Terrible lettings agency, anything we can do?

Dubber_2

We recently moved into a newly rented house, perfect location, great house etc.

We will have been there for 2 weeks tomorrow and have the following problems with the lettings agency:

- We have still not received our inventory despite asking them several times about its whereabouts. As such, we have had t write out every little defect and taken hundreds of photos so we could move our things in.
- We have raised problems caused by the last tenants (broken toilet seat, curtain rail hanging off the wall, all sink plugs and light pulls taken by previous tenant, junk left in garage by previous tenant, washing machine incorrectly removed and waste pipe leaking water into cupboard underneath.
- We were told that the house was cleaned to a professional standard by previous tenants, it was far from it and took us 3 days to clean!

The second part (defects/missing items) have now mostly been sorted by the landlord, who is absolutely wonderful as the property is supposed to be managed by the agents but he offered to sort it out for us.

Is there anything we can do about the agents or are we better off just ignoring them and hoping that the landlord decides to rent to us direct after the 12 month contract is over?

BitterAndTwisted

The agents are just brokers and it depends on what kind of contract the LL has with the agent. Perhaps in your case the agent was only providing a tenant-finding service and the cleanliness and repairs to the property were not their responsibility.

As long as the defects have been rectified I don't see what the problem is. The lack of check-in inventory is much more of a potential problem for your landlord than it will be for you. Stop worrying about it.

rexmedorum

I think the best you can do is see how it goes for a bit longer. Without inventory it's asking for a disagreement with the LL (even if you are likely to win that one in the end).

If it is still like that in a few months, it's worth trying to talk to the landlord. If he ends up doing all the work anyway he may be quite happy to cut out or replace the agent (right away or come the end of the contract).

Of course all of this is assuming it is managed by the agent?

DVardysShadow

Dubber wrote: »

... - We have still not received our inventory despite asking them several times about its whereabouts.

A signed inventory from you is just a set of promises from you to return the place in the same state. So, if you have proof you have requested the inventory, you should forget about it and relax that you cannot be held to account at the end of the tenancy for things you have not signed for.

Dubber_2

To answer any doubts, the property is supposed to be fully managed by the agency, we are not even supposed to have the landlord's contact details, the only reason we do is because they couldn't be bothered to deal with the leak and called him to let him know and he came and fixed it.

I was under the impression that the lack of inventory would cause us as many problems as it does them, if that's not the case I won't worry about it.

bap98189

The best thing you can do is keep the landlord informed and keep him/her up to date with progress (or lack thereof). The agency work for him, not you. Hopefully he will realise how useless they are and either hound them or terminate their contract.

DVardysShadow

Dubber wrote: »

To answer any doubts, the property is supposed to be fully managed by the agency, we are not even supposed to have the landlord's contact details, the only reason we do is because they couldn't be bothered to deal with the leak and called him to let him know and he came and fixed it.

You have a statutory right to the Landlord's contact details.