To think lots of landlords see a tenants deposit money as rightfully theirs?

[Strawbroke]

Third (and last, whoop!) time I've left a rental property after leaving the marital home 4 years ago.

Every single one has forced me to use the dispute service tovretirn my deposit, even though I have tried to negotiate with them. First two I agreed to them taking half as I was a bit of a wet fish but nothwanted it all. Forced me to go to dispute. They got half. After loads of stress and a delay of 3 months.

This last tenancy was a 20 month tenancy and I was determined to get the house perfect on leaving. 5 adults cleaned the place to pristine levels and i mean or, we covered everywhere. After final inspection from letting agent she said it was in good condition but needed extra cleaning so I agreed to £45 for cleaning. They then proceeded to come back over the next 4 weeks to say they wanted professional carpet cleaning at £255. I said no way, the carpets were as new. So the LL said okay, I'll settle the carpet cleaning bill but you owe me £180 for a new oven door. Which the letting agent broke and admitted via email! Again I said no. Then they added £150 for painting the bannister and handrail in the hallway. It was unpainted when I moved in. I offered £55 as goodwill. They refused it. £100 not enough! At this point I just said give me an itemised list of everything you want to claim off me, they ignored me for two weeks so I had to raise a dispute.

Landlord has put in a claim for 650 for carpet cleaning, oven door, handrail and replacement light bulbs! So with the £650 basically. My entire bond.

AIBU to think a lot of landlords see deposits as an entitlement to keep? The property was let within days so obviously was in great condition! I had to create my own check out report as they didn't bother doing one. It's so frustrating and I was a great tenant. The LL even said when I moved out. I am so glad I've finally managed to buy and not have to deal with this anymore!

We've rented two properties.

The first wanted the place spotless (fair enough) and twice told the letting agent it wasn't perfect enough and twice we had to go back and deal with something. Even the letting agent was eye rolley about the two things - one was a half inch of darkness on the grouting above the extractor hood in the kitchen, and the other was A thin line of cobweb between the landing light bulb and the ceiling We actually had a laugh about it with the letting agent. We'd become quite pally over the 4 years of living there. HOWEVER the landlord didn't quibble for a second about keeping any deposit.

Second place - nightmare. Big rambling house with existing damp problems and tired decor when we moved in. (door handles old and worn. clean but lumpy layers of paint. carpet faded in the sun by the patio doors and a bit thread bare by the doors sort of thing). Shite letting agents. Anyway - from day one we had a condensation problem in the downstairs loo caused by having no central heating in the place. (yes - really) I told the landlord that the loo cistern was dripping condensation onto the lino and i was having to keep a small clean towel down there to soak it up. No interest. Few months later i explained that the lino was becoming discoloured around the base of the loo because of the water drips. No interest. Few months more and we told him we'd bought new lino to cover the old lino up because it was now ugly. Cost us about 30 quid. we didn't want the money for it we just wanted to tell him. No interest. 2 more years on when we left our layer of lino was clean but had got a little tear in it near the door. ONE of the cheeky fucker things the landlord tried to claim for was £150 to replace the lino which was lino WE bought to cover and protect HIS ugly stained bloody lino which was still in place!! You can imagine what i said ...

Ok, other side of the fence here. I’m a landlord. I’ve had two tenants move on so far, and they’ve both had 100% of their deposit back - despite one of them rewiring a light switch and invalidating my electricity certificate 🙄. Also, unless the place was left ina disgusting state, I would expect to pay for cleaning between tenants myself. In addition, new tenants have twice asked if they could paint rooms in a colour they prefer, and I’ve agreed and even paid for the paint, despite it not needing refreshing yet. Not all landlords are bad, but you do need to be careful about who you rent from and to. I always insist on meeting prospective tenants in person and will never let an estate agent do that for me, because I want both parties to be sure we can work together.

44PumpLane Please be aware that every year all of the deposit schemes say, very very clearly that pictures are NOT what they want!

What they want is a verbal description, a judgement made, on the condition of any/all items. They will only look at pictures to back up/clarify that verbal judgement.

This is why most good inventories run to 50 ish pages! They include a LOT of words describing each individual wall/item, that pleases the deposit schemes, then they have a lot of pictures - these please the tenants and landlords.

Arken No inventory clerk could possibly know that a lightbulb was working as you walked out of the door and only stopped working as they switched it on! They remain your responsibility until the check out has been done, just as they remain the LLs responsibility until the check In is finished! You do have to retain some sort of perspective!

swingofthings thanks, I'm making a list of all the advice here, as a first time renter it's so good.

