to think that end of tenancy inspections are just yet another way of ripping tenants off?

[Thisarmingman]

I mean, really, you can lose money from your deposit which afaik is supposed to cover damage because your extractor fan isn't taken apart and cleaned or the inside of the kitchen cupboards aren't pristine? Since when was that damage?

Seems like landlords aren't happy enough getting tenants to bankroll their lifestyle - they want tenants to prepare the property for the next person too which is surely the landlord's job.

People who own houses and sell them don't have to do this on pain of losing several hundred pounds. It's just a rip off.

I've rented- always got my full deposit back and I've been a landlord- my tenants didn't get a penny back because they wrecked the place. Believe me it wasn't a money making scam.

Re the dispute scheme. Landlords do not need receipts to prove they've cleaned or made repairs. I disputed my deposit being held for the spiderweb incident. Agent told me if I disputed it they would double the charge. I disputed, they doubled the charge. Agent took a photo of the cobweb so I lost my dispute. Apparently whoever oversaw this thought £250 was reasonable to remove it. Plus the scheme is paid for by the agents . So as a tenant you will be very very very unlikely to win a dispute.

And this was after paying £260 check out fee. I'm still pretty mad about it 3 years on

Barbarian,
Yes, I have a copy of the inventory.
They haven't replied to me today which is quite rude of them, so will chase them up.
The photos in the inventory were from 10 months before we moved in while there had been previous tenants, because we moved in the day they left they couldn't be bothered to do a proper inventory/clean.

There is a mark on the skirting board that we did not do, however I didn't write it on the inventory as to be honest I didn't notice it or think it was important. Do you think they could still charge us for this?

Sorry for hijacking your thread btw OP. I literally could have wrote this thread as they also had on the original list that our extractor fan was dusty!

requesting again, I must be using a different scheme. Receipts were needed for anything claimed as a repair or replace, and no claim would be entertained without them. The damage and filth was so extensive that under half the fixes needed went over the deposit value. ( and yes, I do know that wear and tear isn't chargeable...)

BTW landlord time and effort cannot be claimed. So landlords either pay a de-wrecker , which will cost far more than most deposits, or do it themselves.

All this info is on the deposit scheme websites.

parking that old inventory will be laughed off, as it should be.

Too late for you OP as you are at the end of your tenancy but best advice is when you rent a property (and I mean the day that you get the keys) go with a good digital camera and take photographs of literally everything. Ever wall, door, window, close-ups of appliances, inside fridges etc etc. Then that same day scan the lot in (easier to send if you convert to PDF files) and email a copy of every photo to the agent and/or landlord. If you don't have landlords contact details send to agent or solicitor acting for landlord and ask them to forward it on to them. When you are leaving make sure you move out at least one day before you are due to hand keys back then clean and make sure that the property looks as good as it did when you took the tenancy. Again take pictures of everything and email again. You then have perfect proof that you gave it back in as good or better than it was when you received the keys. If you have pets or have been cooking heavily spiced food or smoking then have carpets properly cleaned so that it is immediately rentable. They then have no grounds whatsoever for retaining any of your money.

Also the cost of the end of tenancy inspection if it isn't in your tenancy agreement then you don't have to pay for it. If it is in your tenancy agreement then ask 'before' you sign to amend the tenancy so that the cost is either split 50/50 or paid by the landlord in the event that the property is in as good a condition at the end of the term as it was at the beginning.

parking a scuff on the paintwork is 'normal wear and tear'. So unless you have gouged a lump out of the wood or put in a massive dint then I'd challenge that too.

parking marks on the skirting board generally come under 'normal wear and tear' which they cannot charge for. Unless youve gouged out a great chunk of wood or something.

Landlord tried to take 250 quid off my sister to replace her kitchen extractor(cheap and nasty newlec 6inch fan) Lucky enough for her she hadn't handed the keys back yet, quick call on the way home to fit a new fan to which the landlord created thinking she had changed it i took great delight in dropping him the minor works certificate and a copy of my NICEIC Approved Contractor Registration off.

"Bank rolling their lifestyle" Wish I knew what this wonderful lifestyle is that our tenants are bank rolling. Maybe you should buy your own house if you're so concerned about your landlord's lifestyle.

My friend lived in a private let home for 2.5 years, and had a landlady take £350 of her £650 deposit about a year ago, even though she spent approximately £450 on painting and decorating (to make the place look half decent,) and nets (which she left,) and new loo seats, and masonry paint, and painting the tiles and carpeting 2 of the 4 bedrooms. Plus a few other things. In addition, she spent approximately 25-30 man hours cleaning the house when she moved in as it was a shit-tip.

There were many things broken in the house (like the downstairs loo door, and loo seat, the bathroom shower head, the hall window frame, the radiator in the boxroom, the loo seat in the bathroom, several broken curtain rails etc, and several knackered slabs in the back garden amongst other things...) None of which the landlady fixed. My friend's husband did it all, because the landlady wouldn't do it, and kept griping and saying 'I don't make anything FROM this you know. I barely break even.'

Like my friend was meant to fucking care! She just wanted the stuff fixing! As I said, her husband did it in the end.

