Waiting for deposit to be returned by LA

stevie_wonder

I may be being a bit premature with this but wanted to see what people though. I gave notice on my contract before christmas and in fact haven't been living in the property for over two months (although have continued to pay the rent as per the contract!). Being keen to get the deposit back asap, I arranged a pre-checkout checkout and got through with a clean bill of health. When it came to checkout on tuesday all went well and no problems were raised. I was told they would be in touch but had to chase them up today. In the end I got an email reply saying

"From the date of check out Leaders write to your Landlord to inform them of the findings, the landlord then gets 10 days to go round to the property and inspect. If the Landlord agrees with the findings of Leaders then the deposit is released straight away by BACS into your chosen account.

If there are any disputes then we will be in touch with you, please be advised that the deposit can legally be held up to 30 days after the check out date.

I hope this information helps, we will release the deposit to you once we have received your Landlords comments."

Are they just trying to hold on to the money as long as possible? also this 10 days review by the landlord is something thats never been mentioned to us in th past - can they really do this!

I'm so annoyed with them :mad:

stevie_wonder

Ignore me - just checked through the t's and c's and it says they will pay it back to us by 30 days - no commitment to get it back any sooner.
However, it also says that they hold the deposit and can't claim the interest!

rosysparkle

Almost certainly the LA is holding the deposit as stakeholder for the landlord. They have to take the landlord's instructions on any deductions, and it's not unreasonable for the landlord to want to check the property for himself. If your checkout was only two days ago, the landlord is unlikely to have received the report yet.

Within 30 days after the checkout is fairly standard, I would think. We try and release deposits as soon as we can after the checkout, but we do advise tenants from the start to allow up to 28 days.