Renowned landlord deposit issues!!

parkysaves

I have been doing quite a bit of reading up on betterment and think I am going to go down this route. For 12 mths I was unable to use the garage as a garage due to the door being held up with an old wardrobe door and I had to attach a piece of wood along the bottom panel of the side garage door so that no animals entered the garage when I wasnt there as it was rotten beyond repair. Now all of a sudden there is a new garage door, carpets and it just seems as the house stood empty for so long before me(there was a family in for a couple of mths over the winter but the boiler broke and landlord provided an oil filled radiotor for the lounge but no boiler repair! They moved out!!), they have used my money to replace things as they are apparently in dire financial straits. The previous tenants have said they would provide statements as to the poor state of repair of the place which will hopefully aid my case.

I am now gutted as in hindsight when I stood in the lounge to measure for curtain poles etc as there was nothing in there in floods of tears with my dad wondering what I had done, I should have walked away. I have lost so much more now than I would have if just walked away and my current landlord is great.

clutton_2

opposing these landlords through the deposit protection scheme which they had registered your deposit with, will cost you nothing.... zilch.... nada... nowt.

As a LL of nearly 12 years, i would strongly recommend that you contest these deductions with the Deposit scheme and let the arbitrators make the decisions. They are on the side of the tenents, as the deposit money belongs to the tenant ande not the landlord.

Did you sign an inventory on move-in and on move-out ?

Did you take photos of the property on leaving ?

Poor landlords like these depend on tenants not chasing their rights ......

go on - you can do it.... you will get all the support you need from this thread...

bw

parkysaves

Thank you so much everyone. Now I have got over the original shock of this I feel better placed to start dealing with them! Can I just ask one small thing. Am I still able to go through the deposit scheme even if I have effectively already lost the deposit? By this I mean that as I held back on the 2nd mths notice rent until I got the deposit back so they didnt have two lots of my money, they kept the entire deposit, taking £300+ for cleaning and painting and the remainder for outstanding rent. They are now asking for another £204 to make up the odd weeks rent as I didnt leave on the 1st of the month. So I am presuming that they have received back the deposit from the holding company.

I didn't take photos on leaving as I only received the notification letter a couple of days before and couldnt get time off work so saw her there at 9.30 then had to leave her to it and they later phoned me and told me what needed doing ...... hindsight I know

I know they are taking the mickey and I very much feel I would have a case for betterment but my main worry is my parents being guarantors. Mr Landlord has already said he will go straight for my parents if I kick up and whilst I know this is a scare tactic, you can understand me not wanting to drag them into it .... it pains me that at 38 yrs old having owned my own house for years I then met someone who took me for everything and I find myself in the position of having to have a guarantor. Just feels like someone else wishing to ride off my back. Sorry for the rant... sore nerve !!!!

franklee

So you start a tenancy in July 2010 for six months. Then what happened? Did you go into a statutory periodic tenancy? Or a contractual periodic tenancy? Or did you sign up for another fixed term.

If you went onto a statutory periodic tenancy then you need to give at least one months notice ending at the end of a period. Any terms written in the tenancy agreement to end the tenancy no longer apply.

For the other two options you would need to look at what the tenancy agreement says.

As I understand it most common is a statutory periodic tenancy so I would not let the extra rent charge go without checking the above details first.