DD moved into student rental. Some repairs needed. How long is reasonable to wait?

[fortyfifty]

DD has moved into her 2nd year student house. Tenancy started 1 September. One student was there to receive keys and deal with inventory and report issues. Other students have moved in throughout September and reported a few other things to the agent. Broken lock on bathroom , a door handle which locks you in the livingtoom so theyre now having to wedge open a fire door. There's broken unusable furniture and also a broken extractor fan in a shower room.

The students have chased all the issues through the agent and are told the landlords live abroad and they're still trying to contact them.
What should they do next?

In reality I doubt these things will get fixed (I've had 4 children at Uni with accommodation very similar).

The biggest concern is the fire door issue, so that should be a priority.

They need to ensure all damage is recorded and confirmed in writing to the agent though to ensure they don't get the blame for it and lose deposits when they leave.

Hopefully all those issues were in the inventory (otherwise the agents are pretty poor).
The agents shouldn't need to contact the owners for every little thing, they should have a repair fund.
I'm a landlord and these things would all be fixed within a week, and it drives me crazy that other landlords are so slow, giving us all a bad name.

Standard student accommodation sadly.

Keep chasing agents.

Landlords are just on a money making exercise . Agents too !

High demand = high prices and shoddy service.

Have all these things been noted on the inventory?

They could contact their uni accomodation office, the fire door is a H&S issue, but they may find somethings don’t get fixed because landlords don’t really care about student lets.

But they need to make sure they don’t get blamed & deposits kept.

I told DS and his house mates to photograph every room, and specifically areas of damage or non working items. Even 2 broken chairs, which were unusable, never got replaced, meaning they couldn't all sit at the same time.
They should insist on the fire door being sorted out. Most agents I know would repair that and charge it to the LL.

Fire door - report to the council. The property may be required to be registered as a HMO and this would likely be in breach of that

other repairs: Detail them in writing with photos. Send to Agent and the address of the landlord on the tenancy agreement. Start a paper trail. Have a look at this

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/housing/renting-privately/during-your-tenancy/dealing-with-repairs/

(this assumes England, if not then choose relevant nation on home page and go to equivalent advice)

Tell them to contact the student union, there is normally really good advice given there.

Our ceiling caved in due to a bathroom leak & landlord tried to claim it was liveable (you couldn’t use the only bathroom & there was sewage on the sofas). They soon got their arse in gear when we contacted the union’s property team.

Report the fire door to the council. Otherwise, is the property managed by the agents or just let out by them, if it’s not managed there really is not a lot they can do frustratingly

"Report the fire door to the council. Otherwise, is the property managed by the agents or just let out by them, if it’s not managed there really is not a lot they can do frustratingly" I'm not sure.

DD didn't see the original inventory as the one student who could get to the property on moving in day dealt with it. Issues that were found after then have been reported to the agent and they had to go on a website form. Photos have been taken of everything on moving in and issues found afterwards.

The most pressing issues are the fire door, bathroom door lock and the extractor fan.