To want to complain and fight my estate agents/landlord?

[erised]

My husband and I have just secured a house to rent with Romans. We've paid a holding deposit and signed paperwork, even given notice on our current place. In the listing for the house it says 'Cats allowed' and this was confirmed multiple times by the person putting through our paperwork. I received a call today from the estate agents saying that there was a mix up and the landlord has said that we are not allowed our cats and it's either them or the house. Is there anything I can do to fight this? I'm so upset, this was our dream house and I'm also pregnant. Am I overreacting?

you really shouldn't be visiting that often for so long. If your allergies are really that bad then how do you handle being around people who have pets? Or being in a public place where animals can be as well? I'm calling bs.

Not me. DH has a severe cat allergy. Also rabbits. No other animals that we know of. He’s also asthmatic. He will react if DD strokes a cat at her friend’s house. We mostly manage it by being very careful about handwashing and changing/washing clothes. If we were renting out a property we couldn’t take the risk of cars being there in case he needed to fix something etc. I’m not paying ££££ for someone else to do something so that someone else can keep a cat. (It’s bad enough that we have to deal with their shit in our front garden.)

Youre not getting thaT house

Give up on it and start looking for a new one

there are indeed really bad landlords as pointed out upthread - although Shelter conveniently can't see that a lot of them are housing associations. And yes, almost no enforcement. There are of course also scum tenants but this is MN so forget that.

new legislation means no extra deposit for a pet. Regardless of landlord allergies a cat can wreck carpet and woodwork and the deposit protection calculations mean no realistic compensation. Hence rejection of cat.

but I agree, give up.

Personally I think scum agents are the main problem, for tenants and lls alike. They are the ones who have caused the problem here.

OP, how long ago did you give your notice? Do you know if the owners have found new tenants yet? If not, I’d contact them, explain the situation, and ask for a monthly rolling contract while you look for somewhere else.

The agents for the new place have proven themselves to be careless and incompetent, and if they’re going to be the ones managing the property (likely if the owner lives abroad) I’d take this screw-up as a red flag that they’ll continue to be crap.

For future reference, I’d advise never giving notice until you’ve actually signed a contract on somewhere new. Last time we moved, like you we found somewhere, paid holding deposit, passed reference checks and were waiting for the contract when the owner changed her mind and decided she didn’t want to let the property after all. It was hugely annoying but as we hadn’t given notice we were able to start again and actually found somewhere much nicer. I hope you have similar luck.

What are they supposed to say though if the landlord has already told them once that he won’t accept the OPs two cats,

What’s to say he has? Romans lettings are crap, they make shit up as they go, to suit themselves - not the LL & not the tenant

If they had fine their job properly in the first place, the OP wouldn’t be in this situation.

~fine~. Done