Letting agent refusing to remove furniture

[cosmonautkitten]

I'm a young professional in my early twenties living in London with two other housemates/friends. A month and a half ago our current landlord served us notice, but thankfully we soon found and offered on a great new house.

It's a furnished house and at the viewing we asked the letting agent if some of the furniture could be removed to make space for our own. He said that was absolutely fine as they also manage the property- so on our offer form we asked that it be part furnished but stated we could be 'slightly flexible'. As another condition we also requested that our cat be allowed to reside at the property.

We were told a couple of weeks ago that our offer had been accepted (so thought this was of course inclusive of all our conditions!) and have just now completed referencing. The contract arrived but it had a pet exclusion clause so I emailed the letting agent to clarify this and also asked if we could talk about the furniture we'd like removed.

Thankfully he's amended our contact to remove the exclusion clause... but also told us that the landlady has no storage space and that it is normally the done thing to make furniture requests at the offer stage. I've emailed back and politely pointed out that we were told that it would be easy for the furniture to be removed and that in fact, we did mention this at the offer stage.

He's now promised 'to discuss things with the landlord and get back to [us]'... but do we have any recourse against the letting agency if she isn't amenable to this? Is there anything I can say to them if they come back with a 'no'? We've already spent several nonrefundable hundreds in referencing/partial deposit so really do have to move in regardless at this point, but I'm rather annoyed that they misrepresented the house in this way (we don't blame the landlady at all, just the letting agent!)

Oops, sorry, just realised how long this is

"Part furnished" and "slightly flexible" are two terms that are completely vague and open to much interpretation.
I doubt you will get anywhere with the landlord at this point, but it's always worth asking. However, it might be worth sucking it up as she is allowing the cat (this is quite rare).

If the furniture is junk (as it quite often is) she might just be willing to ditch it, but I'm sure your landlord won't want to pay for storage and removal. She might allow you to store it though if you offer to pay all the costs involved.

Good luck!

Depends on the landlord - if you get mo joy you could pay to put the furniture in a storage unit if you’d rather use your own and just put it back at the end of the tenancy?

If you are happy with the property and the pet exclusion clause has been ditched, I think that you may regret insisting on the removal of the furniture as the landlord may decide that they would rather look for a tenant who is happy with the furniture and doesn't have a cat.

It is so wrong but in some areas of the UK there are more potential tenants than there are properties to rent which means that LLs can be ridiculously fussy about who they rent to.

Forgot to add but like PP have said, would you be prepared to pay the storage costs?

Even if the furniture is junk, the LL will probably want to keep it they will be considering future tenants not just you.

It is terrible that the lack of accommodation in the country has meant that tenants have so little choice and are at the mercy of LLs.

while it is fun to whine about horrible landlords are at any opportunity, (which you will note the OP is not doing) this is a simple case of an agent fuck-up. They didn't pass on the request (because that involves work and there is hair to be flicked) and are now trying to cover up.

remind them again that the offer said 'part furnished' - but what did that actually mean? Was it defined anywhere?

no-one will want to pay storage costs, especially not in London.

Thanks everyone! I am willing to deal with the furniture, but I take a lot of pride in how a house looks and like everyone's speculated it absolutely is junk - uncomfortable sticky fake leather sofas, mdf tables etc. I've not spent a lot on my own furniture but it's all very good quality items that I've spent a few years carefully buying second hand or been given by family so it would be a huge pain to have to sell it when I love it all.

In no way do I want to damage the relationship with our new landlady - I'm just annoyed at the letting agent as I feel they misrepresented it to us and probably haven't even mentioned it to her at all! I clearly remember him saying that as they managed it as well there would be no problem removing the furniture . I'm also worried that they're going to present it to her like a new request rather acknowledging their own fault in the situation. I don't know if I should email them again, but not sure what to say?

At the time we decided to move ahead with referencing for this house we had two offers accepted (aside from the cat - who's been much less of a problem than expected - we don't look like bad tenants at all on paper) and the fact that we could have furniture removed swung it for us on this one over the other (unfurnished and actually prettier but worse location).

I looked up the nearest big yellow self storage box price - £61 a week!! No way.

£61 a week split by 4 isn't that bad if it is the only thing you can do.

Could you offer to buy the furniture from the LL for a minimal sum and then chuck it out.

I know it sounds insane but what is the advantage here for the LL of removing the furniture?

If it is the mistake of the agent because he hasn't mentioned it to the LL then there is no certainty that she would have agreed to this change in terms.

Agents do piss me off though as they are basically useless.

Also don't forget the agent works for the LL and to benefit them, some people Don't realise this and think that agents work for both parties.

What would you do if the LL refused to remove the furniture?

Have you paid an extra deposit for the cat?

Also i thought that the Government were putting an end to these huge referencing costs.

not yet. and when they do someone has to pay...