Landlord wants to withhold deposit

[tigerpug]

We rented a lovely house for almost 2 years. It was very clean and tidy when we moved in, and we put a lot of time and effort in to make sure we looked after it well during the time we lived there. The landlords are very fussy, and we knew that when we moved in, so checking out & deposit was always a concern.

We moved out 2 weeks ago, and paid for professional cleaners to do their work. Then we returned to the house 3/4 times after this before the inventory to finish up all the specialist jobs (oven cleaning, oiling their wooden floors, weeding etc). The house was so clean and well looked after that the estate agent who did the inventory said to her colleagues that it was the cleanest tenanted house and the easiest inventory she had ever done. Clean inventory - we were relieved

And then... the landlords moved back in early and have niggled over 2 things

• broken toilet seat in one bathroom. It was not broken at all. The mechanism clicked when you lifted the seat so perhaps it was broken internally, but we never saw any evidence of this. Anyway, they said £40 to replace. If its broken internally then we wont quibble about this

• Rips to wallpaper. On the check in inventory done almost 2 years ago it says some minor rips & marks to wallpaper. Landlady says we have made some new rips. I really dont think we have, I am sure I would have noticed, as would the estate agent who did the check out inventory. My 3 year old slept in this room for nearly 2 years and we always made sure he was careful to take care of the bedroom. They want to charge us £100+ for new wallpaper

I am really upset and quite angry about this. We did a lot for them (allowed them to park in the drive before we moved out, bought £70 floor oil to maintain the floors which we didn't charge them for, meticulously cared for their plants etc), and even the estate agent thinks they are being unreasonable. Such a shame as we seemed to have a good relationship. I have also found out that after the inventory was done, and I handed the keys back to the agent, they gave the landlord all keys straight away, even though we still had 4 days of our tenancy left. The house was empty, and I wouldn't have minded this at all, but now I feel that we are being taken advantage of, and them having access to the property whilst we were still paying rent shouldn't have been permitted.

They are meant to be sending photos to the estate agent of the 'damage' but they didn't do this last week, so we are left waiting for them to do this when we could really do with our money back.

I have rented out a flat of mine and whilst it was never returned to me in such good condition I wouldn't have quibbled over things like this. Given that they rented their house to a family of 4 (2 young boys) and that they should expect 'wear and tear', do they have a case to take some of our money?

Sorry, this is mainly a rant, but if anyone has any advice I would appreciate it.

Your deposit should be in the protected deposit scheme (if you are in England, at least, I'm not sure how it works in other countries) and I am certain you will get it all back.

Yes you're right, it is being held in the DPS scheme, but the landlord sounds like she will try to claim some of it back.

Until she bothers to send photographic evidence nothing can moved forward and we are just sat here like lemons waiting for our money. She is obviously busy moving back in to the house and its not a priority for her. I have no idea how long she can keep us waiting for, its already been 2 weeks.

Yes I agree with Mintyy, they will have to raise an issue with the deposit scheme company and then you get to dispute it - the deposit scheme will decide. I moved out of a rented house last year and we had a small rip in the wall paper of one of the bedrooms, but the letting agent said that was fair wear and tear and recommended we get the whole deposit back, which we did.

I'm sorry I don't know the legalities of rent deposits etc, but I have to say I think you have gone above and beyond the call of duty and the landlord should just be pleased that the property is ready to let straight away!

Poor you, I hope you get all of your money back, you sound as if you deserve it!

Thanks flag, we are fair and honest people and it really shouldn't be happening

Does anyone know how long a landlord has to raise the issue with the DPS?

I don't know off the top of my head but there is a great deal of information on the website, so I'd google it if I were you.

We have just something very similar happen to us and are going through this process at the moment, it's very frustrating.

Our agent arranged to re-pay us the portion of the deposit that isn't being disputed, keeping back the amount in dispute - this at least means you get the bulk of your money back right away. I'd ask them to do this, if they haven't already.

In our case, it hasn't gone to the resolution service yet. We've had to submit a response to the landlord's claims through the agent, setting out why we think they're unfair. If the landlord doesn't accept that, it goes to the resolution service.

Thanks Emzar, thats helpful to know
I did ask the EA if they could get the remainder of the deposit back to us and they said they would see if they could do that - good news that it is possible.

