Local Authority Dictating Home Decor

[geegee888]

The local authority for the city where I own a rental property has just introduced a new rule that the entire property has to be carpetted, for noise reasons. Not just mine, all flats and houses with 3 or more unrelated occupants.

I was wondering whether anyone considers this a good idea or whether the prevailing view is that its a breach of privacy? My tenants love their sanded wooden floors, they are easy to keep clean and hard wearing and practical, and suit the style and age of the property.

(this is on top of mains smoke alarms, co monitors, intumscent door seals, 30 minute fire resistant self closing doors, cookers chained to walls in case of toppling, annual inspections, fire safety action plans, fire extinguishers and fire blankets, special locks that cannot be locked from the inside in case of fire, only allowed to use a lease approved by the local authority, etc..

And DH has a commercial business with flats above. The whole building is owned by the same landlord.

The only problem DH had was with tenants of the residential parts who were too lazy to walk to the dumpsters at the end of the street so left bags of food waste outside the front door to be torn apart by cats and dogs.

He complained to the LL and it stopped. When new people come, sometimes they need reminding not to be antisocial neighbours. He also installed a lowered ceiling in DH's premises so that the tenants upstairs weren't bothered by noise even though even if there is any noise it only happens to 8pm at the most.

That's a good landlord who understands how to run a responsible business.

It's quite common, and has been for years, but the rule is usually 'No wooden floors' - so vinyl or tyles are OK.

Why not put down carpet tiles, then you only need to replace one or two is the vomit/etc won't come out.

Wood floors definitely look much nicer and carpets look grubby and not my personal taste but in flats, they certain do stop a lot of noise and you have to have consideration for your neighbours.

I bet you just don't want to spend money on your rental do you. My experience of being a tenant is that landlords will do the minimum to make a property habitable and hospitable to neighbours.

OP If you have a problem with brothels or any other businesses that cause a nuisance then take it up with the LA or police.

That is a better solution than whingeing about rules that are in place to ensure you run your own business properly and without causing a headache for the neighbours.

There is a brothel in the next street but it stays because it doesn't bother me or its immediate neighbours. Presumably the police and council are relaxed about it too.

If I noticed that the women working there were there against their will or visitors were causing a problem, I'd be on the phone like a shot. Until that happens the people who run it can just get on with it.

I can completely see why you are pissed tbh. I live in Edinburgh and we have a flat we rent out, and ime the period properties look far better with wood flooring and decent tenants are willing to pay for it. carpet tiles would look blinking ghastly-i can hazard a guess at the areas and even the student flats are far from cheap. And having not long graduated from Edinburgh uni, ime most of the students have fairly high standards of what they expect-although not necessarily of how they treat it.

Ps trams...dont get me started, the bloody things cost us a property sale!

I don't know why you are getting such a hard time OP. I'm a nice middle class tenant amd I'd be really fucked off if every flat I looked at had it's lovely period floorboards covered in carpet just because I couldn't afford to buy.

It's ridiculous.

Personally I think wooden floor covering is the best option in a tenanted property. If I moved into rented and had to live with someone else's carpet I think I would itch.

What about tenants that have allergies? Don't carpets sometimes exacerbate them?

With regards to Local Authorities, I can understand their wanting to deal with neighbour noise but I also think they should deal with neighbour 'smells' too!
Our neighbours cook the most disgusting smelling foods, they don't ventilate their house and the smell leeks through to our house. LA won't do a thing unless a commercial business is the cause.

I would question whether the local authority has a large department with "hundreds of officers" working on this.

I think this is overly intrusive, if the local authority required you only to do this for their own tenants (i.e. if rent paid for by them), then so be it. Presumably private householders can have wooden boards if they like, I can't see why private renters shouldn't be able to either. I would not like to rent a lovely period property covered in cheap carpet, in fact, a certain type of horrible all nylon (usually brown) carpet is known in our house as landlord carpet. And it is depressing to be a long-term renter in a brown landlord carpeted house.

For the nth time, it's an HMO, not just a private rental. HMOs are subject to different, more stringent standards than bog standard private rentals. OP - if you don't want to carpet, just rent it out as a normal flat and not an HMO - or won't that make you as much money?

"The kind of tenant I rent to is young and not particularly good at keeping a home to Martha Stewart standards"

Therefore they're also exactly the type of tenant not to realise how much disturbance they're causing to other people by stomping about on wooden floors at all times of day and night.

I don't think it matters though, a private arrangement is a private arrangement @outraged.

I've just seen this. Knock me down with a feather.

So it doesn't matter where people go: rented homes, places of work including building sites and workmen who are contracted to work in private homes, shops, cinemas, pubs, gyms, zoos etc.

If somewhere contains asbestos, rickety stairs, rotten floorboards, no fire escapes, lethal glass doors or display cabinets, dodgy hygiene, dangerous animals or you fall off the scaffolding because it's not screwed in properly or something heavy falls on you from above etc then it's your own fault if it's private property?

