AIBU to expect the 'unfurnished' flat I've just moved I to to actually be unfurnished?

[Marthamoo123]

Moved into a new flat on Wednesday. We specifically wanted an unfurnished flat as we already had a flat full of furniture of our own.

All the paperwork for this flat states unfurnished. On the tennancy agreement and other correspondance.

When we arrived with a van full of our own things we found the main bedroom with a king size bed and large wardrobes, the second bedroom with a huge sofa in it and the living room with a massive table and chairs and huge broken sideboard.

We called the agents who rang the landlandy who apparently said the furniture had to stay. The agent very helpfully said she would understand if we wanted to find another flat. On the day we were moving! Which would have made ds, dh and I homeless.

We negotiated that we could store the table and chairs in the small shed (it will be buggered by the time we leave, I've already kissed goodbye to getting all our deposit back). We gave away our bed and wardrobe to a furniture charity shop as we had nowhere to store it, and she has agreed to collect the massive, tatty sofa and put it in storage.

There is a horrible broken sideboard in the lounge and she is insisting it's kept. What can I do about it? We signed for this as unfurnished and I am pissed off. I don't want to give away any of my new furniture away for the sake of the landladies broken sideboard (it's HUGE, nothing else will fit in the room apart from the sofa while it's there).

I want to keep on the good side of the agent as we are claiming housing benefit at the moment, it took 6 months of begging for an agent to rent to
us.

That's really shit.

Is there an inventory?

If not, you will definitely get your deposit back, because the deposit protection people always give the benefit of the doubt.

I met the inventory lady here. Yes she put the stuff on there.

If there is no inventory there is no furniture! Unfortunately you have acknowledged that there is so I'm not sure what you can do. Go to the CAB and see if they can tell you about any legislation on this.

Did you see the flat before you agreed to take it?

Can't you put her stuff into storage? Although that would cost you money so might not be an option.

The tenancy agreement states unfurnished, then your landlady has already breached the agreement by leaving that junk there, I would insist it's removed as it is a breach of the agreement. In an unfurnished tenancy agreement, the inventory isn't worth the paper it's written on.

Until your last sentence I would have said write a stern letter to the agent saying they are in breach of contract and you will either a) be terminating it or b) claiming damages. However, as these would no doubt piss the agent off, I would appeal to their good hearted nature (!) and point out what good tenants you intend to be but could they please honour the agreement.

If she's already collecting the sofa, can she not collect the sideboard too? Does it split in half for storage for example?

Can you get yourselves down to the CAB or speak to a solicitor who can give a free half hour of advice?

I didn't have a choice but to sign it. It's taken us so long to find somewhere to live who would take HB I didn't want to risk it. The agent told dh that there were at least ten people on her books who would take it and move in the next day if we werent happy (true, we are in a part of west London where rentals are snapped up in a couple of days, you need to be psychic to find a place) and we couldn't risk making ourselves homeless.

I can't afford storage. Even for a small room it's £20 per week.

When we vied the flat people were living here. It was FULL of furniture, but we were told it would all be gone.

I have my ex husband breathing down my neck as he wants ds to live with him (in his mannor house, he's bloody rich) and I wanted to make this home as nice as possible for ds.

So why was it advertised as unfurnished? The Agent is at fault here, and is falsely advertising.
It's rubbish for you,hope you can sort things out.

So sympathise with you, had exactly same with my landlady and a hideous formica table she won't remove and won't let me put in the store cupboard on the landing either. In the end, i took it to pieces and stored under my sofa and when they do the quarterly check it gets reassembled and put out for that half hour... madness!

Coud the already broken sideboard 'fall apart' and suddenly be in pieces you can't put back together ?? Couldn't do that w. my table it was too new to use that one with!

you could arrange for it to be put in storage and bill them for it.

its really shit as you can't do anything about fake advertising if you are a tenant, other than make a big fuss.

i would be tempted to chuck it and claim that there was 'rubbish' in the house which you had to remove. but would take balls.

We had this with a rental house. We arrived on the Friday and had the van until the Monday afternoon. We informed the agency that whatever wasn't collected by Monday would be going to the tip. We were told we couldn't do that, we said we were being very reasonable giving them a few days and as it wasn't on the inventory to please not be ridiculous.

It went to the tip. We got our deposit back.

Just spent the past hour haggling with the LL via the agent.

She said we could buy the sideboard from her fr £100 (!) so then we could do what we liked with it. After going back and forth we settled on £15.

Dh is now in the back garden gleefully smashing the damed thing to bits.

£15 well spent :)

I turned down several flats that (when viewing) came with odd poeces of furniture. When I asked the agents about it they claimed that the get out was that it wasn't fully furnished.

OP this would ring warning bells about the type of landlord/agency you are dealing with.

We let and I would never dream of doing this to a tenant. I know you said it took time to find this but I'd be looking to move on asap.

I'm angry on your behalf op! Am fed up of these "quirks" of rented housing.

Thanks all! Have got a grip over it now, but I'm still angry we were misled. If amcontract says unfurnished then that what I expect. It was a real shock and a pain in the arse to have to work around things.

Same thing happened to us. We have furniture for a 5 bed house as we were about to buy so this was a stop gap until then. Owner in Australia, agent said owner agreed to unfurnished, this was the only reason we took the house. We even went there 2 wks before the move and the agent wrote a list of what needed to go. 48 hrs before we were moving agent calls to say owner now not moving furniture and misunderstood what unfurnished meant (?). Also added that we could always pull out if we wanted to - 48hrs before, removals paid for, me 32 wks pregnant with 2 toddlers. I wanted to kill them. My husband went to school with them too and liked them up to this point. I still hope they rot! we had to dismantle beds, etc and put them all in the garage (theirs not ours) even their dirty pots and pans were in the cupboards. They told agent that we couldnt move anything else but we said fuck them and shoved their stuff in the roof space and garage. We are now moving out of here next week. It actually sickened me still having to live here.

Traceymac that's terrible!

We also let out a house, and the last tenant left a shedload of crap. I insisted he remove it with a deadline to forfeit his deposit. He moved some of it but left some furniture. I wouldn't have dreamed of forcing the new tenant to live with it if she hadn't wanted to so I let her decide, and would have paid myself to have it removed - it's part of the 'wear and tear' of being a landlord to sort out the house so it's in good nick for the next tenant. And the agency is also at fault for not sorting it also, although since they're paid by the landlord not you and they have you over a barrel, it's crap. If the agency are half-decent people though, could you negotiate with them for a return of any fee you might have paid, against the costs of clearing the stuff? The landlady sounds like a shark - she should have advertised it as part-furnished or removed the stuff.

That's quite rubbish for you OP. I had the reverse situation as I let out a house. The agents never told me the tenant wanted an unfurnished home until we went over with the inventory list!

But I was glad getting a tenet at all and moved all the stuff the new tenant didn't want! The landlady is being unreasonable! X

in law , trust me , this i know ! if you accept a place with furniture in, the legality of let/contract is changed had it been empty! should you have to ever go to court re let , google it , for your own info .