I hope you get your money back too

Getting the bulk of the deposit back was good for us psychologically too - it's such a kick in the teeth to have a landlord do this when you've put effort and money into maintaining a property and spent hours and hours cleaning it on leaving, it really upset us. But getting the money back meant that we didn't feel we were being held over a barrel for the full deposit, and as it was only a couple of hundred quid left outstanding, we're now approaching it with more of a 'fuck them' attitude, treating it as a bit of a game - much healthier mentally!

Do quibble about the toilet seat - it wasn't broken as far as you are aware, nor did the inventory check pick up a problem - you should expect that £40 back too.

In Scotland landlords don't have long to respond-it's about five days. You should have info about where your deposit us-I'd phone Znd ask the company holding the deposit the likely time frame.

Good lord, something almost identical happened to us a few months ago and I was incensed!

However, I am a solicitor, was heavily pregnant and had some time on my hands so decided to fight them - even though the amount they wanted to deduct amounted to around 10% of the deposit it was the principal of the thing.

Will come back to thread later (wrangling baby and toddler) but in short:

• conduct all communications in writing.

• depending on what your agreement says, they may be out of time for raising retention items.

• they need to pay you the undisputed portion of deposit, they can't hold on to it whilst you wrangle over retention items.

(Disclaimer - I'm not a property lawyer!)

1. as someone has mentioned, they can only withhold the disputed part of the deposit, the balance must be repaid to you within the timeframe specified within the tenancy agreement.

Our landlord ignored this and stated that provided we were reasonable they would be happy to return rest of deposit.

They got a very snotty reply from me that they were not permitted to condition the return of the undisputed portion of the deposit and I expected to receive it in accordance with the tenancy agreement (in out case it was 10 business days after period for landlord to list items for which they wanted a retention) - cue grovelling email from letting agents.

2. there is tons of useful info on the tenancy dispute service website, do have a look. To give you some examples of things our landlord tried to claim for that we argued about:

• a professional company came in to do the check-out inventory, accompanied by male landlord and his father. Agent was rather over enthusiastic and c 50% of items he listed were already raised and covered in the check in inventory. In some cases there were check-in pictures which showed there wasn't real change by end of tenancy; in other cases there were no pictures. The onus is on landlord and agents to document so I'd say your landlord is on a loser re the ripped wallpaper - there is no evidence that there has been additional damage.

• female landlord then went round house a few days later and came back with a vague list of c15 additional items she wanted to raise and deduct from deposit. Our agreement stated that they had 10 BDs from end of tenancy to tell us what deductions they were proposing - I kept getting piecemeal emails from letting agent saying x wants to claim for this, that and t'other, that they (landlord) thought they were being reasonable and hoped we would be too (always suspicious) and as per above would otherwise be happy to return balance of deposit.

• I declined to respond until I had the full and final list of items and costs - basically I wanted to string things out beyond the 10 BDs so that they didn't have time to get arsy and bung on additional items once we'd responded with a no to their list (which would have reduced the undisputed amount that they had to repay).

• they cannot claim for fair wear and tear; you have to use the item negligently. Eg

• tried to charge us for a new shower hose as old one was leaking (we'd never noticed). Refused on basis that we'd used shower for its intended purpose and it had obviously come to end of its life.

• where landlord does have a case, they cannot automatically charge you for full replacement cost, they have to take into account expected life of item and how much of item needs replacing. The dispute service has rules of thumb for product life (I think it is 10 years for carpet). Eg

• if carpet is damaged and needs replacing 2 years into tenancy and was 2 years old at beginning of tenancy, landlord can only claim for 60% of cost of replacement (as would have expected carpet to last for another 6 years).

• landlord cannot enrich themselves at your expense. If carpet was a bog standard one they cannot charge you for a luxury replacement. Eg if the standard one was £1000 and the luxury one was £2000 they could only claim £600 not £1200.

• they have to be proportional. In our case the landlord tried to claim £90 because a cosmetic piece of plastic had fallen off the ensuite shower - they wanted £40 for a new shower kit and £50 for a plumber to fit it; all for something which was a number of years old and made no impact on use of the shower. They got short shrift

• they need to provide proper costing and receipts (not pull figures out of thin air like ours did

Sorry this is so long - there is actually lots more but I had to stop somewhere! Feel free to pm me as your strategy and responses depends on what your agreement says and how long ago your tenancy expired.