To not put the house back to what it was?

[QuantumDog2]

I've rented the house I live in currently for nearly 9 years. When I moved in it was a new build and we were the first to live here, so obviously a buy to let. The walls were all trade paint magnolia and the carpets were cheap, exactly the way new builds are presented as standard.
Over the years I've decorated it and made some improvements like extending the patio and I spend £1400 on new flooring for the lounge because the carpet was worn out by that stage and looked grotty.
Now I'm leaving as I've bought somewhere with my partner, but contractually apparently I have to return the property the way I found it. I'm 6 months pregnant now and don't fancy donning my overalls and climbing ladders to paint. What would you do? I feel like after 9 years here and the time and money I've spent on the place (although my choice totally) I shouldn't really be penalised, but I expect I will lose my deposit?

@knightsinwhitesatin

Renters are treated terribly in this country. How is it fair that they can’t make their abode a ‘home’ even when living there for 9 years. With all the money the landlord has made over that time they can easily pay to cover it, as they should be doing anyway for new tenants. Especially given that OP seems like a great tenant and has obviously looked after their property, and even made improvements that they are happy to take the benefit of. And no I am not against landlords, there is a need to provide properties for rental, but so many are cold hearted. People who rent have a right to live somewhere nice with personal touches.

They can make it their 'hine' but upon leaving it needs to be put back to how it was on move in day. What colour scheme you like, future tenants may hate. Magnolia is neutral colour which pretty much anyone can tolerate

Good luck op and don't waste too much emotional energy on this.

It was your home for 9 years. You enjoyed the decor that you created.

You are now faced with a financial decision:
Deposit: £1,300
Cost to put wall colours back as they were: £X
This is tricky as the link posted above states that
The industry guidance would suggest that if a tenant has lived in a property for five or more years (and they are not required by a contract to carry out redecoration themselves) there is little prospect of success in a claim for costs where the tenant hasn't caused the need for redecoration. The crux here is that the tenant has on the face of it, potentially caused the need for redecoration due to the dark colours, however, if it had remained magnolia, it would have required painting in any case.

Value of the goods you could save if you removed them - curtain poles, light fittings, flooring - less the cost to remove them.

Is it worth moving out and then paying someone to do each of the following
A) Paying someone to repaint the entire house, which will be easy when the house is empty and free from furniture or accepting a reasonable deduction from your deposit for the repainting
B) Paying someone to remove the flooring and replacing it with carpet or accepting the deduction of the cost of refitting new carpet
C) paying someone to remove all of your fittings and replacing with the original ones?

You could also put something in writing to your landlord and give them the option to consider keeping the light and curtain fittings, the flooring and the patio in return for accepting the requirement to repaint the house after 9 years.

She asked the landlord after a year would she paint the undercoat and was told to do it.

She asked for a replacement for the crappy carpet and was told No.

The LL is a CF.

I had been following this. Yes - I think appeal any deductions and you're likely to be successful.

The landlord is supposed to redecorate after 5-6 years anyway, so after a 9 year tenancy and they have never had to redecorate, you shouldn't be charged any of the costs needed towards this. The only thing they could argue is that the darker hallway paint is harder to cover, so take longer in time than if it was a neutral colour. And for a hallway, the costs incurred in "the labour covered for 1 extra coat" would be negligible.

But theyre still showing it to tenants as is are they telling them owner could change all the colours?

Rightmove has today marked the listing as 'Let Agreed'.

interesting

when do you move op

@whynotwhatknot

interesting

when do you move op

Complete on the new house on Monday. I'm handing the keys back on this house towards the end of October.

Oh good well yu got time hope it all works out

You have been such an amazing tenant. Any landlord that wasn’t a complete would be glad to have you. There’s not many of those though and I know that from bitter experience.

Just RTFT. You are 'lawn mowering'.

Story: Mary's lawn mower breaks. That's ok, Mary says to herself. I'll ask my next door neighbour, Sally if I can borrow hers. Then she starts thinking to herself - But what if Sally is annoyed with me for asking her? What if she doesn't want to let me borrow it because she thinks I'll break her lawn mower too? Maybe she's really mean and unhelpful. I bet she'll say no.
When Sally opens the door Mary shouts You bitch! I don't want to borrow your bloody lawn mower anyway!

