Can a landlord charge for this?

[sharksinparks]

We were moving out of a rental property on Friday, and checkout time was 2pm. The landlord said he wanted to come on Thursday to check to see if he needed to get a cleaner. We said no because we were using Thursday for our cleaning. We cleaned the place from top to bottom.

The landlord came at the agreed time on Friday. He found a few things that he said weren't clean enough. He wants to get a cleaner, but also says he will charge us an extra day's rent. This is because the new tenants were meant to move in the same day and he said he would have to delay that by a day, and it was our fault because we didn't let him come on Thursday. Can he charge us for the extra day's rent???

For background: The contract says the house needed to be in the same state of cleanliness as when we moved in. To our recollection it was, but we had no formal check-in report with photos to compare. We took our own photos at check-in, but they aren't detailed enough to show the areas the landlord said aren't clean. The landlord did take detailed photos at check-out, so probably has some from when the previous tenants moved out, which he will use to argue his side.

He has no basis to do this unless it's written in the contract that he can. If he's taking it out of your deposit then you can appeal this.
Also typically rental is not done "by the hour" so if your last day was the 30th August then that would include the whole of that day so he couldn't move in people during that day. At 2pm he should have given you indication which bits were not sufficiently clean and you could have cleaned them there and then.

If there's no check in report with photos to show how clean it was, then he has no hope of proving to the deposit protection scheme that it's not clean enough at the end of the tenancy.

What date does / did your tenancy end? Who agreed the check out time?

Have you requested your deposit back through the deposit scheme? Any deductions for cleaning will have to go through their dispute process.

Thanks all. The tenancy ended Friday. The contract said we should return the keys by 2pm. He wanted to come at midday, which we agreed to. As he was pointing things out we were able to clean some of them - e.g. dust under the bed. But at around 12.45 he asked us to leave. We asked if he would like us to do any more cleaning, but he said no, just go (he was always quite rude), so we did.

I recorded some of the conversation, but not sure if I'd be able to use that as evidence because I didn't tell him I was recording. Any advice on that?

I'll be doing the deposit claim today - it's with a deposit protection scheme, so fingers crossed it will be ok.

I bet your bottom dollar he didn't get a cleaner, and the reason he was so keen for you to go was that the new tenants did move in as he'd planned!

I doubt you'll need the recordings if he has no signed check in inventory from when you moved in. The impetus is on him to prove that it was worse when you left than when you moved in, not for you to disprove it.

No he can't
He can try to claim some of your deposit for cleaning not being to the standard required in your contract if he has evidence of this though.
As part of my job I have to try and stop Landlords from claiming from deposits and I would strongly argue against this one and probably win

Right if you offered to clean more and he told you to go and it was before 2pm he doesn't have a leg to stand on

It was a furnished rental was it? Very hard to do a mega clean in that case. Last time we moved we had a team in to do inside and out over a couple of days once we had emptied the place. But our agreement was very detailed. Oven cleaned, fridge washing machine etc, shower heads descaled carpets shampooed, lawn mowed bushes trimmed gravel raked windows inside and out walls washed etc, on top of normal clean. I can't see he can enforce anything if you don't have such a document

Thanks all. Your answers have cheered me up no end. It was a furnished flat, rented direct from the landlord, but advertised through OpenRent and, thankfully, he used their standard contract, and their deposit holding service, so hopefully that will protect us.

Absolutely not. He can't charge for the cleaning or the extra day. Is your deposit in a deposit protection scheme. He needs to go through that. You dispute the change. TBH they are very fair. They won't change you for either and you should get your deposit back in full.

Just to re-iterate what others have said, if there's no check-in report he doesn't have a leg to stand on with deducting any cleaning costs from your deposit.

Don't agree to any deductions and ask the scheme for your full deposit back. If he argues let it go to arbitration. Most schemes do some sort of mediation first so they should put him straight if he has no evidence of the condition at check in that you've signed and agreed is correct. if he produces a check in report you haven't seen and signed you can absolutely reject it as innacurate.

Appalling behaviour from the landlord rushing you out though - he should have factored in a short void period to check the property over, do any cleaning needed and check if any maintenance or redecoration was needed - he sounds like an amateur.

And he definitely can't charge for an extra day.