Can I / Should I withold rent?

ProDave

What most on here suggest, is you say to your LL okay I will move out at the end of the month, if you give me £5K

you can do that as you have secured your next rental.

SpiderLegs

steampowered said:

Check if you need a reference from your landlord for the new place.

If you don't need a reference, and if you think that your landlord is going to mess you around with deposit, personally I would be tempted to withhold the final month's rent. Let the landlord take the unpaid rent from the deposit. That stops you having to mess around with a fight under the tenancy deposit scheme and waiting months to receive your deposit back if the landlord starts taking the proverbial.

Doing this would be a breach of your tenancy agreement, as you are required to pay rent on time. Your landlord could bring a small claims court case against you to recover the unpaid rent. However, it would take months for the case to get anywhere near a courtroom, and by then the landlord would have been paid by the TDS scheme.

You are of course assuming that the deposit is enough to cover this unpaid rent plus any genuine deductions.
I don’t know why it’s ok for the tenant to not have the hassle of arbitration but it’s ok to potentially force the LL to have the hassle of pursuing the tenant through small claims.

freesha

You CAN withhold your rent, yes. But you shouldn't.

moneysavinghero

ProDave said:

What most on here suggest, is you say to your LL okay I will move out at the end of the month, if you give me £5K

you can do that as you have secured your next rental.

Not sure the OP has said anything about the LL wanting possession before the 6 months notice they need to give.

AdrianC

SparklyHats said:

agreed, except the point of my logic is that they end up only holding half the cards they do now - keeping the numbers simple if rent is £1000, at the end of this month they 'hold' £1000 + £1500(dep), of which we argue over £1500.  If I don't pay then it's £1500(dep) less the £1000 as a rent deduction so my maximum loss is £500.

No, it doesn't work like that.

Pay - they hold £1,500 deposit. Deductions are taken from that, according to the DPS's adjudication. The remainder is transferred back to you. If the allowable deductions are more than is held, they can take you to court for the remainder.

Don't pay - they hold £1,500 deposit.  Deductions are taken from that, according to the DPS's adjudication. You owe £1,000 rent, which is also deducted from the deposit before the remainder is transferred back to you. If the allowable deductions are more than is held, they can take you to court for the remainder.

steampowered

SpiderLegs said:

You are of course assuming that the deposit is enough to cover this unpaid rent plus any genuine deductions.
I don’t know why it’s ok for the tenant to not have the hassle of arbitration but it’s ok to potentially force the LL to have the hassle of pursuing the tenant through small claims.

I would agree with you entirely if this was a reasonable landlord. However, since the buy-to-let market in the UK is so unregulated with so many dodgy landlords out looking for any excuse to knock money of a deposit, if you know that you have a landlord who is likely to take the mick, it's fair enough to play the game.

The small claims system would normally compensate the claimant with interest at the rate of 8% if the claim is successful, which seems fair recompense for the landlord.

Perhaps the TDS system should require the landlord to give compensation to the tenant if a deposit claim is rejected, so that landlords are discouraged from making vexatious claims. 

SpiderLegs

steampowered said:

SpiderLegs said:

You are of course assuming that the deposit is enough to cover this unpaid rent plus any genuine deductions.
I don’t know why it’s ok for the tenant to not have the hassle of arbitration but it’s ok to potentially force the LL to have the hassle of pursuing the tenant through small claims.

I would agree with you entirely if this was a reasonable landlord. However, since the buy-to-let market in the UK is so unregulated with so many dodgy landlords out looking for any excuse to knock money of a deposit, if you know that you have a landlord who is likely to take the mick, it's fair enough to play the game.

The small claims system would normally compensate the claimant with interest at the rate of 8% if the claim is successful, which seems fair recompense for the landlord.

Perhaps the TDS system should require the landlord to give compensation to the tenant if a deposit claim is rejected, so that landlords are discouraged from making vexatious claims. 

Nobody posting or reading this thread has any idea whether this landlord is reasonable or not.
As to your second claim about there being ‘so many dodgy landlords out looking for any excuse to knock money of (sic) a deposit’, well we can smoke test that fairly easily.

https://www.tenancydepositscheme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Statistical_Briefing_2020_Interactive_Final.pdf

Adjudications as a percentage of tenancy deposits protected

TDP legislation was introduced, in part, in response to concerns that a significant minority of tenants felt that their tenancy deposit was unreasonably withheld and had experienced difficulty in getting their deposit back.

However, the consistent experience of the schemes is that disputes are raised in a low proportion of cases, typically fewer than 1% of tenancy deposits protected.

Above is England & Wales, the rate for 2020 is 0.84% NI is equivalent but Scotland (where LL’s are more regulated I believe?) is higher at 2.79 (2019).


Even if we assume that every dispute results in a win for the tenant (because angelic tenants wouldn’t dare make vexatious defences) then that’s still a pitiful number. So all these vexatious claims that these evil landlords are making don’t actually exist. 

SparklyHats

SpiderLegs said:

Nobody posting or reading this thread has any idea whether this landlord is reasonable or not.
As to your second claim about there being ‘so many dodgy landlords out looking for any excuse to knock money of (sic) a deposit’, well we can smoke test that fairly easily.

Adjudications as a percentage of tenancy deposits protected

TDP legislation was introduced, in part, in response to concerns that a significant minority of tenants felt that their tenancy deposit was unreasonably withheld and had experienced difficulty in getting their deposit back.

However, the consistent experience of the schemes is that disputes are raised in a low proportion of cases, typically fewer than 1% of tenancy deposits protected.

In fairness, I think we do to the first part!

This seems to be an interesting debate of morality versus technicality, but I'm wondering how many of the deposits that are kept by LL's are done so because they're not contested by the outgoing tenant due to circumstamces / ability / education etc etc  (if that's in that report link then forgive me, I'll read it at some point but not today!)

greatcrested

The whole point of the Housing Act 2004 was to provide an independant arbitrator to resolve issues.

No longer can LLs simply decide what deductions tomake.

No longer should tenants decide to withold rent.

In most cases, LLs & tenants now agree between themselves what is fair, since the knowledge by both that the arbitration system exists is enough to prevent obvious unfair deductions.

In those minority of cases where they cannot agree, the arbitrators make the decision independantly on the evidence presented to them.

As an aside, I trust you served proper notice.....?

SparklyHats

As an aside, I trust you served proper notice.....?

Ish.  We were given the s21 with six months, although I suspect I could probably have picked it apart if we had a mind to.  The existing LL knows we're intending to be out asap - and that's fine by us.  We have a great new place lined up, keys tomorrow