Uninhabitable flat- Urgent help needed for kids in first flat

dimbo61

Has the heating been off all summer ( cold,damp and empty )
Get the central heating on and ask the tenants to make sure windows are open when showering and when in the property.
Do not leave any wet clothes on the radiators or inside the flat.

As a student landlord we will start the adverts for next year in a few weeks !
Yes the students/tenants have just moved in yet the University housing office in Manchester will start next years adverts from the 1 st of October.
WHY ? In order for students who are orgainised to get House hunting early and get the best properties signed up.
All the Landlords on Manchester Student Homes sign up to a code of conduct and provide good quality student accommadation.
Did your son and his mates check out the Uni housing office like MSH ?
We do everything right, gas safe certificate, good heating, safe and secure with alarm system, smoke alarms etc
All our tenants are happy ( I hope ) with the student digs we provide and we never have problems finding tenants.

specialboy

How rude are you? I do hope you get no joy in this situation, good day to you.

flora48

I was amazed at the places my kids chose to live in when at uni, especially when leaving behind comfortable clean home. One child refused the offer of staying on in brand new halls to go and live in a crummy damp old terrace house, so bad that one lad's mum took him back home. Somehow the lure of living with their friends and being independent was too great for my kids to resist. The other lived in strange dark house that always had a peculiar smell. Nothing we said could change their minds. As others have said these kids are adults and are legally bound as such. Unless environmental health decree the flat to be inhabitable the lads will have to do as best they can, opening windows and airing the place seem a good starting place. I am pleased to say that both mine lived to tell the tale and are "all growd up and sensible now".
I feel your pain of your predicament.

[Deleted User]

I can't offer much help except to advise buying a big dehumidifier from Ebay. I paid £80 for a huge one that seems quite powerful. Find reviews to source the best one you can afford.

Unfortunately you will have a long battle to get any money back, obviously a LL who rents a property like this is not going to score highly in morals/scruples so i suspect the young men are going to have to learn from it and make a better choice next time.

To be honest, when I was 18, I didn't have much money and at times felt I'd never find somewhere to live I could afford. BUT I didn't take one smelly dirty broken down bedsit with a very iffy acting LL.., no matter how cheap it was. I just knew it wasn't a good place to live, even at that age.

Get your son to research his rights (thorough reading of this forum is a start) so he knows what he can expect. Environmental Health nowadays may only act on the most urgent of cases, and HMO's.

Make sure you/your son take pics of the whole place to ward off deposit deductions at the end of the tenancy. Make sure the deposit is protected.

silvercar

dimbo61 wrote: »

Has the heating been off all summer ( cold,damp and empty )
Get the central heating on and ask the tenants to make sure windows are open when showering and when in the property.
Do not leave any wet clothes on the radiators or inside the flat.

As a student landlord we will start the adverts for next year in a few weeks !
Yes the students/tenants have just moved in yet the University housing office in Manchester will start next years adverts from the 1 st of October.
WHY ? In order for students who are orgainised to get House hunting early and get the best properties signed up.
All the Landlords on Manchester Student Homes sign up to a code of conduct and provide good quality student accommadation.
Did your son and his mates check out the Uni housing office like MSH ?
We do everything right, gas safe certificate, good heating, safe and secure with alarm system, smoke alarms etc
All our tenants are happy ( I hope ) with the student digs we provide and we never have problems finding tenants.

Wish I had known that you were a MSH landlord a few years ago!

flora wrote:

I was amazed at the places my kids chose to live in when at uni, especially when leaving behind comfortable clean home. One child refused the offer of staying on in brand new halls to go and live in a crummy damp old terrace house, so bad that one lad's mum took him back home. Somehow the lure of living with their friends and being independent was too great for my kids to resist. The other lived in strange dark house that always had a peculiar smell. Nothing we said could change their minds.

I totally agree, why these students have to choose such awful places, when such decent accommodation is available is beyond me.

