent?
6) Is the hot water working? Is the boiler working and is it too noisy?
7) Leaking water somewhere? Check carefully ceiling and walls, if they have dark spots it means there was leaking water or mould, and landlords might refuse to fix it because they want to save money or they want you to run away and break the contract and make you lose the deposit.
8) Ask openly if you lose the deposit or any money if you leave before the end of the contract, or ask if they can write in the contract that you can leave before the end of the contract if there are problems.
9) Is there a washing machine?
10) Make sure there are no neighbours shouting and yelling like animals near your flat, don't try to ignore them, they will make your life a real nightmare.
11) Is there a cooker?
12) Aerial cable for tv and telephone connections.
13) Is Council tax included?
14) Is it self-contained for real? Or the shower and the toilet are "very close" to your flat?
15) Is there a window in the toilet? Make sure that you can open it.
16) Don't take any top floor if there is no insulation, they might be too hot during summer. This is very important. Also rats, mice and insects normally pop up in a top floor.
17) Bills for water?
18) Bills for electricity?
19) Bills for gas?
20) Is there enough storage and space?
21) Who is the landlord? Ask it openly, name and surname, don't be shy again.
22) Knock at neighbours to say hi, have a chat and ask them if is a nice house etc.
24) If in the ads you read they don't accept men they are discriminating against 50% of population, for them it might be easier to deal with women, but If I were a woman I would never answer to an ad that discriminate against men. If in the ads they don't accept people on benefit that's because the landlords don't want to declare anything and avoid the taxes, and they are tarring everyone with the same brush, or they don't want to accept them because they associate people on benefit with troublemakers. There should be a law that force landlords to accept men and peope on benefit, but unfortunately there is no such a law yet.
25) If landlords continue to ignore your problems take legal action or go to a Housing Advice centre.
1) Make sure you sign the Tenancy agreement and receipts, many landlords avoid contracts so they don't have to declare anything and don't have to pay taxes.
2) If you see an old carpet or an old shower without a single tap for mixing hot and cold water it's always a bad sign. When the property looks old it's usually a rip off, the landlord should take care of it, he's responsible for it and there is no excuses to save some money without refurbishing everything.
3) Take only wooden floor or tiles, it's much more hygienic and easier to clean. Carpet actracts insects, they thrive on it. Carpet might be ok only if you change it often but you need a lot of money for it.
4) Ask if there were any mice, insects, rats or any sort of pest.
5) Are the bills included in the rent?
6) Is the hot water working? Is the boiler working and is it too noisy?
7) Leaking water somewhere? Check carefully ceiling and walls, if they have dark spots it means there was leaking water or mould, and landlords might refuse to fix it because they want to save money or they want you to run away and break the contract and make you lose the deposit.
8) Ask openly if you lose the deposit or any money if you leave before the end of the contract, or ask if they can write in the contract that you can leave before the end of the contract if there are problems.
9) Is there a washing machine?
10) Make sure there are no neighbours shouting and yelling like animals near your flat, don't try to ignore them, they will make your life a real nightmare.
11) Is there a cooker?
12) Aerial cable for tv and telephone connections.
13) Is Council tax included?
14) Is it self-contained for real? Or the shower and the toilet are "very close" to your flat?
15) Is there a window in the toilet? Make sure that you can open it.
16) Don't take any top floor if there is no insulation, they might be too hot during summer. This is very important. Also rats, mice and insects normally pop up in a top floor.
17) Bills for water?
18) Bills for electricity?
19) Bills for gas?
20) Is there enough storage and space?
21) Who is the landlord? Ask it openly, name and surname, don't be shy again.
22) Knock at neighbours to say hi, have a chat and ask them if is a nice house etc.
24) If in the ads you read they don't accept men they are discriminating against 50% of population, for them it might be easier to deal with women, but If I were a woman I would never answer to an ad that discriminate against men. If in the ads they don't accept people on benefit that's because the landlords don't want to declare anything and avoid the taxes, and they are tarring everyone with the same brush, or they don't want to accept them because they associate people on benefit with troublemakers. There should be a law that force landlords to accept men and peope on benefit, but unfortunately there is no such a law yet.
25) If landlords continue to ignore your problems take legal action or go to a Housing Advice centre.
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Comments
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Don't become a tenant?0
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helpthetenant wrote: ».
8) Ask openly if you lose the deposit or any money if you leave before the end of the contract, or ask if they can write in the contract that you can leave before the end of the contract if there are problems..
