Tenant and carpet issue. Advice welcome

[TrickyD]

Our tenant will be leaving in August, after 11 months..Though the house was let furnished, he has removed virtually all our furniture and placed it in storage. We only discovered this when we went with the agent to make an agreed inspection.

One of the bedrooms has a stripped wooden floor, and every previous tenant has been quite happy with this. However current tenant has carpeted it, again without our permission.

He has now asked if we would buy the carpet from him. He has offered a receipt for £290, and wants £195 for it.

I am not averse to keeping it and paying something for it, but that seems a bit excessive. We have agreed to let him terminate his tenancy a month early, so I don't feel we owe him a favour. Any views on this please?

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Having just moved back into our old home, which has been rented for several years, it is clear all our stuff has been in storage.
Viable stuff has been cleaned, but there is mould under the lamps, on the sockets...... Curtains are creased and damp. I've binned some, and am attempting to rescue some with a dry cleaner.
Bits of furniture are missing - so a desk looks complete from the front, but if you open a drawer, you see missing backs to the drawers.
Unfortunately, the letting agent did an end of tenancy survey whilst we were still abroad, so it's down to us to repair or replace.
Check under and behind things

Why did he put down a carpet when he was only there for 11 months.

Because he wanted it? His personal circumstances may have changed and he's moving fit work or is moving in with a partner. How many of us can predict how life will pan out?

I actually have sympathy for putting stuff in storage. When I was looking for places to rent, all too often I’d find somewhere perfect but “furnished” which in many cases was basically the LL not being arsed/not wanting the expense of moving their shit furniture out.

I think the fairest way would be for LLs to be flexible.

BlueRussian, yes, if we did decide to pay for the carpet, though the advice on here is not to do so, £80 or £90 seems more like it than £195.

He has been a pain from the start. They have a baby, and were specifically told to use spring loaded safety gates. Instead they have screwed three gates into the rather nice woodwork.

I don't want to cut off nose to spite face, but I don't feel very flexible at the moment.

Sorry, I wasn’t having a go at you OP. You sound like a nice LL. I’m just grumbling about how so many rentals are “furnished” with rubbish. Not saying you’re was.

I think that’s appalling if he’s actually damaged your property. Absolutely hold him responsible for making good damaged woodwork and floors etc

God no, if I as a tenant made a change to something like flooring I'd not be asking the landlord to pay for it. If the flooring needed changing I'd ask them to sort it; if it was just that it was wood and I wanted carpet I'd buy a big bloody rug. That's so weird.

Thanks Morty but I had not thought you were having a go. I like to think it is nicely furnished because DH wanted somewhere pleasant to live during the week while he was working miles away from his loving wife and for said wife to go over to stay there with him some weekends.

Thank you all for being so helpful. I nearly wrote this as an AIBU but am so glad I didn't. No doubt I wiuld have been denounced as spawn of the devil and told to pay for the carpet and refund his eleven months' rent.

I’ve never rented out a furnished house. Even if I rented out my own home, no tenant would be using my Hans Wegner dining chairs! Definitely store furniture! No one looks after things the way you do!

I would be furious about the screwed in baby gates.

You need to get that assessed and repaired before his deposit is returned. Don't be afraid to charge for that, it is a specific violation of what he was told.
Cheeky git.

No definitely do not buy it. I would be telling him to return all furniture and pick up all carpeting before the inspection so you can check he's not used gripper rods or damaged the furniture in storage.

My landlord had a tenant in a beautiful cottage attached to our large house. It had been the servants quarters and was a lovely 2 bed with original features such as black iron fires in the rooms, original restored wooden beams and varnished tall skirting boards. We allowed decorating in neutral colour of walls only, and we had a no gloss rule and decorating was allowed only with written approval.
New tenant fucking white glossed the shit out of everything. Skirting, cottage doors, the large iron hinges, the wooden beams and fires RUINED! There was nowhere near enough deposit money to put it back to original so it just had to be left. I could have wept when I saw it.

He not have been able to find spring loaded safety gates which would fit, they are more limited in size than screw in ones.
You should ask that he fills in the drilled holes after removing the gates though.
He may have put down a carpet if he had a crawling baby? If it was his first dc he may not have realized the kind of house he actually needed to live in. But I wouldn't pay for the carpet and I would check carefully for damage to the floor.

Chester, that is dreadful. What a nightmare.

Dreichuplands, yes I understand that springed gates might be hard to find, but if he had explained that to me, I might have accepted it. To install with screws when he had been told not to is not acceptable.

It the fact he didn’t tell you and went ahead that’s disappointing. Spring loaded gates or not, you would have had the chance to make an alternate solution. There isn’t an excuse.

Hello, just an update on the carpet issue as I am very grateful for all your advice.
We told him we did not want the carpet. At the weekend he vacated and we inspected and were amazed to find virtually every item back in its correct spot.
A couple of items are missing but the agent is dealing with that, and we were delighted to see the lovely bedroom floorboards back to normal.
On the other hand, though the stair gates did not harm the woodwork, they did pull out some of the paint and plaster, leaving holes that will be hard to make good without redecorating the whole room and no doubt he will contest that.

You should be able to get a passable repair of that. Doesn't look as though the Stargate was screwed in though - more that the sticky pads have pulled off the top skim of the plaster.

Yes, I think it was the sticky pads causing the problem. The agent is getting someone to look at repairing, hope it will be passable. Less trouble all round.