Having had both my kids choose to live in what I would have considered a fairly grotty hall (for those that know M/C - the tower of OP), there are plenty of decent private halls with security, decent internet, cleaners in the heart of student land. But no, they both chose to move from one grotty student house to the next. Between the boys I have now visited 5 such houses; each one supposedly an improvement on the last. Ironically, the best one of the bunch was one that wasn't found until September one year after my son decided to stay on for a masters.

It not only amazes me that they choose such places, when private halls allow you to choose your flat mates and are no more expensive, but that they clamour over each other to book places for next year already with strangers that they have known for less than a month.

Bantex_2

Try watching a few episodes of The Young Ones.

topdaddy_2

orangefusion wrote: »

No special boy I did not. I was working hard to earn the deposit and rent, I live 300 miles away. One of his friends did all the checking and he is as upset as I am. Why are you so unhelpful- telling me what I SHOULD have done is not helping. I need to know what we can do now to move on from this and get them sorted into somewhere dry and get their money back.
Of course I should have checked, all the parents should have, but we didn't and now we need help to retrieve the situation.
Please dont bother answering with any more responses if they are going to berate me for trying to find ways to move forward, we are were we are and I am trying to find solutions right now.
Thanks to the suggestion of the Uni accom office- I will tell the boys to do that on monday along with EH-they will have to do that too- I agree that its best if they do it.

Im afraid its entirely helpful. Helping your son learn a very harsh lesson. Im assuming someone there see it before agreeing to it? If not then theres another lesson. So when the peson that veiwed the property encouraged everyone else to part with a total of 12k(they could have possibly bought a place for that much money spent for just 6months) they must have made a good case. Another lesson learnt- dont trust what youve been told. So has the LL/ LA been contacted and given a chance to rectify? If not then they should be, another le....anyway you get the idea. Rest safe in the assumption this will never happen again to your son.

silvercar

topdaddy wrote: »

Rest safe in the assumption this will never happen again to your son.

Trust me, it will happen again next year.

Within a few weeks, they will be scurrying around, searching for a better dive to rent next year, confident that by booking early they will secure the best place.

So they view current student properties, ignore the dirt and damp and look at how big the rooms are, whether there is outdoor space for a BBQ and how near the bus route/off-licence/take away their desired hovel is. Sign up with the people on their course/ hall corridor and congratulate themselves that they are "sorted".

Between now and next September, they will fall out with half their new friends, one will drop out of uni and be substituted for someone they've never met, another will find an addiction and be so high they won't recognise the person they thought they new, another will become a recluse and lock himself away tied to his laptop playing minesweeper surfacing only in the dead of night to nibble cheese with his new found pet the rat in the basement....

and so the cycle repeats.

bris

orangefusion wrote: »

There was a dead rat in the bin which had clearly been a live rat when it climbed in.

I would love to see the post mortem report that allowed you to clearly see how the rat died.


Time to let little Johnny grow up, his mistakes are his own now.

pickledonionspaceraider

silvercar wrote: »

Trust me, it will happen again next year.

Within a few weeks, they will be scurrying around, searching for a better dive to rent next year, confident that by booking early they will secure the best place.

So they view current student properties, ignore the dirt and damp and look at how big the rooms are, whether there is outdoor space for a BBQ and how near the bus route/off-licence/take away their desired hovel is. Sign up with the people on their course/ hall corridor and congratulate themselves that they are "sorted".

Between now and next September, they will fall out with half their new friends, one will drop out of uni and be substituted for someone they've never met, another will find an addiction and be so high they won't recognise the person they thought they new, another will become a recluse and lock himself away tied to his laptop playing minesweeper surfacing only in the dead of night to nibble cheese with his new found pet the rat in the basement....

and so the cycle repeats.

This is SO accurate

I think most student private rental accomodation is much the same with different levels of horrendous-ness.
I would contact the LL and insist that they send up a clean up party. I advise you to get pictures of every square inch of the house

The damp is a massive worry, if it is soaking up the walls, does that sound like rising damp?

Tell the landlord that you are contacting enviromental health, as the damp sounds a real issue

As they have signed contracts and one of them has viewed the property, I am afraid you may be struggling to get them reallocated now, especially so late in the day with Uni starting so soon.