Landlord Suing me for £6,500!!!!

[Deleted User]

I have a dog, they damaged doors.., to save myself money I have sanded, filled and repainted them myself so no one knows they were ever damaged. I still live here. I haven't waited til I move out because the state of the doors was irritating me to look at .., and my dogs did the damage. Strangely enough, I automatically assumed I was responsible for repairing them.

If you knew kitchen cupboard doors were damaged.., and room doors.., why on earth didn't you repair them yourself (or pay to have them repaired if you can't) and save this question ever coming up. A lot of the things .., like regrouting floor tiles .., you could have done yourself rather easily for minimal expense. Yes in an ideal world, the landlord would have done things like this, but it isn't an ideal world. A lot of the 'jobs not done' you could have done yourself for minimal cost (like removed glass from garden and taken it down the dump rather than risking your dogs getting damaged paws for months on end) and probably enjoyed the house a lot more.

I agree that it looks like your landlord has vastly overcharged for replacing the ktiched (when it wasn't new in the first place) but you are vastly under estimating the costs of the jobs YOU were responsible for too. You can't just assume the landlord should get sandpaper out and repair the doors your dogs damaged.., he is perfectly entitled to get someone in to do it at your expense. If you had replaced the chewed kitchen cupboards (with a secondhand carcass or doors, whatever) it would have cost you the minimum and then the landlord wouldn't have had any room for manoeuvre.., the courts (if it gets that far) may laugh the landlord out of court, they may not but it will almost certainly cost you more than taking responsibility for the repairs you caused by not repairiing the dog damage yourself.

Why was the garden left overgrown if you paid a gardener £10 an hour to do your garden? Either the gardener wasn't up to much, you didn't use the garden or you hadn't paid a gardener for some time.

Normally I'd feel sorry for a tenant but to be honest, the landlord and you seem to be a good match for each other lolol.

rmacnair

Gra76 wrote: »

What you percieve to be fair and what the landlord percieve to be fair are clearly 2 entirely different things.

Two things come out of your posts for me OP.

Firstly, it's obvious you don't see eye to eye with the landlord.

Secondly, you have no idea of real-world costs. Absolutely none whatsoever. Why should the landlord accept your bodged DIY efforts for things your dog damaged? Chances are your attempts to make the kitchen look better would fail.

Can the kitchen still be sourced? If so why not offer to buy the individual components that your dog chewed and pay to have them fitted. If it can't then I don't know where you go from there, but if I were a landlord I'd expect the damaged items to be replaced at the very least, but then he probably doesn't want a kitchen where some components don't match the rest of the kitchen. I suspect that's why you've got a full replacement quote.

The rest of it you'll have to argue over but I can see where your landlord is coming from in relation to the kitchen and door.

I get where you're coming from; I was meaning that I would expect him to do the DIY as he had done throughout the rest of the house. As for botched attempts; the jobs he did do whilst I lived there were completely bodged; why should I pay for a higher quality service than what he was willing to pay for?

OK, so if a tradeseman is required then yeh there's going to be a labour cost involved, but even then I would only expect this to be towards £300-£400 for all the repairs (only the bottom of 2 cupboard doors had been chewed).

As for replacing the entire kitchen at a cost of £4,500; From talking to Shelter and Citizens Advice they say if you make a replacement it should be a like-for-like and and age-for-age replacement. Given that when we moved in the cupboard doors were 20+ years old and had chips, blemishes and scuffs (which is in the original inventory) I can't see why the costs to replace would be high.

I_have_spoken

Why didn't you affect the repairs yourself? You had at least 18 months after the puppy was "crated" (is that legal?)

N.B. Was it the puppy or Molly the lama that did the damage...?

rmacnair

deannatrois wrote: »

I have a dog, they damaged doors.., to save myself money I have sanded, filled and repainted them myself so no one knows they were ever damaged. I still live here. I haven't waited til I move out because the state of the doors was irritating me to look at .., and my dogs did the damage. Strangely enough, I automatically assumed I was responsible for repairing them.

If you knew kitchen cupboard doors were damaged.., and room doors.., why on earth didn't you repair them yourself (or pay to have them repaired if you can't) and save this question ever coming up. A lot of the things .., like regrouting floor tiles .., you could have done yourself rather easily for minimal expense. Yes in an ideal world, the landlord would have done things like this, but it isn't an ideal world. A lot of the 'jobs not done' you could have done yourself for minimal cost (like removed glass from garden and taken it down the dump rather than risking your dogs getting damaged paws for months on end) and probably enjoyed the house a lot more.

In hindsight, yes I should have repaired the kitchen doors and I am obviously regretting that, but would you expect such an extortionate bill totally out of proportion to the damage?? How much did it cost you to make the repairs yourself?

As for the other repairs (grouting etc.) it's more the principle of the matter, why should I pay him nearly £11,000 over 12 months. I did move the glass out of the way of the dogs and no harm came to them, but again it's the principle of the matter, why should I be the one to do that when housing standards clearly stated it is his responsibility. In my old house I paid £500 a month and never really asked the landlord to fix anything (other than a broken boiler) because you expect to get what you pay for and I did not get what I paid for.

rmacnair

I_have_spoken wrote: »

Why didn't you affect the repairs yourself? You had at least 18 months after the puppy was "crated" (is that legal?)

N.B. Was it the puppy or Molly the lama that did the damage...?

Crating is legal yes. It's a very large crate and she was only in there at night and whilst the house was empty. I only lived at the property for 11 months and yes I wish I had repaired the damage.

harrys_dad

The landlord is entitled to have the house returned to the condition it was in when you moved in, no more no less, subject to how long you have lived there. The landlord is not entitled to any improvements.

Do you have a signed inventory from when you moved in? Do you have a signed inventory from when you moved out? Are they different?

i suspect that your view on the landlord not doing repairs when you were there is irrelevant to this. What is not irrelevant is the fact that your dog damaged several kitchen units and a door. The landlord cannot however expect/force you to pay for a new kitchen when the original one when you moved in was 20 years old.

I_have_spoken

Maybe LL is billing you 'on principle' too?

rmacnair

harrys_dad wrote: »

The landlord is entitled to have the house returned to the condition it was in when you moved in, no more no less, subject to how long you have lived there. The landlord is not entitled to any improvements.

Do you have a signed inventory from when you moved in? Do you have a signed inventory from when you moved out? Are they different?

i suspect that your view on the landlord not doing repairs when you were there is irrelevant to this. What is not irrelevant is the fact that your dog damaged several kitchen units and a door. The landlord cannot however expect/force you to pay for a new kitchen when the original one when you moved in was 20 years old.

Thanks, at no point have I denied the dog doing the damage, my annoyance is with his interpretation of the damage and its associated cost. I am not totally unwilling to pay costs but he just did all the work without consulting me and then has tried to sue me for the costs, only showing invoices and receipts.

There is an inventory done by the estate agents from when the tenancy started signed by the landlord and myself, stating the facts (e.g. there are scuffs, there are chips, property is dusty).

There is a check out report, which the estate agents and I were not privy to, completed by a different company using lots of adjectives (e.g. heavy scuffs, property is very dusty).

RAS

OP - was there a dual signed inventory when you moved in?

If so what did it say about each of those items?

Do you have any written proof that you asked the LL to repair various things? Do you have the environmental health officers report?

Reue

rmacnair wrote: »

There is a check out report, which the estate agents and I were not privy to, completed by a different company using lots of adjectives (e.g. heavy scuffs, property is very dusty).

End of topic. No signed dated checkout report means no deposit deductions and unable to prove damage in court.

Ignore the letter.