Quick question - renting unfurnished

Lavendyr

Hello again

As some of you already know OH and I are having to move out of our current rental. The market in our area is very heavily biased towards unfurnished rentals and there is little to nothing in the way of furnished rental around us.

My question is, if we were to rent an unfurnished house with a garden, is there any stipulation that the landlord would still have to provide us with the means of looking after the garden - i.e. a lawnmower?

That's all - though any other advice on renting unfurnished also welcome Many thanks!

PasturesNew

No. There's no stipulation he has to provide you with anything more than a safe house (electrics/gas/water etc).

But - don't forget freecycle!

[URL="http://"][/URL]www.freecycle.org

Lavendyr

Thanks If we do have to go for unfurnished, we may at least try to haggle things like a lawnmower into the equation, and if no luck go to second-hand/relatives etc. I will have a look at Freecycle as well, thanks for the tip!

BrixMorta

Here is a typical extract from a good letting agencies landlords information pack:-
The garden should be left neat and tidy. It is a requirement of our Rental Agreement that the Tenant keeps the grass cut, borders and paths weed free and shrubs trimmed. Adequate gardening equipment should be left for the Tenant to maintain the garden. A power breaker should be provided if any electrical garden equipment is provided.

faerie_girl

We rent unfurnished. We are not provided with a lawnmower or gardening tool. It isn't even in the agreement to keep the garden tidy. Lucky for us we have reletives round the corner who we can borrow stuff from. Also we got chatting to a neighbour when we first moved in and was sorting the garden, she lent us a wheel barrow for a few weeks.

franklee

They do not have to supply the equipment AFAIK. Our rented garden is fairly small so we brought a (Challenge I think) hand push cylinder mower from Argos for 20 quid (think that was a sale price). So worth looking there. The supermarkets do shears and secateurs for a few quid. So we got set up for simple garden maintenance for about 26 quid all in.

We did have two lawnmowers and all the gardening stuff when we owned but got rid of it all as our first rental was a flat. We sold our old lawnmower through the small ads in the local paper so worth looking there. That was before I'd even heard of freecycle which I keep meaning to try out.

I can't recommend the hand push highly enough, it's far more manoeuvrable than my previous rotary and not being electric much easier as I don't have to keep flicking the cable out of the way. The grass collection box is naff so I don't use it and just leave the cuttings on the grass. As the mower is small and light it'll be easier to pack when moving too, I'll keep it this time even if we are garden-less after the next move. Enough waffle ours is something like this, brought over a year ago and working fine:

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/7303030/Trail/C%24cip%3D1500006333.Garden%2C%2BDIY%2Band%2Bleisure%3EC%24cip%3D1500006410.Lawnmowers.htm

Guy_Montag

Bah - pour paraquat over the whole garden, that'll leave it neat & tidy - after a fashion!

Generali

Can you get paraquat outside of Agatha Christie novels?

Neighbours are an excellent source of gardening equiptment. Also, if you ask nicely enough they sometimes offer to do the job for you!. (I cite my hedge as an example).

Lavendyr

Thanks, paraquat an especially useful tip The Challenge mower looks perfect to both of us actually, we'll probably look second-hand for one first but assuming our garden won't be very big (we're not looking for a very big place in the first place) that could be perfect.

Cheers again everyone, don't know how I coped before finding this forum sometimes

RHemmings

Lavendyr wrote: »

Thanks If we do have to go for unfurnished, we may at least try to haggle things like a lawnmower into the equation, and if no luck go to second-hand/relatives etc. I will have a look at Freecycle as well, thanks for the tip!

Freecycle is of course, free. But if you don't get a free working mower, you might want to consider a push mower. Quite cheap, and one less internal combustion engine to dirty up the environment and go wrong. You need to mow frequently though as while they seem easy to use, long grass is tricky.

Edit: I must read threads before I reply. I see Frankee has beaten me to it. Though, I think the push-mower we got from Argos looks slightly better (though more expensive) than the one they have now.

porridge

Lavendyr wrote: »

Hello again

As some of you already know OH and I are having to move out of our current rental. The market in our area is very heavily biased towards unfurnished rentals and there is little to nothing in the way of furnished rental around us.

My question is, if we were to rent an unfurnished house with a garden, is there any stipulation that the landlord would still have to provide us with the means of looking after the garden - i.e. a lawnmower?

That's all - though any other advice on renting unfurnished also welcome Many thanks!

Whatever next?, why not just rent a house with a concret backyard?