I fucking hate letting agents and crappy landlords who take the piss

[ouda]

Just want to get that off my chest.

Have had a broken front door for 6 years. So I have to use the back.
Rising damp throughout, major dampproofing problem but no one gives a fuck
Every window had the double glazing blown. I pay £1000 a month for this shit

But yea you want to increase the rent again.
Fucking assholes.

Agree with the OP; kindly bog off with any landlord "whatabouttary".

I haven't had to deal with a crappy landlord since university, but our agents this time around are twats. I posted on here over the summer, when children and I got home from a morning out to find the front door of our flat wide open, our furniture and possessions shoved to one side and a strange man varnishing the floors. We'd had no warning and had certainly not given permission. Agents were fairly unrepentant; apparently they "thought we'd be on holiday"

NALALT

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Especially as OP says specifies crappy landlords who take the piss.

Also here to rant. Want to leave this property. £80 pounds to check out
Need a reference to leave. £36. I thought ok a rip off but could be worse. Next day I found out through the referencing place they are still waiting for my tenant reference. Didn't realise it was £36 per person! We live in the same bloody place! So as expensive as it is on agency fees to move to another property, i have to also pay that much to leave a property! It will be nearly 3000 to move to another rented place

Currently planning to take my ex-landlord to court over costs we have incurred as a result of them failing to pay up the undisputed parts of our deposit, months after we moved out. Will pursue the disputed parts through the usual channels of course.

Letting agent has decided to make up a huge random fee for check out inventory charges (which was never stated anywhere in anything we ever agreed to or even referred to) and magically deduct it from our deposit. That's not going to happen either, matey.

Letting agent is barely literate. Despite signing every email and meeting her in person numerous times over many years, she still addresses every email to the wrong name (I have a very boring, common name so hardly difficult to spell) and ignores my DH completely (even though he also signs every email)! Letting agencies do really seem to employ absolutely the lowest common denominator, people who can't write, spell, use grammar, or have manners.

Back before TDS was invented my landlord:
Hadn't moved out himself by our moving in day. We got given keys and unlocked to find a fully furnished, messy flat with unmade beds, clothes on the floor, old food in the fridge, and a decent size pot stash complete with rizla in the living room
WE packed up all his stuff then gave him a day to move it out. Not even a thank you
We bought our own beds as he took his. He then claimed £££s off our deposit for the beds we'd stolen
He claimed money off our deposit for mouse treatment needed after we moved out, saying the flat has never had a rodent problem. Luckily we had taken photos of receipts of rat poison treatment pinned up in the kitchen before we moved in
He claimed a lot of money off for cleaning, even though we had photos of literal mould frozen into the back of the manky old fridge which we'd cleaned off, and mountains of crumbs in the kitchen etc, as well as normal dirt from a single man living in a flat on his own who them went on a mo th long holiday and hadn't cleaned up beforehand

The crooked estate agent wankworth I'm looking at you then conspired with him to sell the flat while we were wrangling over the deposit with their own lettings dept, so one day he'd just moved to Spain with our £2k deposit. Short of applying for his extradition there was nothing we could do.
Still angry about this 15 yrs later.

I occasionally Google him. He's a vaguely known song writer, think he won an Ivor Novello. If he ever becomes well know I will go to the papers with this story and try to get my money back, cunt

So glad the TPS came in, but clever landlords still find a way round it to be bastards

I'm a landlord at the moment - short term necessity, and I've been bloody brilliant. If anyone wants to send their arsehole landlords to me for advice on how to treat tenants with respect and decency please feel free

Tenants not paying the rent, and then lengthy waits at every point of the legal process resulting in loss of revenue for 5 to 6 months due to our overworked courts, doesn't exactly benefit tenants. The more landlords who sell up, the less property available, the higher the rents. Plus landlords increasingly rejecting hb and uc applicants due to high rent arrears building up is leading to an even more chronic housing rental market. That is due to the admin system of those benefits. In what way is the lack of affordable housing the fault of landlords?

I agree! Hate estate agents and landlords! Only had one good one and that was my first one when I was a student.

One estate agents was actually malicious truly malicious personally to us as well as shit. It was years ago so can't remember what was said exactly but he had a right go at me on the phone. Couldn't believe it.

This landlord is better than the last one as he does actually fix the less expensive things. Last one was just shit full stop. But there are 2 things which have needed sorting since we moved in and he won't do them, made up a reason but it's clearly just because it's an expensive thing to do.

I am now single (used to be in this property on joint tenancy) and so had to have a guarantor for my sole tenancy agreement cos according to their stupid rules I wouldn't have been able to afford it. I resent that.i can afford it. Estate agents also lie.

I had a great landlord when I rented for 18 months.
However the estate agents were absolute shit .

You know what's annoying about landlords coming onto this thread and moaning about tenants?

They own two fucking properties. You own two properties and you're moaning about someone being a shitty tenant. Yes, there are shitty tenants who take the piss BUT YOU OWN TWO PROPERTIES.

Tenants are spunking their own hard earned money on your mortgage every bloody month. Sorry, but this thread is not the place for your complaints.

My ex landlord deserves a place in this thread.

When I pointed out all the various damp and mould to him he told me to "buy some of that damp paint and just put that on it" he did nothing to the property for 13 years and then gave me notice expecting me to move out within 6 weeks. Fortunately he'd worded the eviction letter wrong so I left it a few weeks and then told him, he then got a letting agent/estate agent to do the eviction letter and they got the letter wrong too.

When we eventually moved out he tried to withhold the deposit, due to the damp issues fortunately his cousin, who was joint owner, told him to shut up and just wrote me a cheque.

He was selling the house and the one next door for over £500k and wanted to keep my £400 deposit....bastard. And he refused to write a reference as I paid the rent a couple of days late a few times....in 13 years

Fortunately my new landlord realised that I must have been paying okay otherwise I wouldn't have been there that long.