@QuantumDog2 you started this thread asking if it was reasonable not to repaint and accepting the cost could be taken from your deposit. Somehow it's escalated in your own mind to court cases, ripping up the patio, removing the flooring and not allowing viewings. To be fair to the landlord their only response thus far has been to repeat that it must be put back to magnolia as agreed.

Classic lawn mowering. 90% of this escalation is in your head not helped by AIBU section on MN

Just think about your end goals here. You want to leave this house with the minimum of stress and minimum of expense. Landlord wants the same. The best way to reach what you both want is compromise not conflict.

I hope it all gets resolved now it's let. Good luck with the move and the new baby. You've got a lot going on.

If I was your landlord and you'd been explicitly told to make good I'd be pretty pissed off and yes would be using your deposit to redecorate. There's a reason rental houses are always painted in neutral paint...

I can quite understand landlords wanting decor returned to how it was at the start of the tenancy where tenants have only been in a short while - a year or so, one would expect the house to be returned as it was. However after nine years during which the landlord has been saved the expense of doing any routine maintenance to the property, sticking to the letter of the agreement and demanding the paintwork be returned to magnolia is a cheeky way of dodging the expense of redecorating that would have been necessary after all this time. So it might take an extra coat or two? If the house had been redecorated at five years and again now there's the two coats of paint. The landlord, if they stick to the demand for a return to magnolia, is taking advantage of the agreement to exploit the OP. I hope the deposit protection points out the error of his ways and you get your deposit back OP. Tenants are treated disgracefully in this country and this is a prime example.

@tinkywinkyshandbag

If I was your landlord and you'd been explicitly told to make good I'd be pretty pissed off and yes would be using your deposit to redecorate. There's a reason rental houses are always painted in neutral paint...

If you were the OP's LL, would you have decorated regularly over the 9 years ago the OP didn't just have a mist coat on the walls? Would you have replaced the worn and torn carpet?

To be fair to the OP @Haffdonga, she had no joy getting a response from the LL to start, and the agent lied to her about payment for the flooring and sounds like they treated her like she was trying it on.

How exactly can the OP return it to the UNPAINTED state it was in?

The new house was given a watery undercoat by the builder and NEVER painted by the LL.

When the OP asked the LL about painting the house one year in, the CF LL answered "you do it".

What is so difficult to understand about what the OP has written.

The LL NEVER paid to have the new house painted in the first place.

The house was given a builders undercoat to prepare the new plaster for painting.

What is so difficult to understand?🤦‍♀️

A CF is what the LL is.

[quote whatk8ydid]@QuantumDog2 Hmm. Did the letting agents take new photos when they re-advertised? If not, you could say something along the lines of "Sorry if I seemed a little brusque yesterday. I appreciate you live rather far away and cannot obviously see the property in person but I thought maybe some pictures of the colours and quality of the painting I've done might be helpful in reassuring you that I'm not leaving a mess behind! I've loved calling this place my home." and send off some nice pictures taken in daylight.

Also - a landlord (about eight years ago now to be fair but I can't imagine the process has changed that much) tried to keep a frankly ridiculous % of our deposit, I think just chancing their arm that we wouldn't contest. We did though - the process was very fair and pretty much all of it was awarded back to us. Just take photos of as much as you can - things like how neat the edges are on the paintwork, the condition of the flooring you've put in, you could even include receipts for that if you still have them (or email confirmation etc).[/quote]
This is great advice—better than just saying I won’t be painting because I’m pregnant. You catch more flies with honey and all that.

We recently moved out of a rental after nearly 7 years and I know they repainted the whole thing but didn’t charge us because they were going to repaint anyway. At best you should have to pay the price difference between repainting over magnolia and repainting over dark colors in the green snd blue areas, which for a good painter just means using a specialized primer and maybe heavier duty paint. So that would be the cost of a primer abs additional labor considering the painters would have already been in and set up abyway. Pale pink is easy to cover so you shouldn’t have to pay anything for that.

But — please don’t harp on the pregnancy thing especially when (as you said) it’s really that you can’t be bothered. Too many women use that as an excuse. It doesn’t matter if you feel physically up to painting— for your LL it’s a monetary decision. Likewise the fact that you’re a single parent. You make it sound like you did your LL a huge favor and paid the mortgage on her home out of the goodness of your heart when the fact is you paid for the use of something that belongs to the LL and you received it. You made improvements for your own enjoyment.