So anyway, the landlady took £350 of the £650 deposit for 'rubbish removal, 'gardening,' and 'cleaning.' Fucking bollocks. They had left nothing in that house, it was immaculate and they kept the garden as neat as a pin. She and her family spent a week blitzing the place and it was spotless. Upshot is, her house move had been quite stressful, and her job was stressful, and she just didn't have the energy to fight, so she didn't fight it, and accepted just the £300 back.

On further investigation, she discovered that the 2 tenants before had had around two thirds of their deposit taken by the landlady. (Approx £400 each.) Again for shit reasons.

She discovered a year later that the new family that came in (after her,) paid the first 6 months rent in advance, then didn't pay anymore. It took the landlady 6 months to get them out, so she lost nearly 4 grand in rent.

What goes around, comes around.

I hope this is ok to ask here, I don't want to hijack the thread. I am a student and have been in the same house for the last 3 years, at no point did we (I share with other students) get any sort of inventory, and we didn't think to take pictures or evidence of the state of the house when we moved in. The house isn't great, there is mould, and it's a bit untidy. When we move out we will be cleaning it as much as we can so it'll be in good condition, but I am really worried about what can be viewed as 'wear and tear' :/

I have a bed (came with the room) that is like a fabric divan, and the fabric has started to come away from the base, exposing the 'filling' would this be grounds to keep the deposit? Will I have to fight my case, this is my first time 'leaving' a tenancy :/

Oh and our deposits aren't 'protected' AFAIK

loops as a student isn't your deposit in a deposit protection scheme? Not sure of the rules but reasonable wear and tear is acceptable but actual damage caused by negligence isn't. Make sure you clean as thoroughly as you can and speak to the landlord before the end of the tenancy and ask them to inspect and tell you whether anything more needs to be done to ensure your full deposit is returned. Do everything by email or text so you have a paper trail.

We don't have a protected deposit scheme as far as I know, we just paid directly to the landlady (not through a letting agency). Yeh, we will clean as much as possible, and there's no damage caused by negligence (the bed just happened from sleeping on it)

Every landlord in the UK is supposed to use a deposit scheme. The Scottish system is stricter than the English one but there is still an obligation on the landlord to use a scheme and there are protections in place for tenants.

www.gov.uk/tenancy-deposit-protection/overview

England /wales - deposit protection mandatory for about the last ten years. Landlords can be sued if they don't and there is no defence.

Is the student house an HMO? Does it meet the legal requirements?

There are some obvious problems with shit LL, tenants, and EAs.

Deposit schemes aside, reading the stories above, a lot of the problem would be solved by a very basic rule: whoever pays for a service gets to choose it.

The reason that EAs can charge 90 quid to the tenant to print a document is that they are not subject to competition the same way other businesses are. The LL chooses the EA, but the tenant pays the fees, so the pricing structure by any reasonable EA should minimize the cost to the LL and charge sky high fees to the tenant, because the tenant can't shop around. It makes perfect sense that EAs do what they do given this is how they are commissioned and paid.

Same with deposit fees. If you LL says they want to keep 250 quid to clean spider webs, the tenant payer needs to be allowed to solve the problem first.

Yes and some tennants don't pay rent for months on end and refuse to leave the house costing £1000's that a deposit doesn't cover

Yes and some tennants don't pay rent for months on end and refuse to leave the house costing £1000's that a deposit doesn't cover

I have now lived in many jurisdictions and my impression here is that tenancy laws seem weak for good tenants, and strong for bad ones. I'd say non-payment of rent should get you tossed out quickly.

yes! every rental I ever moved into needed a thorough clean and had some awful shitty issue as result of the owner doing something on the cheap. cheap laminate flooring and bathroom units in poorly ventilated bathroom for example
at the end of tenancy same routine, I would pay professional cleaner, the landlord agent would deduct extortionate amounts unfairly, then would ensue lengthy period of emails/ phonecalls until months later deposit returned
it's absolutely awful

Chlipepper - Total process takes about 6 months, has taken up a vast amount of my mat leave and stress trying to sort it out

Seems like landlords aren't happy enough getting tenants to bankroll their lifestyle - they want tenants to prepare the property for the next person too which is surely the landlord's job

Sounds like you're the sort of person who wouldn't leave a properrty clean and tidy, or leave everything working as you found it, and in some way sees a landlord as doing you some injury by renting you their property, so they are absolutely sensible to inspect the property and check that you leave it ok.

I think any of us would be checking our stuff was being given back in an ok state in similar circumstances.

Loops unless you live with your landlady, in England you should have been given a notice when you signed the tenancy about the deposit scheme. My son is letting out his first house at the moment and he and I made sure last year this was done and that he got his tenants when they moved in to sign that they acknowledged the scheme (my deposits - in his case).

Someone should make sure more tenants are aware of this - before moving in you need to check. Also those using a letting agent as my son did will probably find the contract between landlord and tenant has a section headed Deposits which says what scheme. Eg the letting agent in my son's case had in their standard contract a different deposit scheme and that was one of the changes we insisted on as my son should not promise to be in one deposit scheme when in fact he is in another. Landlord and tenant should always read every single word of these documents before signing anything.

We need to change English law so only landlords are charged anything not tenants. It used to be a principle of english common law that an agent cannot act for two sides - that you receive fees from one side only and your customer or client is that one side and to receive fees from both sides was a conflict of interest. That principle worked very well indeed.

I used to let out two flats in the 90s (sold them at a loss by the way) and we never ever did not return 100% of the deposit. Mind you no one trashed the place.