Landlord and general upkeep of property?

[Tisfortired]

Hi all, just after some advice on our private rent.

Me, DP and DS4 have lived in our home, privately rented for almost 5 years now. The rent is very reasonable for the area and has not yet increased, and our landlord lives not too far and is usually quite accommodating when there has been problems, he's a nice guy and we have a good relationship.

However, in 5 years the house has some wear and tear, eg when we moved in the carpets throughout were already quite old and worn, so now they are really quite awful. The bathroom is also very old and worn typical 90s style bathroom from when the house was built. The kitchen is basically failing apart, again - original old kitchen, cupboards falling off, flooring discoloured and tattered.

How much of these things are our landlords responsibility and how much are ours? A couple of years ago we redid DS's room, pulled out the awful old built in wardrobes, redecorated (quite plain) and put new carpet down (with LL's permission.) we footed the bill for all of this, it didn't occur to me otherwise. Now I am getting so fed up with the general state of the house, although it is kept clean there is only so much anti bac can do! We are contemplating moving to somewhere in better condition but I'd much rather stay where we are and have it tarted up a bit.

Does anybody know if our landlord has a duty to do any of this, or if because it is somewhat cosmetic are we to do this ourselves?

You can't do anything yourselves without permission or you may have to put it back to how it was when you moved in. Check your tenancy agreement.

Are you with an agency? If not, you might just have to ask the landlord to redecorate, get new carpets, etc. If he says no, there's not much you can do.

We rent a house out with an agency and they tell us after the quarterly inspection what might need to be done at some point. So we now know it all needs to be painted as it hasn't been done for 4 years and the bathroom tiles need fresh grouting. We don't have to do these things but obviously if we don't, we could upset our tenants or they might negotiate the rent down.

It is all up to the landlord to do. Or not. At least it is cheap.

Arrange a chat and open discussions. It would make sense to keep good tenants by doing some works if the landlord wants to, has the money and is planning to stay in the business.

The landlord is obligated to follow health and safety guidelines; that's pretty much it.

Just ask politely , there's no harm in that

Have a chat. The worst that he can do is say he / she isn't prepared to update. Be prepared though that the reason may be that they've not kept up with the rent prices in the area and haven't been increasing your rent.

Your landlord is probably waiting for you to move out before doing any work to the property.

If your landlord agreed to all the work you suggest, would you prepared to have builders in the house for months? How much more would you be prepared to pay in rent?

I think the landlord now has a problem. If he replaces a bathroom and a kitchen and all the carpets and redecorates, he is in for over £10,000. Can he get this back in increased rent? How long would it take? It’s likely to be years and years. Would he add value if he waited until you vacated and then did the work? Possibly yes, depending on house values in your area.

In my view, I would move on if you can afford to. Definitely don’t spend your own money on it.

We would definitely be prepared to pay more rent, we are happy are settled. We'd be looking at paying about £150 extra a month in rent if we moved so would be happy to negotiate this with him.

But then again I don't want to put him in the position where he is out of pocket, we have a good relationship with him so will maybe arrange a meeting to see what he thinks.

I doubt he would do all that work for an extra £150/month rent. It would cost him more to do than it's worth. If you wanted new and modern why did you rent a dated house?

I would say all you can do is ask, in our old house we spoke to the landlord and had new carpets put in all upstairs, we arranged it all and sent him the invoice and just deducted the money from the rent. He was quite laid back though and we did do some bits ourselves - repainted the boys bedrooms etc at our own cost (but we did negotiate the rent to a lot lower as he was going to repaint before we moved in)

When we moved out we were speaking to the inventory people - they say 4/5 years for paint/walls and 10 years of life for carpets is a general rule of thumb.

I used to be a landlord, and didn't mind people asking for improvements at all. I said yes to many. Its not only about recouping the full cost quickly, if he does nothing, the bathroom and kitchen will eventually become unusable, and he wouldn't then be able to get any tenants = no rent at all, without having the whole place redone, and no rent during that period.

Having a family who pay reliably, and are willing to put up with the work being done, and then pay more afterwards, is a pretty good arrangement for the landlord!

Ask him OP :-)

I want to do similar renovations on a flat we own. It needs a new kitchen, redecorating throughout including carpets, probably could do with bathroom being done too.

I don't know how I would go about doing it all without messing the tenant around though. He has been there for about 4 years. He's a NRP who has his kids regularly, so I would potentially be messing that around too. He can't pass a standard referencing but we took a risk because he could pay 6 months upfront and has always stuck with that so is unlikely to move anytime soon.

I'd be delighted if my tenant took it all on to do himself, but all these things definitely come under LL remit!

No experienced landlord will carry out anything other than essential repairs whilst tenants are in situ because the risks to the tenants, their stuff and the building itself are too great.

I'm guess she or he is an experienced landlord because they haven't increased the rent for your entire tenancy. It's a classic tactic to keep maintenance costs down and tenants happy (and therefore avoid voids).

You need to move out. You can have a conversation but it looks like a losing battle for you.

Your landlord will probably remortgage, substantially renovate, and sell or re-rent for a lot more than £150 a month.

16 years as a tenant and years on MN and MSE have taught me well about the rental market.

I'm an experienced landlord and I never increase rent during a tenancy. That's because the tiny amount involved is much much smaller than the costs of a void. I'm not in London so i can't charge fantasy figures and tenants round here don't take on dumps. Not that I would rent out a dump anyway.

This policy has made no difference to tenant behaviour. One wrecker, some careless ones, some good ones.