...to think that tenants might hoover once in a while?

[silverten]

OK, so if you rent a house it's your home, you have the right to live how you choose, etc. etc. etc...

However if you'd been given an immaculately clean house when you took on the tenancy, the landlord had pretty much left you alone for the duration of your tenancy, save a couple of phonecalls to check all was well and an inspection after a couple of years, you'd think that you might think to run the hoover around and give the place a quick wipe over before he visited again, giving you plenty of warning and a fairly mild request to try and clean the place up a bit from the last visit?

No? Just my little foible?

What IS it about some tenants that they are happy not to bother with this stuff?? I don't get it. It can't be a 'tenant' thing, surely- I know loads of people who didn't live in a tip when they rented.....

A little hint to LLs out there (and I've rented more than half my life now, in three different countries, so I've seen a lot of landlords): Don't come around to fix something then make comments later about this or that being a bit dirty or needing hoovering or whatever. Your being such a complete pain in the arse for the tenant just means the tenant will be less likely to tell you about other small problems until they become big problems (or until they move out). So while you think you're being "helpful", the truth is that being such a PITA will probably cost you more in the end.

Unless it's a situation where they are truly destroying the house and making it unlivable, just keep your mouth shut about their standard of cleanliness. That's why you take a deposit, right? So if it's not up to the standard it should be when they move out, you can be compensated for it?

No tenant wants to feel like they need to do a special clean-up for the LL or dread their visit because of all the comments they'll get. Get over yourselves, you amateur landlords. Being a property owner doesn't mean you can be rude.

Well. Said. Not your concern until they move out and then you are free to assess whether their hoovering levels have done any permanent damage.

Though I am

Maybe not the best person to ask as our soon to be ex landlords are a nightmare ( I Hoover every day fwiw )

Also, it's worth pointing out that putting inspections etc in the tenancy agreement is pretty worthless legally. They still don't have to allow you in.

I don't think you understand this renting lark. You need to see the property as business rather than your home. It is a bad idea to be sentimental about a rental property.

You own a house. Some gives you money to live in it for period. They have the right to peaceable enjoyment. Ie. they can live in a tip. The house temporarily becomes their house and home.

Provided there aren't rats or the tenants aren't smearing faeces on the wall then it is really none of your business how a tenant chooses to live provided that they pay their rent on time and clean the place before they leave.

I have only experienced one really bad tenant. They were so filthy that social services came and took their three year old into care! My objection to them was the blood stains on the kitchen wall because one of the tenants attempted to murder her partner.

I suspect that OP has never experienced a really bad tenant.

OP YANBU to want them to hoover, btw. I wasn't implying you were just popping round.

tbh the reason I have found every 'amateur' LL I have rented from a nightmare is because they thought they were friendly. I don't want to be mates with my LL. I want a professional relationship. I don't want him popping over unannounced, checking on stuff, or ringing me on my mobile at random times. It feels intrusive. After all, you have to answer/ respond.

For me, I'd always rent from reputable agents. They know the law and they don't take the piss. We have regular inspections (c. every 8 weeks). I do nothing special for these beyond tidy a bit as the house is always clean! We get a cleaning lady in once a week, just as I would if I owned the place. We also have the garden done regularly. The inspectors see it as it always is: 'lived in' in the sense that there will be clean dishes drying in the rack and books on the coffee table - but clean as in hoovered carpets, sparkling bath and no dust on window sills.

I am a tenant, my house is clean. My sister is an owner-occupier, her house isn't. It isn't just some tenants who are vacuum reluctant.

I don't understand how anyone can just live in a home that they never ever hoover. Even if it's just once a week or once a fortnight it's fine, but never hoovering is dirty and lazy IMO.

I'd also like to point out to those of you moaning about landlord inspections, is that they are there for the benefit of the tenant as well as the landlord. My friends own a rental property and they do a six-monthly inspection (after agreeing a mutually convenient time with their tenants), to check the house is being kept in good condition, ie the windows aren't boarded up and the kitchen cupboard doors haven't been ripped off and to see if there's anything that needs repairing or replacing to make the house more pleasant for their tenants. They have just done an inspection and decided that the lounge carpet looked a bit tatty so have ordered a new carpet. I can't see how a decent tenant could object to a decent landlord doing an inspection.

8 week inspections is taking the piss, unless there is a problem.

Our tenant has an inspection once a year when the gas safety certificate is done. Ie. the agent lets the gas man into the flat with plenty of warning. We have the perfect tenant. She keeps her home really tidy.

Interesting.... where do you get the idea I'm sentimental about the place, ReallyTired? Sure, I've worked really hard on it, but that's basically because I want to provide a decent product in the rental market.

I won't bore you with the details of our worst tenants. Suffice to say they were equivalent to your 'blood on the walls' scenario. Dealing with things like that tends to eliminate any personal feelings for a house one might have, as well as engendering a deep desire to avoid similar situations in future.

I actually feel that the 8 week inspection cycle RevoltingPeasant has to put up violates a tenant's right to quiet enjoyment of their property. It'd be like having your mum nagging you to tidy your room all the flipping time.

