Inventory items missing of over £6k and deposit is 2k

silvercar

Check your buildings insurance, landlord building insurance often includes a few thousand pound of contents insurance.

[Deleted User]

BFYZ said:

I’m appalled that only a minimal deposit was taken against the fully furnished property.

A deposit cannot be valued/based on what you think it should be to cover the cost of what you’ve left in the property. I appreciate you had to leave in a hurry and you bought decent furniture intending to use it yourself, but that’s your mistake. If my landlord furnished my home with their expensive stuff and expected me to look after it, I’d tell them to sod off and put it in storage.

If you’re going to let out a fully furnished property, you should only provide furniture you’d be happy to put in a skip after the tenancy has ended. Your tenants have gone one further and stolen the items. 

But the reality is recovering the loss could cost you quite a bit; for your own sanity you might want to consider just claiming for the full deposit and taking the lesson. Factor in that what you say an item is worth does not mean you’ll get it—use insurance company rationale; if the place had burnt down you’d get X amount to purchase similar items, you wouldn’t get back the amount you paid at checkout, nowhere close.

 If the tenants ever reappear, it would still be for you to prove everything. They could claim the bed was broken, mattresses soiled so they disposed of it, etc., and you would then need to prove it wasn’t. Same with the subletting. You need solid evidence that cannot be easily dismissed, which (unfortunately) a lot can be simply by the tenant saying it’s not true, it’s coincidental, wear and tear. 

If you do ever reach court, you could still win but lose on a technicality, eg. compensated with £1 because you won your claim but missed fulfilling a legal obligation such as gas safety check. Before you do anything, make sure you got all your bases covered.

elsien

[Deleted User] said:

BFYZ said:

I’m appalled that only a minimal deposit was taken against the fully furnished property.

A deposit cannot be valued/based on what you think it should be to cover the cost of what you’ve left in the property. I appreciate you had to leave in a hurry and you bought decent furniture intending to use it yourself, but that’s your mistake. If my landlord furnished my home with their expensive stuff and expected me to look after it, I’d tell them to sod off and put it in storage.

If you’re going to let out a fully furnished property, you should only provide furniture you’d be happy to put in a skip after the tenancy has ended. Your tenants have gone one further and stolen the items. 

But the reality is recovering the loss could cost you quite a bit; for your own sanity you might want to consider just claiming for the full deposit and taking the lesson. Factor in that what you say an item is worth does not mean you’ll get it—use insurance company rationale; if the place had burnt down you’d get X amount to purchase similar items, you wouldn’t get back the amount you paid at checkout, nowhere close.

 If the tenants ever reappear, it would still be for you to prove everything. They could claim the bed was broken, mattresses soiled so they disposed of it, etc., and you would then need to prove it wasn’t. Same with the subletting. You need solid evidence that cannot be easily dismissed, which (unfortunately) a lot can be simply by the tenant saying it’s not true, it’s coincidental, wear and tear. 

If you do ever reach court, you could still win but lose on a technicality, eg. compensated with £1 because you won your claim but missed fulfilling a legal obligation such as gas safety check. Before you do anything, make sure you got all your bases covered.

I’m not sure it’s quite that simple. If the tenant has a fully furnished house then if there is a problem with any of the items they inform the letting agents, they don’t  just claim they’ve binned it and bought something else without telling anyone.
That is what a good inventory is for, to show what condition everything is in at the beginning of the tenancy. 

But if you are going to take them into small claims court, you need to know where they are. Do you?

Have you reported them for theft? Police won’t do anything but it should still put a record on the system.

Grumpy_chap

BFYZ said:

a) Tenants have left and owed 2.5 months of rent which they didn’t pay although it’s covered via Goodlord Policy that my agent took out at the time of inception of the tenancy. 

b) There is furniture missing and left with few damaged walls and 2 doors.  Who is liable for this if deposit was only 2k and the damage is in access of 6k

c) I had buildings insurance and another insurance though agent to cover legal expense and rent protection but none of these cover contents. 

there are about 600-1000 unopened letters which I recovered from property after taking possession that were mostly demanding debt from the tenants.

With all that debt chasing the tenants, you won't recover anything from them even if you find where they are now.  If you do know where the tenants are, you could try a small-claims case but that will cost you money to do and increase your losses even if it makes you feel better the tenants have another black mark against them.  

As for the losses, you are down to what is covered by the various insurances in place, namely the buildings cover and the rent protection policy.  You may be covered for some of the losses (damaged walls and doors) but not others (missing furniture), or vice-versa.

The letting agent is not liable for insurance you did not take.

Good luck in resolving.

Gycraig

Sorry but take some responsibility, you rented out a house you owned via an agent. You left a lot of expensive stuff in the house, you chose not to take out contents cover.

keep as much of the 2k deposit as possible strike it down as a bad go and move on. Trying to blame everyone but yourself isn’t helping you. 

