I'm sure this isn't the first time anyone has posted this, but I'm in a bit of a pickle. So this might be epic.
So DP and I lived for a year in a house owned by a friend of a friend. I had my worries about him being a bit flakey before we moved in, but it was by then too late to find anywhere we liked in budget in the right area. We signed a contract and paid a deposit of £450, but this deposit wasn't anywhere mentioned in the contract. We were never sent details of a tenancy deposit scheme.
No inventory of the property was taken at the time - he said he was too busy, but casually said that whatever was left in the house we could get rid of if we liked, he didn't want any of the things, and said it was fine for us to keep or get rid of as he'd not had time to get rid of them himself. We kept everything else there excepting a hideous lampshade and a coffee table.
The house when we moved in was pretty grim, the carpets were dirty, curtains and everything was generally not great. I know, I know, why did we move there? Mainly because of its amazing location, and the rent was cheap for the area. We made the best of it and I cleaned up the carpets.
The more we lived there, the more we realised that the landlord was flakey, he'd never answer calls and when we had issues they were slow to fix.
The final straw came when we were burgled just over two months ago, I'd only gone out round the corner and came back and was locked out of the house. I assumed the lock was broken (like everything else in the house). We had to call a locksmith to get in the house, which the landlord begrudged us doing, and then discovered we'd been burgled and locked out. So we had to pay for a locksmith to get us in the house, a temporary door fix to secure the house overnight and then a new door was fitted two days later.
We sent the receipts and we took money out of our rent, the landlord said he was happy to do this.
We then decided to move as we didn't feel safe there, quickly saw another property around the corner for sale, consulted our contract which says that our contract ran 'month to month until determined by one calendar months written notice by either party to expire on any day in the year'. So we handed our notice in on the 3rd May, and moved out on the 2nd June.
Now things have gone sour - I get the feeling my landlord is in a bit of a bind money wise and is trying to get more money from us or keep our deposit. Firstly he ignored my emails and calls for a number of weeks and then said that technically he could have charged us for June's rent as the contract runs from the 1st to the 1st. This isn't mentioned anywhere in the contract, and we actually moved in on the 7th June the year before. Is he right? Judging from that line taken from our contract) is that what it means???
It's been over a month and I've been chasing about the deposit and he finally replied last week. He's now saying he wants the coffee table he told us to get rid of, he says the curtains are dirty (which they were when we moved in and we had cleaned them), and he now says he wants us to pay half for the repairs to the house after the burglary. Can he do this? He says we sent the receipt too late for him to claim it on the home insurance, but we sent it first class the next working day, and he has never once before mentioned that this receipt was too late?
I've checked with all the TDSs and he has not registered our deposit, so I know we can make a claim. But looking at the shelter website it says the landlord can make counter claims and this will be taken out of any money returned to us, can he make any sort of claims to us? He'd also said off the record we could paint the place, so we had painted the bedroom, and we're worried he'll try to make some sort of claim about that.
We don't have any photos of the state of the house when we left, and they didn't do an inventory before we moved in. I just feel that he could make up lots of things, because the house is pretty crumbling as no one lived there for 18 months before we moved in. It's sort of his word against ours.
I've said to him that we're fine to pay for any dry cleaning of the curtains, but we won't pay for the coffee table as he told us to get rid of it, and we don't want to pay for the repairs to the house after the burglary. It's now radio silence from him, despite chasing. We just want our £450 back.
What can we dooo? Sorry for the essay!!