However I don't think it is all that terrible if your landlord wants to see inside the place once every couple of years, to check that mushrooms aren't growing out of the walls or something.

tbh I don't mind. We don't see them - they come round whilst we are at work and only leave a note if something is wrong. Of course it never is as they are only checking for damage.

On the other hand, they sort stuff when it needs sorting - a fuse blew majorly on Xmas Eve and someone was round within an hour, no charge to us. More minor repairs generally get sorted within a week.

They are not perfect but no problems, very fair - this is our 2nd property with this agent and we got our whole deposit back after the 1st. I'm happy.

See that's the thing, Bear. If I came round to your house on a non-hoovering day I wouldn't bat an eyelid or say a word, cos it'd be obvious to me that you were actually cleaning the place on occasion.

As it happens the windows/sills/kitchen cupboard fronts/skirting boards in my house all need a damn good wipe right now, but that doesn't matter to me at all. If it gets done before they move out, that'll be great. It if doesn't, I don't need to replace them, I just need to spend a day with a damp cloth. Simple.

Oh, I really need to go to bed now...

Carpet can be shampooed. An industrial carpet shampooing machine can do wonders. With a rental propety you need to accept that carpets will need to be replaced every five years and the property redecorated and carpet shampooed between tenancies.

We set aside about £500 a year to spend on maintance. We have had some big expenses, for example replacing the boiler and re doing the kitchen. With the kitchen we made good use of our tax allowances by paying for the kitchen in one financial year and paying for the cost of labour in the other.

Our agent manages our property. We talk to the tenant about what needs doing via the agent. Its not a bedroom inspection as so much asking her what niggles the property has.

As far as bad tenants go, that is what legal and rental insurance is for. I don't think that nagging about the carpets is going to do much. The bottom line is do they pay their rent on time?

When I rented a few years back our inspections were every 12 weeks. I hated it. I would receive a letter in the post on a Monday saying they were inspecting on the Wednesday. It really does feel like prying and as we both worked I had to get a relative to come over as I didn't want the LL snooping around.
I think YAB a bit U OP. As others have said that's what the deposit is for. Goodness knows I was stung when I ended my tenancy and the LL took most of my deposit but wouldn't send me a breakdown of the costs.

Really - how far do you think a deposit goes? If you have to replace carpets, regrout the bathroom, replace the shower fittings, replace all the sealant in the bathroom & kitchen. Have the place deep cleaned, the oven professionally cleaned etc... it's way more than the deposit. I just don't understand how some of you think it's fine to trash a place because it's rented so the landlord can just re-do it when you move out.

Seb - that wasn't aimed at you, I wrote that before you posted :)

Right, one more message then I'm really going to bed.

Yup, carpets get replaced regularly, and redecoration is roughly every three years. We generally find that if the place looks fresh and happy it stays that way longer. We've got into the habit of explaining to tenants that we generally do two to three year lets because the house needs refreshing if it's not going to look tired and sad, but that we are open to longer lets if the place is kept well- therefore there's an incentive for them to look after the place (if they actually like living there and want to stay, anyway.) I wouldn't expect tenants to cough up for something like a replacement kitchen under general maintenance of the house. Only if they've reduced it to a smoking ruin would I be chasing them for that!

Chipping- couldn't have put it better myself.

'Night all.

I don't think it's on to trash a place either, but it's naive to expect a rented place won't require upkeep, too, and some LL are quite naive IME. There's a balance. I'd expect that, as a tenant, part of what I'm paying for is for the place to be kept more or less in working order - if something wears out, it shouldn't come out of the deposit.

I suppose it depends on the propety and the level of rent you are charging. We don't replace all the carpets at once. We do a bit of maintance each year.

I suppose a lot depends on how long we have had a tenant for and the state of the flat. When we have a tenant leave, I get a shampooing machine from the hire shop and I shampoo the carpets myself. I clean the flat myself. Whether the flat is redecorated depends on the state of the paint work.

Our present tenant has been in the flat for five years. We have made a roaring profit, but she is paying for a service. She pays quite a high rent and in return has a decent place to live. Inspite of paying for the flat to be redecorated c 2K, a new kitchen and a boiler, and mortgage we have made money.

It seems that our LL was unusual in having put the final professional clean put into our rental agreement. We were also asked to touch up a couple of spots of paintwork in the house, which we didn't mind doing - a house with three boys in it is going to get the odd scuff here and there, and it was only fair that we handed it back in the same condition it had been in when we moved in - ie. not perfect, showhome, but neat, tidy, clean, everything working. Mind you, it would have been easier if they had used one colour of paint throughout, and just left one pot of paint in the shed - we ended up having to mix and match to get one of the colours.

One thing that I think helped on both sides was that the whole house, apart from the stairs, had hard flooring - either laminate or tiles, so it was easier to keep clean, and more resistant to dirt.

Our lovely tenant allowed us to put a new kitchen in while she was living there.

She was over the moon about it and thought we were doing her a favour. Actually it was doing us a favour as there was no void period. She did have to put up with no kitchen for two weeks and chose to go on holiday while the work was done.