Disputing deductions from deposit

[SmiteYouWithThunderbolts]

I posted here a couple of months ago about the house I was renting and a problem with sewage leaking up through the lounge floor. We ended up having to leave the house and move elsewhere as the repair efforts turned up asbestos beneath the laminate flooring and everything went wrong from there.

We've since been told that we won't get a penny of our deposit back because of various decorating works elsewhere in the house and the garden becoming overgrown.

Most of the redecoration they've quoted needed to be done before we moved in and you can see on the inventory that the walls were dirty and scuffed anyway. I'm confident that 80% of it is down to wear and tear.

The rest is complicated. The garden became overgrown because we couldn't live in the house from March - May so weren't present to mow the lawn or weed the flower beds. If we'd been able to live in the house up 'til we moved out, we would have kept the garden tidy as a matter of course. It was actually horribly overgrown when we moved in anyway.

The two bedrooms that the kids used DID sustain some damage, in the form of scribbles on the wall. Like the garden, if we'd been living there at the end of the tenancy, we would have repainted. We would have been happy to go in and do that anyway but the contractor who discovered the asbestos told us it wasn't safe to enter the property, so we had to keep all our access to the bare minimum just to remove our personal effects.

I took legal advice from Shelter who said that the state of the property and the fact that it took so long to get anyone out to carry out repairs puts the landlord in breach of contract. The letting agents agreed with this which is how we were able to surrender the tenancy immediately without giving the statutory month's notice. With that in mind, where do we stand now that the landlord is trying to hold us to contractual obligations with the deposit?

We spoke to the deposit scheme people today and will open a dispute, but I'd like any insight as to how this is likely to go. It's such a complex situation, far removed from the usual disagreement about deposits! We're yet to claim for damages, but we lost about £400 in earnings through emergency leave to get our stuff out of the lounge, it cost us a fortune in storage boxes, and we had to stay 10 miles away with family for 6 weeks and pay out for buses & taxis to & from school everyday. We're at least £600 out of pocket even before we think about the deposit!

Anyone have any thoughts?

[Ogg]

Counter sue

[RenterNomad]

Who told you you wouldn't "get a penny back"? If it was the LL/agent, that us only their claim. Write back disputing that, and Ogg has a great idea of counter-suing. After all, your deposit is extra money to the LL/agent, but is already your money, whereas you spent more of your own money due to their negligence. Their/the LL's money now has to be put in play. Especially given that they shirked their responsibility to pay to rehouse you when the property was uninhabitable!

[Ogg]

Are you i midwales by any chance op?

[SmiteYouWithThunderbolts]

Sorry, Ogg, SE England.

I got an email from the agent breaking down all the redecorating they want to do in the house, and it says at the end:

"We shall, therefore, be refunding £0.00 to you as soon as we receive the signed copy letter to confirm your acceptance of the above costs."

I've also downloaded the "Pre-action Protocol for Housing Disrepair", which is what Shelter directed me to. Is that the best route to go down for counter-suing?

At what point should I give up talking to the letting agent and just open the dispute? I can't help but feel that the agent and landlord are deliberately stalling at the moment.

[Ogg]

If you were not genuinely able to live in the house the landlord was obligated to provide you with accommodation and expenses - I would perhaps see a solicitor for a free half hours advice and may be an hours paid advice. You do not need a solicitor to actually sue them but you do sound like you could do with some expert advice with all the paperwork and evidence in front of them as they sound like they are pushing for betterment. What does in the original inventory say ? Who decided the house was unlivable in ?

[SmiteYouWithThunderbolts]

The house became uninhabitable at the end of March after a drain underneath the extension blocked and raw sewage leaked up through the lounge floor.

The lounge/diner was the only reception room and the only access to the kitchen so we had no living space that wasn't contaminated by sewage. The lettings agents first stated that this made the house unsuitable for occupation and they offered us immediate surrender of the tenancy.

We didn't want to move unless necessary, and there were no suitable properties within easy distance of my children's school, so we opted to stay with family while the repair work was done. We asked about the landlord finding alternative accommodation but they kept saying they needed their insurance company to declare the house uninhabitable, which just never seemed to happen.

However, the landlord waited 3 weeks in between getting Dyno-rod to unblock the drain and sending a builder in to rip up the laminate flooring, during which time the moisture soaked about 2 feet up the wall, ruining the plaster as well. When the contractors did go in to strip out the floor and plaster and put down antibacterial spray, they reported back that the tiles underneath the laminate floor contained asbestos. Because the tiles were cracked and breaking up, the asbestos wasn't in situ, so they said we must stay out of the property unless absolutely necessary.