here we go agaion - leaving aside the sweeping generalisations you make (others can respond in kind from the perspective of a LL and how to avoid idiotic uncaring T) you appear out of date
you have not mentioned that if renting in Eng or Wales the deposit must be protected so any deductions will be settled through the scheme's independent arbitrators. If there is a clause in the contract saying the deposit cannot be used to cover unpaid rent then the LL will simply sue for unpaid rent and the T will end up with court costs on top of their rent debt
rising to the bait further you should also consider the impact of hard flooring if living above someone when you walk around - they may soon coming knocking about the noise YOU are creating. Carpets do not harbour pests if the T fulfils their requirement to "behave in a T like manner", ie to clean it occasionally and not trapse the garden indoors, my parents lived in the same house for 46 years and had the same carpet for 27 of them (yes it was threadbare by then!), it never ever had even one insect - it all comes down to the sweeping generalisation of the difference in behaviour between an uncaring T and a proud, caring, owner occupier0 -
here we go agaion - leaving aside the sweeping generalisations you make (others can respond in kind from the perspective of a LL and how to avoid idiotic uncaring T) you appear out of date
you have not mentioned that if renting in Eng or Wales the deposit must be protected so any deductions will be settled through the scheme's independent arbitrators. If there is a clause in the contract saying the deposit cannot be used to cover unpaid rent then the LL will simply sue for unpaid rent and the T will end up with court costs on top of their rent debt
rising to the bait further you should also consider the impact of hard flooring if living above someone when you walk around - they may soon coming knocking about the noise YOU are creating. Carpets do not harbour pests if the T fulfils their requirement to "behave in a T like manner", ie to clean it occasionally and not trapse the garden indoors, my parents lived in the same house for 46 years and had the same carpet for 27 of them (yes it was threadbare by then!), it never ever had even one insect - it all comes down to the sweeping generalisation of the difference in behaviour between an uncaring T and a proud, caring, owner occupier
I try to help tenants, feeling sorry for the next victims, and here we go again with a post against the tenants. It was much quicker if you said that not all landlords are dodgy and not all carpets are old. what a discovery!! You are reinventing the wheel. I hope tenants will ignore your useless post. Please, if you don't have anything clever to say, don't say anything at all.0 -
Some of your points are valid and people should be reminded that the buyer should beware and inspect the property carefully.
Two or three others are somewhat dubious!
I especially enjoyed the irony of landlords being 'tarred with the same brush' by blanket accusations of certain tax dodging when refusing benefit claimants.0 -
helpthetenant wrote: »1) Make sure you sign the Tenancy agreement and receipts, many landlords avoid contracts so they don't have to declare anything and don't have to pay taxes.
Contract or no contract they cannot escape this obligation.
The assumption should be that they are not, and unless explicitly written into your contract they will be your responsibility.helpthetenant wrote: »13) Is Council tax included?
5) Are the bills included in the rent?
17) Bills for water?
18) Bills for electricity?
19) Bills for gas?helpthetenant wrote: »12) Aerial cable for tv and telephone connections.
Seriously, they have to provide the co-axial cable to connect your TV to the ariel socket?helpthetenant wrote: »24)If in the ads they don't accept people on benefit that's because the landlords don't want to declare anything and avoid the taxes, and they are tarring everyone with the same brush, or they don't want to accept them because they associate people on benefit with troublemakers. There should be a law that force landlords to accept men and peope on benefit, but unfortunately there is no such a law yet.
If only it were that easy to avoid taxes....
Why should there be a law forcing LL's to accept people on the lowest incomes in society? They have, or at least should have, the least dispoable income so it makes economic sense to exclude them
Its great that you want to be helpful, but I think you have fell well short of the mark and descended into a rant at LL's, most probably because of a recent personal experience.0 -
mynameisdave wrote: »Contract or no contract they cannot escape this obligation.
The assumption should be that they are not, and unless explicitly written into your contract they will be your responsibility.
Seriously, they have to provide the co-axial cable to connect your TV to the ariel socket?
If only it were that easy to avoid taxes....
Why should there be a law forcing LL's to accept people on the lowest incomes in society? They have, or at least should have, the least dispoable income so it makes economic sense to exclude them
Its great that you want to be helpful, but I think you have fell well short of the mark and descended into a rant at LL's, most probably because of a recent personal experience.
If you are a landlord you have got responsabilities. Everybody would like to have as a tenant a nice lady, with the highest income in society, but that's too easy and too selfish, you can't discriminate against people on low income, people with health issues, and against men. Mine it's not a rant, I am just exposing the facts, and your post again reminds us how selfish and arrogant landlords can be, you have no justification at all defending dodgy landlords, you sound like one of them...0 -
There is so much either inaccurate, misleading or irrelevant in your first post I just don't have the energy to critique it point-by-point. One of the most important things in a tenancy is about the protection of the deposit and you have omitted any mention of it.
And no, I am not a landlord or even a tenant with a particular agenda.0 -
A new breed of SpamTroll.0
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I didn't want to start a whole new thread and thought this possibly might fit in here.
I moved into a flat last June. After realising we had received no post (addressed to us as opposed to the previous tenant) for around a month I did a little online search and found that the address the estate agents had given us on our tenancy agreement and all correspondence had the incorrect street number and postcode. This lead to a good couple of months of having to fight with companies to get details changed (and in the case of my driving license which had been posted to the incorrect address a fee for replacement).
That issue is all sorted now but it has come to my attention (thanks to someone in my office) that my landlord / estate agent unnder the Housing Act was supposed to send me details of the scheme that my deposit is protected under within 14 days of me paying it to them. I don't believe that they have ever sent this to me and the penalty for not complying with this is payment of three times the amount of the deposit sum to the tenant.
Also upon using the deposit protection company's online checker I can see that my deposit is protected with a company... but under my partner's name rather than mine (the tenancy is in both our names) and with the incorrect address. This should mean that the landlord isn't providing protection to me as the information that has been lodged with the company is incorrect. Again meaning that the three times deposit sum is payable.
We have just agreed to stick to the tenancy for another year and the person that initially informed me of this recommended that I wait until towards the end of the tenancy to bring this up with them and to claim the money.
I was just wondering if anyone else has been in this sort of situation and whether I should wait until nearer the end of the tenancy or get this dealt with now?0 -
Sorry I'm not understanding, you're staying in the property for a further 12 months but wish to claim 3 x the deposit back?
For what reason?0
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