Serious essay – Advance warning!
So where to start....
Rented a house just over a year ago on an original 6 month AST.
The house was not perfect but all of the issues SEEMED aesthetic.
The landlord gave the impression that he had been living in the house and that he wanted a 'family' as they look after houses more than singles and students. It turned out, on later talking to the neighbours, he had been renting the house out continually over 8 years.
The housing market is hot around here. This was literally the only house at the time which was not agency managed. This made it more attractive and slightly cheaper.
Rent was £450 per week versus the local market rate of £480/£490.
He knew the house was slightly dated and said that he had reduced the rate to reflect this. On starting the tenancy he said we were free to add a lick of paint so we did! We covered over internal and external damp trusting that he had told the truth about them being rectified issues. We paid for a professional deep clean and a carpet clean. One of the walls with so called 'old' damp was also crumbling so we patched this up and as the house is quite large the bill came to around 2.5k for all of this as the labour price was naturally quite a lot.
One month in no problems!
A chunk of garden fence was missing; the landlord had said he didn’t want to ask the neighbours to fix it as they were really nice people who ran out of money after renovation work. Their dog bit my child! Of course, turns out the fence was his.
A toilet didn’t work. He said he would fix it, it was just a single part issue. Similarly, a light switch (pully) didn’t work for one of the upstairs bedrooms. He called his builder round on multiple occasions to ‘quote’ for work. Of course nothing ever got done and on one visit he basically told me to leave the room. I hung around and despite my landlords best effort, I saw a half built flat in the roof! I assume the toilet and the electrics didn’t work as they had to be re-routed to supply the flat.
Lots of little niggling issues crop up. There are ceiling leaks which literally means a shower comes into the room on heavy rain. It comes through a stained roof area, again, apparently damp which had been corrected!
The house is infested with rodents which becomes more apparent as the weather gets colder.
There is damp covering one whole ceiling, two internal walls and even kitchen cupboards which touch the ground. Mushrooms are now accompanying it!
I am telling him all of the issues and as I start suspecting him at this point, a lot of correspondence is intentionally written via email!
Anyway, around this time we finally get approved for a mortgage. Being what we now know as unnecessarily honest, we let the landlord know. He tells us that he would like to take the opportunity to sell so we remain on a rolling contract on the condition we allow viewings. This works out quite well for us in real terms!
He places the property on the market with the famous London agents who over over over inflate vendors expectations. In 3 months he gets 1 viewing!
We find a place and give him a months notice. He says he will be travelling so our deposit will take a little longer to return, no problem though all okay, we have been good tenants, not on his back for risk of being chucked out, ridiculously clean and rent always on time.
One day later we get 4 calls on a Saturday to view the house which we allow. The following week I am inundated with honestly around 30 calls to view, some of which I allow and some of which I don’t because of convenience and routine with 3 small children. The landlord didn’t even bother to communicate that he had put the house back on to let. Agents walk around promising my furniture as part of the let and this is when I find out the property is on for rent again. None of this is my business or makes any difference to me apart from the fact the level of viewings AND number of phone calls is just too much. I give the agents keys and say you can view anytime during the day Mon-Fri but please otherwise leave me alone. I will be gone in a few weeks regardless and you can do as you like.
I also need to mention that the landlord and the agents now reckon the house is worth £650 per week. In such a hot market, even at that price, any house on the market for any longer than a week has issues or is hugely overpriced! In the month we allowed viewings he had no lets.
Fast forward to our move out day. It’s the Sunday before the bank holiday. I underestimated how much rubbish we would make and how much we would throw away. Because it was the bank holiday I couldn’t get collection arranged for the Monday morning so I went back to the house on Monday to bag all the items as neatly as possible on the driveway with the aim to arrange collection for Tuesday morning which I did! As I was on the driveway, I literally saw my landlord who’s on holiday might I add, turn the corner! He drove straight by and pretended he couldn’t see me! It felt like I was in a movie scene.
Of course he had to say something at this point so an hour later I got a message saying he had rearranged his holiday dates to come back and see us earlier to ensure we could get our deposit back faster!
Fully acknowledging he was a bullshitter at this point, I said brilliant, seen as were all here, lets do the inventory now to make this even more efficient. He said he was actually quite upset with us due to my rejection of 30 viewings a week and that he would rather not see us and could we just drop keys through the letter box. After a lot of eye rolling we did. We had no choice.
After various calls, texts and emails asking when we would receive our deposit back, we didn’t hear a word from him until a letter came to my work place basically saying we will not be getting our deposit of around £2k back as he will be taking that away from the £6k we owe him.
We owe him £1.5k in loss of rent due to not allowing viewings all day. We owe him another 3.5k for him having to remedy our terrible paint work and we owe him the rest because of some sought of issue with how we gave him notice!
I suspect the ridiculousness of this figure is an attempt at reverse psychology where we say ‘OK please just keep our deposit and be nice and write of the other 4k’.
I would actually like to be compensated for the money we wasted on effectively covering damp! My poor, once animal loving child is now terrified of animals. After everything I am so angry at this fraudster and I would like to take him to court.
My questions are….
The house had not been decorated in at least 7 years! I suspect he had to repaint because the agents said you will not achieve £650 per week or even the £450 we were paying with damp spots ALL OVER the house. The agents have some lovely pictures on their website which display our perfectly normal paint job and lots of beautiful damp if you know where to look! This bad paint job was so bad you used pictures of this to put a £1,000,000 house on the market might I add. Can I use these in court?
Can I request witness statements from my neighbours and the estate agents with regards to the condition of the property?
One neighbour suggested he has done similar before? Can I request information from our tenancy deposit schemes to see if this is a pattern?
Can I take him to court without paying tons. We are broke for a long while after this house move?
Lastly I suspect my money is gone! I have been doing some research and apparently he used to be a hotel owner. It looks as though his business went under and if the vast majority of his reviews are anything to go by, he has form for being an aggressive, lying bully. A lot of dishonest behaviour is described by his hotel guests. I am confident I am dealing with a fraudster, can I use this information to build a case.
Any other advice, does anything stand out? What do I need to prove/disprove? What can I claim for? How can I claim? Can I get any legal assistance?
Much appreciated and hopefully this thread can help those who may find themselves in similar positons.