I feel for anyone who has a bad landlord, must be so stressful. But I just wanted to say op we are not all bad honestly. I'm a landlord and leave my tenants to enjoy their home in peace. The can do what they like there as it should be . The have set up a business from home, redecorated to their own tastes and massively changed the garden. Any issues they have we sort as soon as we possibly can. The boiler was old but still working fine but not very efficient so we put a new boiler in to help them pay less on bills. So not all landlords are bonkers.
Sounds like you've had really bad luck with a run of landlords. There definitely needs to be some kind of system where tenants get to vet landlords before commuting to a tenancy. A system like that could weed out the awful landlords and make the whole system so much better. Hope your next landlord is better op

Tenants are spunking their own hard earned money on your mortgage every bloody month. Sorry, but this thread is not the place for your complaints.

It's not just landlords that posters are having a go at. Those that work in estate agents have been called 'the lowest common denominator'.

I have been a tenant in the past and have had good and bad landlords before anyone jumps down my throat.

I e had bad experiences.

I saw a house I liked. Letting agent told me to put 150 down as a holding deposit. Did so. A day or two later, letting agent calls to say that unfortunately, the owner of the house is decided to not rent the house, therefore it isn't available for the foreseeable future. I'm disappointed but hey ho. Request my 150 back to be told that no, sorry, that money is the property of the estate agents and non refundable (under those 'particular' circumstances) it took long phone calls, me being fobbed off, me sticking to my guns and my husband getting involved for them to give me back my money. We both agreed our suspicions that the LA do this frequently as a nice little side earner.

We've had awful, dangerous LL and dont-give-a-damn LA.
Bad wiring, safety certificates that are worth nothing more that the toilet paper you wipe your bum with. Skips of junk in the back or front that are 'promised'will be dealt with But are left months, or longer on the property.
LL assigning unqualified individuals to work the repairs in the house because ha! it's cheaper, duh! Fuck our safety and our lives. Hey! He's my cousin/uncle/drinking buddy, that's good enough.
Really really crap workmanship. No pride. Cowboys the lot of them. Who lays laminate flooring over a carpet? The kitchen fitted out with units that were the cheapest, nastiest, bought from the bargain section, may-be-broken-here-or-there, selling off dirt cheap to get rid of them as no one wants them - kitchen units. So bad to look at, and so poorly installed. But hey, the LL thinks it'll do because THEY don't need to live there, just shove it in place and then fuck off.
Mould, damp, uninhabitable bathrooms and rooms that are off bounds because of the disrepair. They still charge full rent though. Hobsons choice. Beggars can't be choosers and they bloody well know it.

I’ve had some fantastic LLs in the past who’ve understood (and played by) all the rules; been accessible but not overbearing.

Our current one is dreadful. Nothing gets fixed.

The bathroom wall is damp - they’ve used damp paint twice but it bubbles through. Her builder came to repaint it just before Christmas and kicked a hole in the bottom of the wall - guess what, it’s still not repaired.
They don’t understand that you need to give notice if you’re coming round. I’d just returned from holiday, was horribly jet lagged and they turned up at 8am with a plumber to do some works. No prior warning because they said it was external (!), no access required - next thing I know plumber knocks on door and strides in and starts running the sink!

And yes, we urgently need a landlord vetting scheme in this country. As this thread amply demonstrates. Many of these landlords should be in jail; instead they are allowed to continue endangering the lives of others with impunity.

I’ve worked in housing for years - landlords - what ever they believe do not have it hard - possession without a reason, rent increases willy nilly, and no legal aid for disrepair issues (see Grenfell).

I’d like a return to assured tenancies, and rent control, like Scotland.

Can I ask what you mean by assured tenancies? Cos the type of tenancies are assured shorthold tenancies aren't they.

Assured tenancies are mainly offered by housing associations. They are not time limited unlike ASTs.

This will probably go down badly with you lot, but if you appraise yourself of the law, you would realise these are all issues that have a legal remedy, including disrepair. However one of the problems is the withdrawal of legal aid for most housing issues. Without a legal aid system to enable people to challenge landlords who are breaking the law, the laws that are in place go unenforced. There are so many issues with housing in this country, it's difficult to know where to start, but that might be a good place.

I suppose the other thing is that local authorities have been able to challenge successfully in the past, but now are seriously underfunded and assisting in civil housing matters is something they now dodge quite successfully in some LAs.

My own thoughts are the vitriol should probably be directed toward the current administration who talk a lot about our 'broken housing market' but fail miserably to do anything about it. You can pass all the laws you like, but they aren't even ensuring compliance to the ones we do have that are robust enough but aren't being effectively enforced.

So are you saying assured tenancies are just like a rolling contact rather than a 6 month one??

I find the arguing on this thread quite interesting. One side: some landlords are rubbish because of these entirely understandable reasons. other side: Some tenants are also rubbish because of these perfectly valid reasons. Both sides mock each other and intend to undermine each other in their responses.

Essence of thread: Things get shit sometimes for everyone and it's really annoying and unfair when you're the one being treated badly by whoever happens to be doing it and whatever position they happen to hold.

An assured shorthold tenancy is a type of assured tenancy. They are governed by the Housing Act 1988 amongst others. You can find a copy of it along with most other legislation on www.legislation.gov.uk/.

I think one of the issues around both landlords and tenants is knowing the law. Often neither do, and therein lies the problems. Aside from a few grey areas the statutory duties of a landlord are fairly clear and it is pretty disgraceful that they aren't always fulfilled. That's a matter of enforcement not changing the law. The laws are there, but there needs to be enforcement for it to be worth anything. If you are a tenant, knowing the law is empowerment.