£1550 unreasonable to take ?

[Ttcfinalbub]

We moved out of our home recently 2 weeks before we had to. At the same time I suffered a misscariage oh had to work mental hours to cover the dual rent period. We had decorated 2 rooms ( 2 m x 3m and 2.5 x 3m ) and had planned to put them back to normal but with my situation we just couldn't practically do it so we're prepared to pay a large amount from deposit. The landlord has come back saying she is taking the full deposit plus seeking 'more money '. Invenotry check out has issues with decorating- of course thats on us as is one carpet needing cleaned ( 2m by 3m) of course and slight limescale. We've had qoutes ranging from 350 - 700 for decorating £60 intense carpet cleaning. So where on earth does this amount to £2000 ? Is this reasonable ?

Yay! That's great news. Thanks for updating.

Brilliant!

So long as you have contacted the landlord (and they haven't replied) I believe you are then able to go to the deposit scheme. It sounds excessive. But are there any other issues? I suppose you don't know until they respond !

Fab, well done OP. I always recommend people to go down deposit resolution route but for some reason tenants are worried to do it. (Speaking as a landlord)

Hope your claim goes well OP. I had a similar issue with a landlord. Their "quote" (which we never actually saw!!) was significantly higher than the quotes I'd got myself.

She tried to keep £1k. I got £800 of it back. I'm sure I would have got the full amount back if I'd taken photos on the day of our move. So that's something I learnt if I ever rent again!!

Just saw you've already got back most of the money! Well done

Congratulations!!!!!!!

it's good to see the protection in action!!

Not all LL are scum but the scummy ones are bloody dreadful!!!

Brilliant outcome. Well done OP, and well done those who gave such good advice.

Your deposit should be in a client money account, this is in a public register, google and check the register. If it isn’t you can take her to court, threaten to do that. Also, you can take her to small claims court if she doesn’t repay less the damage. Get quotes yourself as to how much the ‘damage’ would cost to put right.

The property doesn’t need to be in the same condition. Definitely go through the dispute process. We did the same and went from landlord asking for £1750 to us giving £0. The contract should consider fair wear and tear and you just need to prove the odd scuff to the wall or discolouring of tiles / carpet is within usual, normal use in a well cared for house.

Sorry! Didn’t realise this was a resolved post. Well done OP.

good result op

does anyone remeber a thread from last year where a pregnant woman was leaving a rental and the ll wanted similar sort of money fro redecoration-cant find it and was wondering about the outcome

Why did you move out two weeks before you had to?

Great news!

The Deposit Scheme is brilliant.

We had our last estate agents trying it on when we moved into our owned home from rented. Having been renters for years, we were savvy.

The house was pretty tumbledown when we moved in and we documented all issues that were never resolved.

We also paid for a full professional clean as we know they'll try to trip you up on this.

They tried to claim we had damaged some woodwork and had to laugh when the outgoing inventory showed 'dust behind the radiators'. It was all the could come up with.

They emailed us to airily let us know that they would be taking the costs out of our damage, but fortunately we knew our rights so we told them they'd need to claim through the protection service.

Turns out they hadn't has it professionally cleaned before we moved in so they were told to jog on as we 'left it in better condition than it was received'.

They were claiming £800. They got £50 for weeding the garden (which we were happy to concede so we didn't have to do it).

Well done for getting your money back OP.

We rented for a year between house moves. Our landlord (Foxtons) quoted us over £4k for redecoration when we moved out. They said they would ‘compromise’ by keeping our deposit of c£2k. I had to cross reference the inventory check in/check out and go through all their quotes comparing them to market prices. Their quotes came from their subsidiary company so well inflated - they quoted us £240 to change a doorknob (it had broken and we had replaced it with very similar). They also wanted every room repainted which was madness given we’d only be there for 10 months.

I was outraged that even with the protection of the TDS, that a well known agency could treat customers in such a way. As well as taking them to the TDS I put in a formal complaint to the Agency which got me nowhere - as expected.

The TDS found in our favour - we paid an insignificant amount for a couple of small items (which I still felt hard done by !) a couple of hundred quid or so - but had I been less clued up or assertive I would’ve just handed over my deposit and been glad they hadn’t charged me £4k.

It took a few weeks to go through the TDS and it was extremely stressful as we hadn’t expected to have to fight so hard for our money back. £240 for a doorknob - makes me laugh now (through gritted teeth).

I would leave it to the deposit protection scheme. Our old landlord tried to take all our deposit and kept ringing to 'negotiate' we left it to them and got all our money back as they go on the evidence.

We disputed when we moved out of rented and they awarded the landlord 0. We’d been there 12 years so they said it was reasonable for him to have to redecorate after that length of time. Plus there was no inventory from the beginning of the tenancy.