Those of you who rent, do you nest or not bother?

[KnittedBreast]

I privatly rent my house and this is the first one I am determined to settle in. This means I need to stop looking at similar budgets in cheaper parts of the UK and depressing myself. I am currently doing up my house, today i went looking at oak to make shelves (didnt realise how expensive oak was, looks like wel only be getting 2 shelves this month!)

to those of you who rent, do you bother to make your home your own knowing it isnt yours and yo could be asked to move, all that wasted time and money etc...

I never used to but having realised unless someone dies il never buy ive decided to do it, fuck the deposit (like il ever see it again anyway). ive painted walls and put up coat things and am planning on shelves and outisde ornaments. Its my little bit of paradise even if i wouldnt chose to live in this house if i had the choice to move

no, not at all tracey :) i don't want to threadjack but the thing with my friend is, kind of, sorted. well, as sorted as it can be while she is still married to that cocklodging freak. she contacted me a couple of days before the wedding to sort things out, and we are still friends, although her dh basically still hates me and doesnt want us to be! long story....

To revert to landlords - totally agree with thing about avoiding emotionally attached landlords, but basically my advice is to meet/speak to the landlord before signing anything and certainly before handing over any money. Our ex-landlady was a complete nutter - phoned us up the night before moving in to tell us - contrary to what the letting agent had told us - that we weren't allowed to use the loft. Too late as we were all packed up to move the next day, but what were we supposed to do with the contents of our full loft?

She did things like look inside our bins and post us notes through the door telling us not to put food waste in the green bin specifically designated for it because it attracts maggots - well what the eff were we supposed to do with it then??!

She would demand to come round unannounced, failed to do any gas safety checks until we actually smelt gas, and then sent round an unqualified friend to fiddle with it.

The last laugh was ours - we've just (nearly 6 months after moving out) got all our deposit back - the adjudicator threw out her claim for the whole lot! She claimed for things like 5 freezer drawers (the freezer only had 3 drawers... ).

Completely bonkers.

I'd advise anyone to rent off a reputable agency and get everything in writing. Remember that without an independent or mutually agreed check-out inventory as well as the same at check-in, the landlord can't actually claim anything - their 'word' no longer counts for proof, mercifully.

Make sure you get your annual gas safety checks done if you live somewhere with gas - or it's a criminal offence and your landlord can get sent down for it.

Criminal offence for your landlord not you - but you can potentially die from carbon monoxide poisoning, which is why it matters.

We tend to buy stuff we can take with us ( new rugs, furniture, curtains etc) we have been moved in by landlords three times in the last 5 years and unfortunately had to borrow money last time as we hadnt jad time to save a deposit etc, so will be a while before we can spend again!

Reputable agency? Is there such a thing?

I've only had rip off merchants for agents, punk ass agents treating us with contempt.

so far, we have only rented through agencies and were very happy both times. repairs are done quickly and well they are also good at communicating.
after hearing horror stories from colleagues who rent privately, I would always use an agency.

"Reputable agency? Is there such a thing?

I've only had rip off merchants for agents, punk ass agents treating us with contempt"

Funnily enough as a Landlord I feel exactly the same

I had a 7mth battle with my last agent for them to return the £220 + VAT they had deducted from the first months rental income for the check out service that they hadn't yet paid for and would have to for at least 18mths as my tenants were on an 18mth fixed contract.

They couldn't understand why I wasn't happy for them to have that money just sitting in their bank accounts on the basis that I would have to pay it anyway

I don't own the house, but it is my home and I will be buying some nicer things for it now. The last place DH, DD and I were in I didn't cause it was always considered a halfway house, but this place is it. We'll be here till we buy. Won't be painting, but that's why you buy art. And I can't wait to get the patio garden up and running; won't have deer eating all lettuce this year!

Buy bits and pieces here and there and it will all come together. Its your home in the end.

Oh, yy, Nancy, I know a lot of LL's who've been taken for a ride by agencies.

The last place we rented, through Gumtree, teh agency was not paying the rent to the LL. He thought his tenant wasn't paying rent and didn't find out the truth until he initiated court procedings.

The agency then folded and ran off with about £3000 of his rent money!

Plus all he'd paid them to get the tenant.

breadandbutterfly - at my last property we did not have a mutually agreed check-out. The LL was still awarded £1K - even the TDS staff couldnt understand the Adjudicators decision and never heard anything back when I complained.

I spend hundreds, if not thousands making that hovel habitable - never again!

I don't really remember what agency we dealt with in finding our flat in Kilburn, London, but we dealt with the landlord after the initial set up for viewing the flat. Sounds like a lot of people have had terrible experiences with agencies. Here in Canada, we have an incredible landlord/tenant act, heavy in favour of the tenant and rarely are flats rented out through management agency's, although the one we are in right now is, funnily enough. But it is all very secure in documents and such.

We've rented in the UK, Canada and the US in the last few years as well as having our home in the UK let (but don't worry we are not emotionally attached to it).

The safeguards in the UK were by far the strongest. In the US we had to put up a very large deposit and pay the agency fee for finding the flat. In Canada there was virtually no paperwork and it was all very informal. In both cases we had very nice landlords, but if there had been a problem we would have had very little legal recourse. In the US we had to leave after three months (dh's job fell through and we had to leave the country) but we were bound to pay the full years rent unless they let immediately (which they luckily did) and we didn't get our deposit back for about six months.

The deposit scheme and the independent check in and out plus the extensive legal contract in the UK seem pretty good for both tenant and LL.

nooka Each province is a little different. In BC, I've signed and filled in lots of paper work but only half months security deposit which is legally to be mailed out to you two weeks after you vacate the property. In Ontario, you pay first and last months rent and security deposit of about $100. If you aren't signing the proper paperwork or its an informal rental, then yes, you can get stung unfortunately, but I think that goes for anywhere. The onus is up to you to protect yourself. I don't know about the US.

Lol - no one told our landlords that then (we live in BC) we signed a one page agreement - compared with the thick document pack in the UK. I expect the US stuff varies from state to state. But the US and UK lets were through an agency, so you may be right it might just be the difference between formal and informal.

nooka That's a shame. I know there are lots of 'illegal' rental flats in BC. My uncle's flat isn't registered and he tried to stick it to me, but I was lucky enough to know and so he actually would have got into more trouble if I pursued legal action, which he threatened me with and I obliged to but then he withdrew. lol

I'm renting a room in a shared place because I can't afford to rent on my own unless I move out of London (where my job is). I can be asked to move with a month's notice. I can't put pictures up, keep pets, or keep my things outside of my room much, because I'm only renting the room rather than the house iyswim. And I have curtains that look like they're from 1983.