Always take it to dispute, never make any offer before hand unless you really feel it's fair (dispute service will go with it) always carefully check the inventory.

I'm a landlord and a tenant, and yes, landlords try it on (not me, obviously - and I'm being honest here - I generally have long term tenants, who I want to keep, so I maintain the property, and take reasonable wear and tear into consideration) - I've only once claimed on someone's deposit, and they had painted the kitchen worktop with all-purpose gloss to hide a burn mark (it was wood, I could have sanded it out if they hadn't painted it) - and even then, I only claimed half the replacement cost as it was a year old when they moved in.

As a tenant, landlords always have a go. The last one claimed for a full clean because there were some cobwebs on the light fittings - that you could see on the checkin photos! And that the conservatory carpet hadn't been cleaned - it had, he was trying to claim that the fading through the windows, and the stripes from the cleaning machine were dirt (also, the amount that carpet shed, it hadn't been cleaned before we moved in - it still had furniture divots!)

We aren’t all like that. My recent tenants left after 2 years, the house was filthy and I spent the best part of a day cleaning it after they went. I’d never charge them though because I like to know it’s let out clean and ready to move into, I see it as part of my job, plus other people standards of cleanliness are never the same. They were also really good tenants otherwise and I think it would have been mean to try and organise and make them pay for a professional clean. I did once claim from a deposit, but that tenant had kept dogs in the conservatory and they’d literally chewed up skirting boards/window sills. I wanted to cry when I saw the damage. Wear and tear and cleaning, unless horrifically dirty and requiring professional decontamination I wouldn’t claim at all. I instructed the service to release deposit in full within a day of them leaving.

Definitely claim your deposit in full from the service it’s with and let the landlord put a case forward if they want to withhold some of it. Don’t negotiate directly, use the scheme.

It's such a chain reaction too.
I paid a professional to do a pre-tenancy clean thinking that if I had receipts from a professional company I could cut out the agents using their expensive preferred suppliers who bribed them with Christmas hampers and he took 8 hours just to do the cooker! Because he was being paid by the hour and I wasn't there to oversee it.
I feel for you OP, it's so frustrating.

We aren’t all like that. Given the number I meet/work for on a daily basis not many are... just they don't half stick in the craw when they are!

Absolute piss take. I’ve never deducted a penny from a tenant’s deposit. As long as the house is left basically clean, with no damage as such and nothing left for me to dispose of, I am happy. I accept that I will have to do a deep clean and a bit of painting and decorating to freshen things up between tenants. In my experience, 90% of letting agents are a shower of bastards and so would never use one to manage a let.

Contest the lot, I’m pretty confident you will get your deposit back.

It's interesting about the verbal.informatiom, as the inventory/check in was all pictures.

@CuriousaboutSamphire ah interesting, thank you!

It's interesting about the verbal.informatiom, as the inventory/check in was all pictures I find quite a few DIY ones are. For some reason LLs don't check what is required, so I either get a list of furniture or a lot of pictures.

Having said that I don't rate a fair few 'professional' ones either. Too much reliance on an App and not enough thought abut the possible end users needs.

that makes me really question how tenants live because our carpet is now 12 years old and still in a good condition.

It massively depends on the quality of the carpet. I've lived in my rental house for four years and the (good quality but not new) carpet is still in good condition. However, my mum bought cheap carpet for DSis' room that started to wear out after a couple of years.

The letting agent hadn't mentioned the broken oven door handle but when I went back in a couple of days to pick up a shoebox I'd left (yes a shoebox!!) I noticed it had been damaged. I emailed her immediately and said can you confirm I didn't do that because it was not damaged when we left her exact words were 'I pulled the handle and it just came away, but don't worry it's normal wear and tear anyway'

My ex landlady is trying to claim 33 hours for cleaning, her time breakdown really made me laugh, she said she spent over 6 hours cleaning windows in a 2 bedroom flat. She also said it took her 30 minutes to clean all the light switches. Oh and my personal favorite was that it took her 4 hours to clean a bathroom which was only described in the check out as "slight dust behind toilet", "dust on extractor fan" and "slight dust on one side of bottom bath panel"

Light switches were not even mentioned in the check out and only 3/7 windows were described as "slightly dusty" and 1 described as having "minor cobwebs" - well what do you expect when someone has moved their entire lives out of a flat, dust is always going to re-settle.

Contest the lot, I’m pretty confident you will get your deposit back.

Personally, I think this is how you can tell an honest landlord - we don't mind being contested, and encourage you to contest (again, the kitchen worktop situation, went to contest and was entirely upheld - because I think I'd only asked for reasonable amounts)

My mistake with my landlord was making the offer (half what he'd asked for) - the service saw I'd made an offer, and just told him to take it. If I'd not made the offer I think it would have just been a couple of lightbulbs docked.