@JackieChiles I'm not 'harping on about being pregnant' or using that as an excuse. I've got SPD, am singlehandedly packing up my house to leave, working and caring for three kids....forgive me if I might have mentioned the fact I'm in fucking agony and the reason why.

It's the assumption that I must be a lazy, feckless tenant just because I don't want to repaint the house in my condition. I don't think it's fair, that's the main reason!

It’s not fair that you’re feeling like people are labelling you that way ( though, you can’t really be surprised when you said you couldn’t be bothered to do it!) but it’s also not your LL’s problem that you’re pregnant and not having the easiest time with it - it’s all pretty clear from the contract ( and subsequent alterations that they’ve agreed to) what they are expecting. ( I’d be up for losing my deposit too in your situation, I’m moving out of my place soon and I’m fully expecting them to keep mine for any number of insane reasons, so I’m totally with you there!)

I hope the people going in next aren’t expecting it to be that lovely blue and the bedroom colours, I’d be fairly pissed if I was the next tennant and that was the case, I think it’s lovely!

Don’t do any painting - the fumes are very bad for pregnancy.

The landlord can’t just deduct whatever they like from the deposit, that practice ended many years ago. Check that the deposit is held in a deposit protection scheme and make sure you have the paperwork on this, ask the agents for it if you can’t find it. (If you have zero paperwork and they won’t provide it then personally I’d withhold rent to cover the amount of the deposit and explain in writing I felt forced to do this because they failed to comply with legal obligations regarding deposit).

Anyway. What is likely to happen is you move out (having made sure to take lots of photos of current condition), the estate agent writes to you with an outrageously long list of all the things they want to deduct from the deposit, you write back objecting to each individual item on that list with a justification eg floor has been upgraded with permission; wall paint was upgraded as previously informed. Suggest you concede some items eg £X cost of repainting the kids bedrooms.

If you and they can’t come to a MUTUAL agreement then I believe they have to take it to Court before anything can be deducted from the deposit. And there is a long queue for Court time…

Get a written quote from a local tradesmen for cost of repainting the non-neutral colour rooms, supply it to agents and say you agree to that amount being deducted but will not agree to anything further as you have significantly improved the property over a nine year period in which the landlord did zero maintenance, and that if the landlord seeks any further amounts then that would be a matter for a judge to decide.

It looks like a home now and I'm a bit OCD about things being just-so, so I've done an excellent job with the finish, if I may say so myself.

That’s all well and good, but it’s not your house so when it ceases to be your home all of that is irrelevant. It’s not your house to do with and leave exactly as you please, that’s the nature of renting (I know, I’ve rented for a long time too). You want walls to look ‘just so’ that’s your issue (and you sound a bit spoiled and fussy about it in all honesty - I’m not convinced it needed all the work you describe.) It sounds like you were hoping from the start that you could just leave it how you like. If the LL wants it repainted then that’s perfectly reasonable.

The walls were all trade paint magnolia and the carpets were cheap, exactly the way new builds are presented as standard.

Funnily enough we’re just moving into a new build now and it’s all lovely - all ‘standard’ we didn’t get any extras. We were also told not to decorate for the first two years as part of the drying out process.

@billy1966

The walls weren't unpainted. OP just latched onto that when somebody started talking about mist coats, because people were saying that she was unreasonable and then the tide of the thread turned when somebody said it was just a mist coat. Mist coats are not done in magnolia, they are done in the crappest, cheapest white paint available. OP originally said:

The walls were all trade paint magnolia and the carpets were cheap, exactly the way new builds are presented as standard

And as for landlord saying they didn't want to repaint a brand new house a year after buying it because the OP didn't like the colour - I think that's fairly reasonable, don't you?!

it was actually unpainted. As in freshly plastered walls that had a watery layer of paint on them. I lived with that for a year because I was told that the plaster needed to dry completely, then I requested permission to paint, which was approved.

The OP wrote this on the 13/9.

I don't understand posters need to call the OP a liar or dispute what she has written.

@billy1966 because that contradicts what she originally wrote. Mist coats are not done with magnolia paint, and OP only latched onto the mist coat concept when somebody else suggested that was what it was, but it's clear from what she wrote earlier that it wasn't, and she just didn't like the colour and perceived that the decor was 'cheap'. Establishing facts is part and parcel of responding to this kind of thread - whether the walls were painted or unpainted obviously changes how people weigh up and respond to the question posed.