To think that if you private rent your life should not be dictated to by the landlord whose mortgage you are paying

[Nursejackie1]

So many of us are stuck in private renting with no choice paying over the odds, while landlords are making a mint. Most landlords have all these rules that you can’t decorate without permission, can’t even put a wall hanging up without asking. Often can’t or need permission to have pets, have regular inspections. I pay loads for my home and due to that cannot save a deposit. My kids have never had their bedrooms decorated in the way I would like.. having to stick with plain magnolia. Why should somebody else decide whether my kids get to grow up with a family pet or not? AIBU to think that if you are paying somebodies mortgage for them then while you are in that house you should be able to treat it as your own within reason and not have your life dictated to and controlled by them?

I wouldn’t want tenants painting everything in sight or letting their cats wee on the floor, for the simple reason that I would be the one spending time and money to rectify those things.

In case anyone is interested, here is the fabulous paintwork we have lived with for NINE years which we aren’t allowed to paint over.

And please don’t say “find somewhere else”, I have kids and housing benefit (I work full time!), it would be easier to win the lottery than find someone willing to rent to me

I own my house and I am not allowed to install plastic windows, keep a caravan on the drive or keep pigs, owing to covenants. Possibly more extreme but still rules.

In my last house I wasn't even allowed to put a carousel on the front lawn. Swizz.

People are entitled to stable housing, whether they can afford to buy or not. really?
I think you forfeit that stability if you are antisocial (and define that as you will), fall behind in payments, destroy another persons property....I could go on. The problem with today’s society is that many people seem to think that the world owes them a nice life just because they were born and the fact they can’t afford a house is everybody else’s fault, nothing to do with the 6 children they had, the fact that they didn’t try at school (or subsequently), that they will only consider properties in SW1, they buy a Starbucks every day......

Most of my points are already covered in other peoples comments here. Renting isn't a service. It's a private business agreement that you choose to sign, if you don't like the terms you don't live there. If you went in an art gallery and didn't like the price or look of the picture you don't have to buy it. If you don't like the condition or rent cost of a property you don't have to rent it. You can pay to have the property condition checked by a pro before renting just like someone who wants to purchase a property would. If you let someone borrow your car when you weren't using it in exchange for an agreed price and the promise they would look after it you wouldn't expect them to mess it up or then not want to pay.

If you can afford to decorate, but aren't allowed under the terms of your contract, then get a Nationwide account that pays 5% and get that deposit sorted.
I own my own home and am also a landlord. I don't have the cash to decorate my children's room as they would like (2 bed terrace, it's what we can afford).
My tenants aren't paying off any of my btl mortgages, they are interest only.

Many landlords will allow a tenant to decorate - especially if you agree to paint it back to a neutral colour after (you might like a super hero mural or dark/bright colours but the next tenant doesn't...).

I had the flat I rent out completely re-decorated before my last set of tenants moved in - during their 18 months there, they were subletting the flat to random people, caused lots of damage to the newly painted walls, the new kitchen work top, window frames etc. Now my choices are to either spend another £1,000+ putting it right or my next lot of tenants will have a flat that doesn't look as nice as it could have done. Most tenants are not willing to look after a property the same as an owner-occupier does so it goes both ways really. If someone wanted to rent my flat for 5+ years and took good care of it, I would happily buy them paint if they preferred a different colour for walls.

In regards to pets, many leasehold flats have a no-pets clause in the master lease so it's not up to the landlord. If it's a freehold house, many landlords will be happy to consider allowing pets on a case by case basis. Again though, if you move out and the next prospective tenants don't want to rent a house that smells of dogs or has the carpets scratched by cats, the landlord will have to pay a lot to put the damage right.

I'm a landlord and would be happy if my tenant decorated to be honest. And I've had tenants with dogs (which wrecked the carpet but that's another story!) It's only a one bed though so I don't tend to get families obviously which is a shame.

Oh and I'm only a landlord because I'm in negative equity and can't afford to sell it, I make a substantial loss on it. Thought I'd point out we're not all rich money grabbing toasters!

Toasters!! Hee hee.

Tossers

@thisisacrazyidea - wtf? Is that your definition of the average tenant? Dear Lord.

YANBU.

I private rent and am thankfully allowed to decorate. The living room was full-on 80s style half and half wallpaper when I moved in - the bottom half was dark Brown. It wasn’t even applied well. I’ve vastly improved it just by stripping it and painting.

I think it’s ridiculous that people can’t put shelves or mirrors up, these things can be easily fixed and don’t wreck a home.

This is something I struggle with a bit.

I'm a landlord because my husband is in the forces and we travel around. We bought a house to be on the property ladder and now live at the other end of the country.

