What is fair ' wear & tear' in a rental after 3.5 years ?

[escape]

Looking to move , maybe in a month at the soonest if today's application is accepted :)
Lived in this property for 3.5 years and would like to gain full deposit back as you'd expect.
We have really had our fingers burned in the past on this issue, however so I really want to be 'front foot'
House is worth a lot less than she paid for it these days and I even think she will get less rent next time too, so expect her to niggle...
Anyone any experienced thoughts on what would count as fair wear and tear after 3.5 years? TIA

It might be in a worse state than you'd like, but the fact they 'were grubby within one year' is surely immaterial - they've been there 2.5 years so that is the period against which to assess whether this is fair wear and tear. Bear in mind you have to expect wear, it is not be seen as ok to expect tenants to keep it 'perfect'.

You may get a partial contribution towards the paintwork and the proportion will be assessed against how frequently you could reasonably expect to paint those rooms.

Have you tried cleaning the walls before jumping to repainting?

We rented a house for 4 years and discovered that the only answer is that it's all subjective. In my opinion, the LL knew they were renting to a family with 4 young children, so they should suck up the fact that the walls down the staircase had the natural rubbing off from having young children running up and down them. They didn't.

The basement flooded because the A/C broke. We told them of this straight away and that there was residual damp. They argued that this was more damp than they were expecting.

A raccoon ate the garage door in an attempt to get to the bins. They argued the bins shouldn't have been stored in the garage, even though it was in the contract that they should be stored in the garage.

I expect my tenants to leave the house sparklingly clean but not trying to hide the natural defects that have occurred over time. Tbh, I wish I had been my own landlord when we were renting!

timetosmile I did this so feel free to PM for a chat. Meantime:

• tenants pay council tax and utility bills, plus insurance for their own contents and rent (hopefully..). You pay everything else.
• ARLA agents are better, as they can't run off with your money (the industry is totally unregulated which is awful) but do not expect much in the way of service. You will be running it yourself remotely.
• get the agent to inspect 3-monthly to start with, reducing to six monthly if you have long-term tenants. This is not to check how they fold their knickers, but for the state of the building and to make sure they are treating it reasonably. Tenants should report leaks, sagging gutters etc but often don't.
• fit extractor fans in kitchen and bathroom, wired to the lights.
• write an instruction manual for the place and leave copies of appliance manuals.
• you need a BTL mortgage and landlord's insurances, to cover the building, your contents (carpets, curtains, boiler, kitchen, anything you leave), malicious damage by tenants, legal expenses for tenants who won't leave when told and you may want to try for rent guarantee.
• you need a gas safety certificate, renewed annually, and an electrical check is also good practice.
• as someone else notes remove as much as possible. If you have an attic you could use that for storage and exclude it from the let, but tenants do need space to keep things. Anything you value must not be in the building. If there is something you need to leave, it must be in the tenancy agreement and made clear to the tenants BEFORE they rent that it will stay in the house.
• storage is expensive and unless you have really flash or treasured stuff, two years in storage means you might as well buy it all again.

(sings...'Christ, you know it ain't easy...)

Agree with others. Having been a tenant of 30 years and left every house immaculate and better than when we moved in for most of them you cannot be charged for the full replacement cost of a new carpet if it is 5 years old.

If your landlady tries to deduct anything other than a minimal amount and as long as you have professionally cleaned the carpets the tenancy deposit appeal process will award her nothing.