Did you really mean to say that or were you just not thinking about it?

Ever heard of public liability insurance? People don't get it for a laugh. They get it because they have to because it's the law otherwise people would skimp and say 'tough'.

YANBU - although it's reasonable to have carpets in bedrooms and hallways, when it comes to kitchens and bathrooms it's not practical - food gets dropped, trodden in, drinks get spilt (especially as students have a tendency to hold drunken parties in kitchens) and it's going to be vile, and a health hazard when the mice / rats / cockroaches follow the food spills. And when it comes to the bathroom, you come to problems of them getting out of the bath sopping wet (no money in the budget for a bath mat, towel is on the towel rail out of reach etc.) If this happens constantly you could end up with a mouldy carpet.

And when it comes to the rent increase, I don't see students coughing up that much extra - even if you have a large house, with (say) 8 students, you're still talking about £50pppm - and some students will live off that £50 for a fortnight! When I was viewing student houses earlier this year, there was a vast difference in quality if you paid an extra £20pppm. I think you will struggle to let it if you put it up that much.

boomting Rubber flooring in kitchens and bathrooms.

On a similar thread I got loads of people saying they couldn't afford it in their own homes because it's so expensive.

But this is a business enterprise. Professional kitchens, gyms and anywhere where hygiene is a proper concern rather than an excuse for not spending money invest in it because it lasts.

On the subject of a previous tangent, I've refused to rent properties because of the cream carpets! Too nerve-wracking.

geegee I'm not sure if I understood you correctly- did you say the regulations meant that individuals weren't allowed to have locks for their bedrooms in HMOs?

Come on you bigjessie they are eay to keep clean. All you have to do is fork out for a Rug Doctor once a week

Are you sure once a week would be enough?

If only the hot weather would hold for long enough for me to organise renting a rug doctor this year. It's a year since I last rented one, and I think the carpets need doing again.

I wish our council were half as hot at regulating HMOs .

I worked in a LA Housing department for years and some of the slums I saw would make your eyes bleed.

I understand it's expensive for landlords but where I live you could take a three bed property and rent it out for £350 per month per room or get £600 PCM for it for a single family. Most of the career landlords I know (inc my fil) own multiple HMOs so they are obviously recouping their costs.

To those who suggested I "don't want to spend money" - you don't have any idea, do you? What I don't want to do is spend my budget for nicer furniture, redecoration, important structural maintenance (window frames all need renewed as well as guttering which isn't cheap or easy in a tall listed building) on completely unnecessary carpets which will downgrade my property, look awful and be deperessing for my tenants to live in.

Those who think university students live in rooms with locks on the doors - you really do have some funny ideas. Its a joint and several tenancy, as are virtually all leases in this market - they lease it as a group of friends. A perfectly normal, healthy way for people to live, particularly in an expensive city centre location.

While I'm sure my tenants, could keep their bedroom carpets pretty clean, the kitchen and living room are a different matter. And it is ruining a beautifully ambient flat with lovely varnished floors and nice rugs and replacing it with something horrible. All because the local authority here cannot stop interfering and micro-managing people's lives.

Yes, I will have to put it in the kitchen, and tear up the expensive Marmoleum I had put in only a year ago. And then when they eat at the dining table, if someone even once makes a mistake and drops some food then accidentally teads on it, the carpet will forever bear its mark. Disgusting. Worse flats than mine will probably infest the entire buildings with mice and possibly bugs.

I can't let it to families - they wouldn't want to live here, next to a busy road junction, up two flights of stairs, with no garden.

They haven't yet decided about bathrooms but will issue a finalised diktat soon.

The other thing they haven't factored in is that in Edinburgh, a lot of HMOs are also let during the festival, and festival tenants are notoriously untidy and messy, far far worse than students. Carpets will be a complete disaster for those lets.

Tragic. I'm sure you'll sort it out though.

geegee well, I used to live in an HMO. Five girls, all told. And I deeply, deeply valued the lock on my door. As a young adult, living with young adults, I found that you can't take it for granted that your friends aren't going to crash in at three in the morning, with a ONS who will get confused about the exact location of the bathroom. Having a locked door reduces such embarrassment!

I'm sorry if you took it as a criticism of you. I didn't expect you to leap to the defence of the local council. If they have forbidden locks for bedrooms in HMOs, I stand by my opinion that it's a bit much.

And I'm the person who used to go around shutting fire doors, "because it's a fire door- it could add blah blah to our lives! Stop propping it open!" I have a very healthy respect for fire regulations, borne entirely of having lived in HMOs and having had flatmates who left stuff burning!

Oh, and in the days when I was young and flat-sharing, and none of us had children, we liked to lock our doors for privacy upon occasion. It's more discreet than a sign on one's door saying, "Having sex now, so don't walk in".

This is bizarre. How do they even know you're privately letting? Isn't this just between you, tenant, mortgage company and tax office?