help with my deposit ....

danda

I rented a house in NW10 and we stayed there for the minimum tenancy as we were buying a house and were waiting for the paper work to go through... anyway we left the property within 5 months time (but we paid for the 6 month minimum contract and the landlord agreed with it) we had many problems in the property because of the past flooding problems they had there (but we did not know any of this when we rented the property) so we ended up pay more for our bills because the house even with the heating on, use to freeze...

Long story short, we did the check out in December and even the inspector said the house was left in excellent conditions... etc ... when the 6 months passed we contact the DEPOSIT PROTECTION SERVICE to get our deposit back and since then we have being trying to sort this out with no success... we contacted the agency as well to know why the landlord is doing this and apparently he wants
deductions from our deposit for fix things that has nothing to do with us... (like roof leaking ,etc ). We also tried to use the service from DPS (Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Procedure. An independent service that acts as an alternative to going to court, aiming to resolve disputes between landlords and tenants through evidence-based adjudication) but they refused as well and probably because they have nothing to say against us...

Now I am here trapped... It is being almost 5months and nothing has being sorted... and truly I don't think nothing has to be deducted from my deposit because I haven't done anything wrong, I paid an extra month and gave the keys back to the agency when I left the property after 5 months, so the landlord could rent again or even sell the property if they wanted to (even though I paid for 6 month)... now my feelings are ... the landlord wants to take money out of my
deposit to make me pay for things that they should've done right from the beginning, like contracting the right
builders to make a proper work in their property, etc... because once I got into the house, even the neighbours told me the house was for sale before but it didn't happen because the bank spotted those flooding problems and that's why they left it for rental... Now, I would like some advice of what I should do...

princeofpounds

We also tried to use the service from DPS (Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Procedure. An independent service that acts as an alternative to going to court, aiming to resolve disputes between landlords and tenants through evidence-based adjudication) but they refused as well and probably because they have nothing to say against us...

Did you get confirmation that your deposit was registered in the scheme?

And when you say 'they', I assume it is your LL refusing to use ADR?

In that case use small claims court. It's quite easy.

princeofpounds

We also tried to use the service from DPS (Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) Procedure. An independent service that acts as an alternative to going to court, aiming to resolve disputes between landlords and tenants through evidence-based adjudication) but they refused as well and probably because they have nothing to say against us...

Did you get confirmation that your deposit was registered in the scheme?

And when you say 'they', I assume it is your LL refusing to use ADR?

In that case use small claims court. It's quite easy.