Really interesting to hear the other sides from landlords. I understand there must be so many tenants who leave the place in a state.

We've always been really respectful and asked before doing anything in our rentals. I'm a landlord but let to my sister, and although we have a tenancy agreement I've never been in the position to have to clean/repair a property that a tenant has left.

We rented through an estate agent in both our rentals, and the property manager has been quite understanding (although crap at communicating and slow to reply) and as I understand he is just passing on what the landlord says, whether he agrees or not.

What happens if the landlord refused to do an inventory like in our case? The house was a state and I sent emails with pictures to the agent. He was too cheap to do an inventory. If he tries to contest anything does he have a leg to stand on? We have beige carpets which do look more grubby now after 2 years but when we moved in I was wearing white socks on the carpet and the soles turned grey so it's not like the carpets were clean before!

I'm a landlord and have also been a tenant and it really does work both ways. There's dodgy landlords and dodgy tenants!

We had a tenant who stayed for six months. When she left one of the doors was completely off the hinges, a socket had somehow been broken away from the wall there was a huge hole in the plaster in the bathroom where the towel rail had apparently "fallen" off 😒 We had painted the entire flat for her moving in and one of her kids drew over every wall with biro. We also had to replace a 1 yr old carpet because it had chewing gum and sweets stuck in it. She tried to argue it was all wear and tear. Her deposit didn't cover a fraction of what it cost for us to put it all right.

My student dd had to vacate her flat for a month, effectively ending one lease and starting another’s a month later. They were charged for all sorts of things, cleaning etc that were never done. The flat was in exactly the state they left it when they moved back. Best example was charging to remove a stain from an item that belonged to one of her flat mates and charging to remove it from the flat. It was still there when they got back and still stained. Complete cowboys. Two of dd’s flatmates’ parents are property lawyers, I’m fairly confident we’ll get the money back in the end.

What happens if the landlord refused to do an inventory like in our case? They will have an extremely difficult job persuading any arbitrator that they are due any compensation!

If you leave things as you would like to have found them, and document it (like your emails), they won't get much of a look in.

I do agree you've been a bit of a pushover and this may lead to landlords trying it on with you.

In my last rental the letting agents were a bit crap and never actually bothered to do an inventory. When I moved out, the landlady raised some minor stuff (totaling about £200)- things like small scratches on the paintwork where I honestly couldn't remember whether it had been like that when I arrived or not. I'm afraid I did raise with the deposit service the fact that there was no inventory, and so the landlady was unable to reclaim anything. It's a business transaction- good will doesn't come into it in my mind.

I do think a lot of landlords view the deposit as their right though- especially in terms of trying to reclaim new for old, which isn't allowed. A lot of them can't really afford the maintenance on their properties and rely on deposits for this (which obviously means they can't really afford to be landlords).

There are some bad tenants too, though.

No not all landlords think like that.

I've just had my old tenant leave and a new tenant come in.

Old tenant got their whole deposit back without any query from me because they had looked after the place and my agent told me it was fine.

However, on inspection it was found that it needed a new boiler - apparently tenant was unaware of this as boiler was off over the summer and they used the immersion heater for hot water, why I don't know. And several other things needed replacing - sinks and things - and a bit of painting was needed just to smarten it up a bit. It all cost me a lot of money but none of it was down to the old tenant. It's wear and tear and one of the downsides of being a LL.

Sounds like your LL is taking the piss and hopeful will get nowhere when it goes to arbitration.

Not all LLs are out to screw their tenants but the ones that are give all LLs a bad name.

When we rented, our useless LL was notorious for causing a fuss with the TDS.
I bit the bullet and paid for an EOT specific cleaning company, who were affiliated with the letting agent. If we failed anything on the inspection we would get our money back. They did EVERYTHING. Windows, oven, carpets etc.
We keep a clean house, but after they had finished, it was incredible! I had never seen anything like it you could almost hear the gleaming!

We got 100% of our deposit back and I feel like I got one over on our arse hole landlord

Speaking as the mother of a former student tenant - I would take timed and dated photos of everything you come across that isn't right both as you move in ... and attach them to emails when you complain to the person managing the property. Always email first and then phone. And never give up on getting the deposit back. Agree with PPs - mould is dangerous and a huge problem. Insist on a dehumidifier and some contribution to the electricity costs.

Speaking as a LL - I've handed back the entirety of most deposits. The main problem has always been pets - which I allowed but no longer.