We want to buy here, but don't want to be the arsehole landlord who evict people. We will have to sell the house soon though.
We say that so long as the house is neutral when the person moves out we are happy for them to redecorate. But we do need inspections as how do we know the tenant isn't wrecking things? This seems fair to me.
Also, our tenant is allowed pets so long as they pay a larger deposit. My well trained dog became ill and wrecked a carpet. My hamster was once too close to curtains and wrecked them by pulling them through the bars of her cage. These are accidents but can happen and I can't afford to pay for these things regularly.

Our tenant is literally covering the mortgage. We don't have a lot of money otherwise and that house is our savings.
We are stuck in a military house with magnolia walls and tatty carpets. If we want that to change it needs to be in our own house.

@DarkDarkNight completely agree

I rented a house for 7 years.
It was an old house but newly refurbished (btl), brand new everything. When we moved out she wanted to keep our deposit because she wasn't happy that after 7 years of a family living there, things didn't look brand new still.
She didn't account for wear and tear.
A light bulb was missing and batteries from an electric fire remote were missing (we never used it).
There was rising damp which caused damp spots all over the walls and black mould, and she expected us to repaint the whole house.
The garden looked better than when we moved in.
We paid her £40,000 in rent for a house that was owned outright.
She was petty and unfair, I'm so glad I don't have to rent anymore.
Everything we did we put back, ie putting pictures up etc. I filled any holes and repainted any walls that were dirty. Still wasn't good enough.
We were good tenants and she made out we left the house in really bad shape. Pathetic!

Thisiscrazy You do realise that most people living in poverty work for a living?

I believe that everyone has a right to a safe, pleasant place to live. Even if they come from a disadvantaged background. Even if they struggled at school. Even if they happen to work in care or hospitality or a similarly underpaid sector.

Fuck me that this Undeserving Poor attitude is still prevalent. What is wrong with people? We have more wealth than ever before. There is no reason, other than individual greed, that some of us are without the basics of life.

@Shoxfordian
Do you really need that explaining?

YABU. Rent and house prices are high because there aren’t enough houses. It’s basic economics. It’s no wonder that you can’t afford to save up for a deposit if you can’t even understand the basics of how life works

I think the situation in Germany doesn’t give any flexibility.

I know at some point we will be needing to rent for a short while.
For us and a lot of people something like the German rental way would be a hindrance.

I know people have said that the government are tackling the situation and trying to make it fairer to those who rent but all I have seen is policies put in place that make rents so much more expensive.

When we started off the choices we made were similar to a lot of people around us.

People who had both a law degree and worked at a law firm would be going from the office to pull pints in a pub until closing time, or would spend there time at weekends as waiting staff or shelf stacking in a local supermarket.
That is how we got in the housing ladder. It wasn’t just handed to us on a plate.

@nursejackie1 Have you spoken to your landlord about painting?

The standard contract my tenants signed states no decorating, not hanging anything on the wall and no pets.

However, they are allowed to decorate, they have mirrors and photos on the wall and currently have two cats.

As soon as they'd been in a couple of months and I knew they weren't going to annoy the neighbours, didn't instantly stop paying etc I was happy to relax those clauses. I only didn't right away as if you are unlucky enough to hit a bad tenant I've found that it tends to show itself in the first two months.

After 9 years, especially if they allow a pet, it's madness if they won't allow it.

bibbity as per my pp, our experiences as accidental LLs have been universally bad. I have a friend who has rented the same place for 15 years- I know she is a good tenant. The point I was making was that there needs to be give and take, you aren’t ‘entitled’ to stable housing just because you are alive. It does come with responsibility, on both sides. And once either side has been screwed there tends to less flexibility for the next person.

Have you ever discussed what colours you want to use?
When I worked for a HA we’d get houses handed back with (usually badly painted) primary coloured feature walls. The next person would be desperate to move in but every time would complain about the bloody wall and either the extra time until they could move in as it was a nightmare to paint over or complain that the decoration voucher given wasn’t enough.
From that we’d then get the ‘well if I can paint the walls I can paint the tiles (wrecked for the next tenant moving in, especially if one was damaged and needed replacing), and worst of all painting kitchen units (and then Demanding new a new kitchen if a drawer needed replacing and the drawer front supplied was the original and they had no paint left - and coving worktops with sticky backed plastic (which is a devil of a job to get the stickiness off)).
So the easiest thing is to blanket say ‘no’, but if you have been there a while, why not try discussing it through with them. If you’re just after painting an easy to paint over colour they may say yes - if your looking to do Gotham city at night then I think it will be a no!

People trotting out the “rent is more than a mortgage” argument show their lack of understanding of basic economy. If it were that simple, you’d all own your own homes too. But the reality is the landlord had to find a minimum 25% deposit. They then have to have buildings insurance, gas safety checks and when the boiler goes bang (like ours did the other day and cost 2.5k) there’s no magic landlord money tree and never in the history of Mumsnet has a tenant offered to do their own repairs (I’m not saying they should either.

It’s pretty naive to think the costs of running a house beyond utilities only amounts to the cost of a mortgage.

Property prices are unsustainably high because the government policies have encouraged investment into property and thus a property price bubble