Cleaning when leaving property

shiney85

My partner and I moved into a flat earlier this year. We plan to stay here about a year, then move on for work, edging closer to higher wage areas! We aren't moving for a while yet, but something has been on my mind since we moved in.

When we were moving in, the letting agents told us the carpets would be cleaned, as would the rest of the flat. In our contract it says we will have the carpets professionally cleaned on leaving. On moving in day, the house was just a bit....grubby. It's a high spec flat, but there was dust all over the kitchen, the bathroom floor was covered in, erm, little black curly hairs, the doors had hand marks all over, and the carpets did not look nice and fluffy and clean, as I imagined they would when being professionally cleaned. Even the toilet had not been flushed...

We treat the flat like our own, and have wiped all the doors down of handprints, covered marks on the walls with tester pots, and fixed things that were not working correctly when moving in, like the toilet flush and cupboard doors (Our contract says Landlord should arrange for these to be fixed, but between a landlord who is yet to bother, and my OH being Mr Fix-It, well..) The flat is in a far better state than when we moved in.

I want to know if, when moving out, we can ask to see a receipt to prove that the carpets in the flat were professionally cleaned before we moved in, and if they tell me they weren't, if we can refuse to do it? I just feel like the flat was not cleaned for us, so why should we go to great lengths for the next tenants? We will of course hoover, dust, leave the worktops sparkling, everything we can do that costs us nothing but time and elbow grease, I just feel it's a bit unfair we should have to shell out for carpet cleaning when, I believe, this wasn't done for us.

I suspect as it is in our contract to have the carpets cleaned that we must....but the flat wasn't received as promised. I noted the complaints above in the inventory too, FYI Thoughts appreciated, thanks!

laveylady

Hi

If you noted it on the inventory that was returned to the letting agent, I'd be inclined to phone up all casual and say you were looking through paperwork etc and have noticed you don't have your copy of the carpet cleaning invoice that obviously shows the work was done as per the contract. You can then easily prove the contract has been breached on their part. Watch out they don't just magic up a fake invoice- phone the named company and ask them to confirm the details, such as date carried out, invoice number etc. Agents / landlords are notorious at try this one in my experience.

If you have lived in the flat a short time say a month or two I'd advise photographing areas of potential dispute eg carpets, scuffs on walls etc with the date stamp shown on the images. That way when you move out you have evidence. I now do the same as a Landlord to keep everything fair for me & my tenants as I've experience agents try to make a couple of hundred pounds by telling me & the tenant they would 'sort it out' and then pocket the money having not had the work done.

Good luck

BitterAndTwisted

You are not obligated to have the property or the carpets professionally cleaned. Your only obligation is to return the property and all its fixtures in precisely then same state of cleanliness as it was at the beginning of your tenancy. Although I think you should draw the line at sprinkling the bathroom floor with dark, curly hairs. Unless you've kept the previous tenant's ones....

What did the dual-signed inventory at the start of your tenancy have to say about the carpets and their condition?

benjus

We were in a pretty much identical situation - only in our case there had been a check-in inspection done by an independent company who agreed with us that the property (and the carpets) did not look to have been professionally cleaned and wrote this on their report - despite the fact that the Letting Agent claimed to have receipts for professional cleaning.

The Letting Agent sent us a letter a few weeks before we moved out reminding us of our obligation to get everything professionally cleaned - I just sent an email reminding them of the state of the property at check-in and they pretty much dropped it. That said, the deposit hasn't been returned yet, so better not count my chickens just yet...