To be boiling with rage at my 'landlady'?

[FrameyMcFrame]

I've posted on here before about my horrendous landlady, she's always popping round to 'check' things in the house.
This time she said she wanted to check 'the state and condition of the house and garden'

Ok, fair enough. I tidied up a bit and around she came for a good old snoop.
I left her to it and sat in the living room with my two DC.
After 20 minutes of snooping she came back to tell me that the inside of the shower cubicle was dirty... so dirty that if I didn't clean it soon it would 'damage the glass' Not sure how a bit of old shower gel can damage glass
Then she went on to say that the inside of the oven was filthy...and again it was going to damage the glass if not cleaned. It wasn't that dirty, I'd just used oven pride on it the week before!!! When I said this she went through to the kitchen and opened the oven and ran her finger along the back of the oven door and showed me that it was dirty.... obviously I'd missed a bit.

At this point I had to physically restrain myself from telling her to fuck off...
I was so angry afterwards I had to have a glass of wine to calm down

[Hammy02]

I'm sure that by law she has to give notice before she comes round. I don't know whether there is a maximum number of times she can come round. I would hope so. FWIW, I've rented my place for 2 years and its been checked twice. That, to me, is reasonable.

[kitbit]

I take it this is a private let.
You don't have to let her in you know. And it's illegal for her to prevent you from having privacy and the ability to enjoy your own home.
Do you let through an agency?

[knittedbreast]

id say to her "dont worry thats what my deposit is for!"

[Hammy02]

She has to give 24 hours written notice to inspect the property.

[EricNorthmansMistress]

Why are you allowaing her to do this? She is breaking the terms of the tenancy agreement if she is not allowing you to have quiet enjoyment of your home. She has the right to inspect the place every so often as set out in your tenancy agreement but nothing above that. Stick up for yourself!

[pjani]

That is outrageous. I don't know about legals etc but it's totally inappropriate!

[TattyDevine]

Gawd some people shouldn't be landlords/ladies. It takes a bit of detachment and blind faith.

YANBU

[FrameyMcFrame]

She did give notice, and always does in an email. But she's always coming round for some reason... to check the window locks or other spurious reasons.

Is there a maximum amount of times they're allowed to come round?

[Hammy02]

How often does she come round?

From Directgov website...

Tenants' rights include:
?freedom to live in the property undisturbed

[kennypowers]

If you have a standard tenancy agreement, it's usually the tenants responsibility to maintain the interior of the house and the landlord's to deal with anything exterior (but not gardening) or structural. Unless you've got something specific in the contract, this only really matters when you've handed in your notice and she's coming to inspect with a view to returning your deposit. Next time, ask her to specify what she wants to look at and why.

[Plumm]

You are allowed to say no when she requests a visit (I am a landlord and former tenant). Twice a year for an inspection is reasonable and it's what most of the letting agencies will do.

[Hammy02]

My landlady lives overseas but came back to see some relatives. I bumped into her on our high street and asked if she wanted to come and have a cuppa at the house. She declined!

[HumanBehaviour]

I would have hated having her as a landlady.

[saffy85]

Sounds a bit like mine. He comes round every now and then and has a go about the dumbest stuff you can imagine. I guess this is because the house is always pristine when he comes round so he feels he has to moan about something. Last time he came round he informed me that: We have too much stuff. My DD is spoilt and has "too many" toys. I need to be very careful with his properteeee because when I moved in here it was in "excellent" decorative order (was it bollocks).

The only thing he has in his favour is that he texts me and gives aleast 24 hours notice and if I say the day/time he has picked isn't convenient he will reschedule (althouh he don't half moan and it did take me pointing out he couldn't be here without me here, so if he did come round anyway and I wasn't in he would be breaking the law). I actually hate the man with every fibre of my being. And I don't genuinely hate many people. I don't much care for his wife and kids either who came with him last time. His wife actually looked me up and down and I caught one of their DD going through my handbag(!) and the other rifling through my DD's chest of drawers

So glad to get that off my chest. YANBU btw OP.

[BettySwollocksandaCrustyRack]

Yeah, speaking as LL she def has to give notice, she cant just turn up!!! My agency inspect my property every 3 months but obv they would give the tenant notice of this.

