Tenant has changed carpet, door and curtains!!

[Member786488]

He’s leaving tomorrow as was served a s.21 in July, my daughter is moving in.

he’s just told me how much he’s ‘improved’ the flat - he’s put in a horrible cheap grey fluffy carpet over a lovely, hard wearing, (expensive) and neutral one, he’s put a couple of doors in because he ‘doesn’t like open plan’, and my (again, neutral) blinds and curtains have been replaced with dark red things.

his deposit is £860. I don’t want to have an uncomfortable conversation but I think I’m going to have to. What’s reasonable here?

I can’t believe he did all that without asking!

@kitsuneghost that is not the case at all, it's why we rent really nice houses I am 100% sure I can live with including carpets, bathroom fittings, paint colours , whether or not we can put pictures up etc - I check all these out first. Although it becomes your home, you cannot make any changes at all without permission to structure, fixed fittings like kitchen units or doorways or go round putting new flooring in without permission

I have changed curtains and light fittings before but store carefully and replace back before we move out. I once asked if we could paint a pink bedroom blue or yellow- and they were fine with that and told me to leave it that way when we left

That isn’t how it works at all assuming you are in England?

The deposit protection scheme (whichever you are with) decides. You can say what you want to deduct but if your tenant doesn’t agree they will decide for you.

I use an insured scheme so I hold the cash but that doesn’t mean I am in control. I was legally required to return it all.

As much as mumsnet is anti landlord I can tell you that good landlords get fucked over as much as good tenants do by crap landlords.

Fortunately out of 8 tenants I’ve had 6 lovely ones and 2 absolute scumbags. The scumbags were all via agents, we no longer use an agent and I use my own (probably highly discriminatory but I care not) approach to vetting tenants. Now I have no problems at all.

I rent. I am so paranoid about picky landlords that have kept the old toilet seat that i replaced when I moved in (the whole house is great but there were some stubborn stains I couldn't get out of the seat!). The old seat is in the garage!

@AlltheFs I never understand these scumbag tenants- you just bugger up your ability to rent nice places easily and given the current rental market personally I like being top candidate .

I've always kept the houses we've had exactly as if it was my own , including garden etc - I couldn't afford to buy our really lovely current house but whilst I'm in it to me- it's mine!!

OP did you/your agent protect the deposit?

All depends on this OP

How had he put doors in? This makes no sense.

As others have asked, have you protected his deposit?

Considering you don't know the legal process of how returning deposits work, I don't think you're a good landlord, and it's perhaps not for you.

Curtains/blinds - fine, as long as he has kept the originals in good condition.

Carpet - it might be to protect your one from the dog, so fine. It might be to hide a massive stain in the original. You need to find out what's underneath.

Doors - just weird. Do you mean that the door frames were there, and he just fixed doors to them? In that case, you're hopefully just looking at the cost of removing the fixings and making good. Or has he actually had alterations done?

I think you could have some awkwardness here, where you're completely at odds in your perspectives.

You're thinking about how you can restore the place back to how it was and undo his changes - maybe needing to charge him/keep his deposit to pay for it; whereas he thinks he's made improvements, so he may actually be hoping, when you settle before he leaves, you'll pay him for his outgoings in 'improving' your property, or possibly let him off his last month's rent in lieu of his financial outlay.

His use of the word 'improvements' is the potential red flag here, as opposed to if he'd spoken about his 'preferences' or 'personalisation'.

I've just been through all this. As a previous poster says, if you are unable to agree a sum with the tenant, then ithe case goes to the TDS for a decision.

You will need to provide evidence. In my case, this was the tenancy agreement, highlighting each specific clause that had been broken, with evidence, photos, the check in / check out reports undertaken by an agency.

The tenant will get a period of time to respond, then there is a lag while the evidence is considered, then an award is made. In my case I was awarded the whole deposit. It takes a while but it isn't difficult.

If you can agree a sum between you and the tenant, it would be far easier.

Actually as a tenant you can change flooring with permission. I know, because we asked permission as his carpet (which he put in between viewing and us moving in) didn't suit my wheelchair.

The key being permission

I’m a landlord. I think see whether your belongings are around before taking it further. I’d balance that decision against throwing him out though. It’s a rubbish thing to do after a year. It sounds as if he didn’t understand the difference between being a council tenant and a private tenant. I’ve only ever served notice on 2 tenants. One for neglect / damaging the property and the other through the courts for non payment. The easiest thing would be to try to settle this between yourselves.

To me, it sounds like the tenant has made changes to the house without permission, including replacing items with cheaper versions. They should have asked for permission to do this amd and should have kept everything so the house can be returned to its original state. Who on earth puts door up in places they don’t own?!

You don't get to claim to restore it to the same state it was when he moved in. Everything gets deprecated. How long has he been living there?

e.g. even if it is agreed that the carpet he got rid of should be replaced, if he has been there for 8 years and it is deemed that the useful life of a carpet is 10 years, you can only claim 20% of the cost of a new carpet out of his deposit. But if he has only been there 1 year you'd get 90%

I'm dying to know how the tenant added doors in an open plan property. I mean.. how??

There are really horrible, cheap, plastic doors that concertina (think accordion) and so they don’t have hinges, they have runners at the top and the bottom, so although hinges are required, holes need to be drilled top and bottom to hold the runners so the door opens.

Bi-fold doors are also available in MDF or wood, that do the same as concertina doors. But regardless, damage will have been done to the openings where he’s had doors added.

Op said only a year. The curtains and carpets were new.

@JoanOfAllTrades ah I get it now. Thank you.
Maybe the tenant was cold? I wonder what grade the energy certificate had...

After losing 5 months rent and needing to spend thousands on repairs after finally evicting my tenant I envy you your tiny problem.
Seriously, just let it go.

If the deposit isn't registered with an approved scheme, you won't be keeping any of it. You'll have to give it back and hope he doesn't make an application to court for damages.

I have been both a tenant and a LL. As a tenant, I changed flooring and blinds but only with the written permission of the LL.
As a LL, I had a tenant literally destroy my house, it cost more than £10k to get it back to a habitable standard. Fortunately I had legal cover, so that was all paid and no, she definitely didn’t get her deposit back!! If he has thrown away your blinds etc, see what it says in your contract, but I think you should be entitled to withhold money if you need to replace these things.

I should add that @PinotPony is right. If the deposit isn’t registered with an approved scheme, you will struggle to keep it.

Erm, nope.

He needs to put it back to the way he found it.

Surely he’s kept the curtains? He absolutely shouldn’t be replacing carpets or adding in doors without permission. Did you not go and check the property during the tenancy? Surely you do 3-6 month check kind of thing?

I’d say if the deposit wasn’t in a scheme, say nothing and let him go as it’s illegal not to secure the deposit in an approved scheme, but if he has damaged the property then go through the scheme with your costs, I had to do this with a flat I let out where the tenant had demolished the decking! No idea why he did that, if it was damaged etc we would have replaced it, he also damaged some of the inside doors, again we would have mended if we had been informed so we eventually came to an arrangement via the scheme between us, it didn’t get to the arbitration stage.