That's the point at which we decided we couldn't wait around and needed to move to a new house entirely. It took a further fortnight for a specialist asbestos company to remove the tiles and test them to confirm the presence of asbestos, by which time we had left the property and were living in our new home.

Two of the bedrooms do admittedly need repainting because of marks my children made on the wall which I accept are beyond fair wear and tear. We would have painted it ourselves before leaving if it was just an ordinary end of tenancy, but because the contractors told us the house was a health risk, we couldn't/didn't want to spend any more time in there than it took to remove our personal effects. The rest of the decorating they're trying to sting us for is no more than wear and tear on top of badly scuffed walls that needed painting before we moved in.

The original inventory is pretty damning. It describes the house as being very dirty throughout, walls scuffed and marked everywhere, carpets in need of replacing, toilet seat cracked etc. There's a whole crazy history there too, but it's not really relevant here. Suffice it to say, this house has been a nightmare from start to finish!

Sorry for the essay. There's just so much information to plough through.

[RenterNomad]

Bloody hell! Definitely don't accept a penny of deductions, and take legal advice on what you can claim from them! Their negligence is disgusting! Poor you, for having faced such foul conditions.

As for the marks on the walls, stress to a solicitor/CAB/Shelter that you had no chance to make good*, because of the property's state.

Astonishingly grasping people, your LLs!

[SmiteYouWithThunderbolts]

Thanks, RenterNomas. Looking at it written down like that, it really hits home how badly the landlords have handled this. I can't wait to draw a line under this whole experience and finally say we're free of that house.

We're gathering all our evidence to start a dispute through the deposit scheme's adjudication service, so hopefully that will get our money back. Their website says disputes typically take 2 - 3 months to resolve though

[SmiteYouWithThunderbolts]

Whoops! Sorry for the typo in your name, RenterNomad

[SmiteYouWithThunderbolts]

Can I ask for a bit more help?

I've had an email from the letting agent this afternoon asking me to confirm if I've started proceedings yet and saying the landlord intends to take this to the small claims court.

What exactly could they take us to court for? I don't understand how the landlord could initiate any kind of proceedings against us? Is this just a ploy to try and frighten us off...?

I think I'm going to have to go and find a solicitor :/

[RenterNomad]

Have you raised the dispute with the deposit protector (e.g. TDS)? If you haven't, do, as you will need to do it anyway. If you haven't, perhaps that apparent passiveness (sorry) is what's given the LL/agents the confidence (that you will roll over) to go on fishing?

Look into the small claims process that the same time (are your extra travel and other expenses receipted?)

If you want to reply, a simple: "Thank you for ypur letter. We look forward to reading your grounds." is hopefully neutral enough.

Good luck!

[SmiteYouWithThunderbolts]

We're about 80% of the way through submitting evidence to the deposit protection scheme but we haven't finalised it yet. I rang them this evening and they said a consultant will call me back in the morning, so I don't know whether to finish off submitting it tonight or wait 'til I've spoken to them.

[RenterNomad]

Thinking about it, surely the LL can't get anything from small claims, as any claim is what the deposit is for, in the first instance! A small claims court should, properly, turn them away until any deposit adjuducation (there's your argument, if they are greedy/aggressive enough to try that).

I don't have any experience with the legal side of hsrassment, but it sounds as though it's going that way. Therefore, log these communications, too, and contact the 101 police non emergency number for advice on that? That's not a matter for a solicitor yet, either (at least, not for you!).

[RenterNomad]

Glad your other thread is attracting much more advice now. Hope you manage to get a good night's rest as a result.

[SmiteYouWithThunderbolts]

Thanks, so do I. It's not good lying awake at night stewing over this! Thank you for all the advice.

[RenterNomad]

Ah, the other advice is better than mine

[CelticPromise]

Hello Smite what an arsehole your landlord is! Just wanted to say, my parents had a deposit dispute with a landlord a couple of years ago and had all their deposit returned. It took a few weeks but all resolved in their favour. Also, if you end up in the small claims court you won't need a solicitor- most people self represent and the paperwork bits can be done online and are not too complicated. I think you should definitely claim against the LL for your expenses when the house wasn't habitable.

Good luck.