She sounds a bit of a nightmare I have to say....christ, she is nit picking over petty stuff, as long as the property is left really clean when you leave its not really her business what state your oven is in. Mine is minging at the moment and needs a bloody good clean

[IntergalacticHussy]

she's only doing this because you're letting her.

She doesn't have the right to let herself in without obtaining your prior consent.

she must give you 24 hours notice if she wants to inspect the property.

she must allow you quiet enjoyment of the property as others have said.

you're going to have to stand up to her big time as others have said. i used to have a landlady like her before i had kids, except i was only (briefly) renting a room.

That was before she scared the bejesus out of me. I mentioned the prospect of getting a sofa for the living room so that we wouldn't have to sit bolt upright after a hard day at work, and maybe, y'know, watch tv together (shock horror).

She went absolutely apeshit, accusing me of trying to turn her house into a dosshouse and walking into the room with this sourpuss face on saying 'I can't believe I was so wrong about you. I thought you were a nice girl!' Yes, because only evil people sit on sofas, you crazy bitch!

Some landlords/ladies are even more interested in controlling their tenants than they are in the money.

S

[kreecherlivesupstairs]

'I thought you were a nice girl'.
I'm a LL and as long as the house is left clean at the end of the tenancy, that's all I am worried about. Mind you, we did have to spend three days last year cleaning and painting after the last lot left. Not sure if they had a sofa or not

[FrameyMcFrame]

Oh God just got an email from her now about the garden...
I'll copy and paste...

'About the garden, as we discussed, it does need urgent attention, as a lot of the shrubs are now very over grown and need to be pruned back as soon as possible. This applies to both the front and the back garden. For this work, bearing in mind that you said you didn't know an awful lot about gardening, I think you're going to need to employ a qualified gardener as there is a real skill to pruning a shrub correctly. The problem always is finding someone good and I'm afraid having now been out of the area for some years I don't have any recommendations. You could try asking Joan and Brian next door. Otherwise you'd need to use Yellow Pages or perhaps look at local notice boards'

The garden looks fine to me, we mow the lawn regularly and the 'shrubs' look fine..

[IntergalacticHussy]

Saffy85, it sounds like you could stand up to your landlord a bit more too. There's no need for him to bring his wife and kids, you could quite reasonably tell them to wait outside or in the car. It's your home, not theirs. If they require an explanation you need only give the example you've sited here of them invading your privacy on a prior occasion.

Tell your landlord he can come in twice a year to inspect the property and no more, and underline the fact that it is only the property he is allowed to inspect: not your children, not their toys and not you. You are engaged with a business transaction with the man, in fact you are probably paying his mortage or allowing him to have a standard of living he would not otherwise enjoy. The fact is, he needs you more than you need him and therefore he must respect your legal rights and boundaries. The tosser.

[MackerelOfFact]

She sounds like a bit of a nightmare. I agree that provided you leave the property in a good and clean condition, the cleanliness at any given point of the tenancy is irrelevant.

I have the opposite problem, it took 5 weeks for my landlord to look at my broken oven and about the sam to investigate the crack which appeared in the eaves which water started to leak through.

[ChippingIn]

Just say 'No' next time. Tell her you have the right to a peaceful occupancy and that she is next entitled to visit in 6 months time. Hopefully that will put a stop to it.

[MumblingRagDoll]

God what a rude cow! Dont' let her do this! When she next wnts to check the house you say.....We will be scheduling one visit a year.....and that is that and it will be at MY leisure....not yours.

[Bucharest]

Blimey.

My Mum is a landlady and has 3 properties. AFAIK, unless the tenants ask her to go round and look at something that needs doing on her side of things, (like she replaced a shower over Christmas at one of the houses) she never sets foot in the place.In fact, one of the houses is next door to my cousin's, and when she goes to my cousin's house she says she always feels a bit embarassed and turns her head in case the tenants think she is snooping.

I'm in rented property here and the landlord (thankfully abroad) always stays on the doorstep saying "ooooh no,no wouldn't dream of it" when he comes over and brings documents or some such round.

Yours sounds like she's really overstepping the boundaries.

[ChippingIn]

Framey - tell her that you are happy with the garden how it is, however, if she wants to pay for someone to come and trim her shrubs (sounds kinky) then you will do your best to accommodate entry to the back garden (sounding worse now! LOL - well, it is Friday!!).