I would be wondering how they passed the credit checks if their credit is bad to the point there’s hundreds of letters hounding them for money 

Olinda99

Probably a silly question, but isn't the removal and keeping of items of furniture etc theft, and thus a criminal offence?

pinkshoes

BFYZ said:

Agents had an email that it was being left under the mat outside the main door. They have since gone inside and it’s pretty much empty apart from the garage where some of their stuff is still left behind. I presume that would now go to the skip. 

I’m appalled that only a minimal deposit was taken against the fully furnished property. I might have to take this matter to courts as a civil dispute with the help of police report. 

As the owner of the house, it was up to you to decide a deposit amount that you wanted and agree this with the agent. The agent works for you.

You also needed to take out CONTENTS insurance for your own belongings in the house as you were renting it furnished e.g. if there was a fire, you would need to claim these on your own insurance along side the buildings insurance for anything fitted that buildings insurance covers.

In theory you could report the theft of the furniture to the police, and then take the TENANTS to court (the people listed on the tenancy) for the cost of replacing these. You would need to claim the second hand replacement cost (so 13 months of the tenancy plus the few months you had them) as you cannot claim their new value.

As for their belongings, then contact the original tenant and state that they need to collect their belongings otherwise you will dispose of them in 28 days time. If there is anything of value then perhaps sell it and put the money aside. If the tenants sublet it, they will then have to find the people they sublet it to.

Schwarzwald

Gycraig said:

Sorry but take some responsibility, you rented out a house you owned via an agent. You left a lot of expensive stuff in the house, you chose not to take out contents cover.

keep as much of the 2k deposit as possible strike it down as a bad go and move on. Trying to blame everyone but yourself isn’t helping you. 

I would be wondering how they passed the credit checks if their credit is bad to the point there’s hundreds of letters hounding them for money 

Quite surprised about the neagtive attitude in the first place vs the OP ….

yes sure not taking out contents insurance was a mistake and over-furnishing the rental too, but hey, in the first place the bad acting tenants are to blame for stealing these items!

Sure the OP shld have taken out insurance against it and yes should take responsibility for jot doing this.

in any case i would try to file a crimjnal report against the tenant for straling these items and also file a small claims court case. The costs are relatively little vs the already incurred loss and while unlikely to recover the losses, sounds like the right thing to do.

beyond that, probably time to write this loss off and move on having learnt this lesson a hard and expensive way

Schwarzwald

InOlinda99 said:

Probably a silly question, but isn't the removal and keeping of items of furniture etc theft, and thus a criminal offence?

More knowledgeable readers can advise differently, but i would agree that simply removing inventory items from a rental without consent from the landlord sounds pretty much like theft and stealing. 

[Deleted User]

elsien said:

I’m not sure it’s quite that simple. If the tenant has a fully furnished house then if there is a problem with any of the items they inform the letting agents, they don’t  just claim they’ve binned it and bought something else without telling anyone.
That is what a good inventory is for, to show what condition everything is in at the beginning of the tenancy. 

Under normal circumstances, yes, agreed, if you have a good tenant.

But this is dealing with liars and thieves, not everyday tenants. When the LL pursues them for losses they’re going to come back with all sorts of nonsense. And stuff like mattresses are considered disposable; last I heard if you’re going to provide a mattress it should be new and wrapped and not reused for another tenant. If claimed for, they’d likely get nothing back for a mattress regardless of what it cost them to buy. Things like this will. It all makes for a massive amount of hassle for the OP. I’m not saying they shouldn’t pursue this, if they want to they should, but they won’t get anything near what they paid for the items, once they’ve found their tenant, that is. 

I doubt the tenant will surface. And even if they did, they’re probably pros at this, know the regs and everything and how to jump through the legal hoops. Plus, they’re likely in debt, so no money to give. LL could win the claim and still get naff all back, in addition to the cost of pursuing it.

My take is fully furnished is at the landlord’s risk under any circumstance, and I could say I did report damage but was ignored. They deny. My word. Their word. Inconclusive. Can I be made to pay for something that cannot be proved either way? Not so sure. It would end up with some compromise, token gesture; you want this, say it’s worth this much, I kick off, say it was poorly made and unlikely to last six months, here, have a tenner as recompense. Judge nods, yes, that’s fair, get out of my court room, I’m exhausted with this.

Not having the correct insurance in place is another clock up. Everything considered, trying to hold on to the full deposit and forgetting the rest would be—difficult to accept, but sensible. Small claims on the rent arrears maybe, but anything for the furniture I can’t see being worthwhile. Damage to the walls, etc, would surely be judged as covered under the deposit.