Just SCREWED on our etat des Lieux in Brussels

[rushingrachel]

Hey, for those that followed and helped with the saga of our move I can report we were royally done over by the worlds most biased expert ever who came up with the figure of 2800 euro. More than half of which related to the fact that he said the parquet in the living room needed stripping and revarnishing. I was more furious than I have ever been in my life. The house was in great nick, the builder had been in, the cleaner, the window cleaner. It was nepotistic daylight robbery. And the guy did not even pretend to be neutral. I could have wept, having just lost my job to lose so much money was really painful. So thought I'd share the pain!

I feel your pain! It is is many years since I lived in Brussels and suffered through the agony of (several) etats de lieux. Is there any point in appealing to your landlord or to the agency through which you rented? I remember one flat from which I moved where we had painted the walls to cover up previous picture frame marks (I took over the flat part-way through a tenancy from friends) and the expert said we had used the wrong paint and it would all have to be redone. It was a BIG room and while I was waiting for his report I happened to speak to the rental agent who laughed at my distress and said they were redecorating the whole flat anyway so the paint I had used was irrelevant. Never got charged a penny.

Hi rr. I meant to pop round today with a New Year card (I know, I'm soooo late with them). Wish I had now. Sorry to hear this. Belgian landlords are so crap.

You could ask to see the calculation made to produce the 2800. We had 1700 damages, I was well peeved given what I had put up with from our landlord and how I had helped him in the weeks before moving out. He lied in front of the expert which probably cost him a few Euro after admitting the house hadn't been painted for 8 1/2 years (expert discarded all wear and tear on walls after admission of lying) and also got nothing for the back garden and showing the expert a photo taken a year before we moved in and claiming it had been taken at the beginning of our tenancy. Our landlord got over 1400 however for the parquet in the living room (30m2) and also 3 bedrooms with tiny amounts of damage but he got compensation for every m2 (40m2) even though only about 3m2 was damaged by impressions made by bed legs and daughter weeing on floor under bed and not noticing for a few days!!! The system stinks. You do not have to sign if you don't want to, I wouldn't without seeing the calculation - we saw ours.

What a nightmare! We got stung for 1600 euros for a miniscule amount of painting - where pictures/curtain rails had been etc, and where dd had drawn on the wall. We're planning on staying put until we have amortised the full redecorating costs - as it was all new and white when we moved in.....

You've made me feel a bit better. I was so pissed about the parquet. There were 2 patches with marks and we had oiled them so you could barely see them and he charged us for the whole floor! What riled me was that he found pesky things that needed cleaning like traces of water on the dishwasher (I jest not) and charged the cleaning at 35 euro am hour. At that rate we should all be cleaners! The calculation was something like 1800 for the parquet, 400 for painting, a couple of hundred on cleaning and a few other misc bits. However there were several things that he totally missed! My husband puts this down to the fact I followed him around like a crazy woman shouting and stamping so he could not concentrate. I still think landlords should have to prove they do the work we pay for and not just profit from the system!

Our new house has tiled floors throughout, it was one thing I didn't like when looking around, but now we are here, I am very very glad we no longer have parquet floor to look after. Our landlord said he removed the parquet from the living room before we moved as he was fed up re-varnishing it after tenants left and he installed was has turned out to be really easy to clean slate grey tiles, I'm very happy with the landlord's choice!

The expert missed several things we had damaged in our old house too during inspection as we stood in front of them :-)

Another strange thing was that we had verified all light bulbs were working the day our exit inspection and after professional cleaners had spent 2 days deep cleaning. We had moved out 2 weeks earlier - in order to "benefit" the landlord and his renovations. The landlord let himself in after we and the cleaners left. The next morning during exit inspection, 2 light bulbs refused to work, yet in the previous 3 years, bulbs would blow every few months. We reckon the landlord deliberately changed the bulbs to gain 10 euro extra each. It made my day to see the look on the landlord's face when we calmly went into the garage and pulled out our hidden stash of light bulbs and changed the dud ones!!!!! I'd already read about the light bulbs scam and was ready. Ahh poor landlord, another 20 euro lost for him.

Yes - we got charged for a couple of lightbulbs too! Bastards! Our current etat de lieux describes a "jolie haie" in the garden. We moved in March where the garden (this was a new build, first occupants) consisted of some dead looking twigs and a rutted turf muddy patch. DH has spent HOURS on the garden - which looks half decent after 3 years.....they wouldn't DARE comment on it!

I love that you did that with the lightbulbs natation. It's things like this that make me glad we own our house. Mind you, the plumber came for about 15 minutes yesterday to fix a leaking toilet and charged me ?50 for the pleasure! He said he was close by so it's not even as if he had to come all the way from Tervuren where he lives! I wouldn't mind earning ?200/hour!!!!

I am just glad we had the windows cleaned. Someone told me they were charged 10 euro a window! We had put those Eco bulbs in that take hours to light up and the landlord tried to say we should be charged as they weren't good enough but not even the biased expert bought that. As a result he could not see in one of the bathrooms properly and did not notice the shower screen was kind of broken! It's still daylight robbery though.

I'm dreading what will happen when we eventually move out of this house.
Our landlord is a money-grabbing bastard and is sure to wring every penny out of us that he can.
The entire house was in a pretty bad state when we moved in, but I'm sure he'll try to pin all the damage on us. He clearly hasn't made any of the repairs that he has presumably received money for in the past.
We shall see!