Advice for a Landlord Please

[AccidentallyLordofLand]

Hello, looking for advice.

I'm an accidental landlord. Bought a house and then moved in with (now) DH. The house was not worth selling at the time so it is rented through an EA.

I spent a lot of time/money on the garden prior. It was important to me it was maintained and I chose the EA because they seemed to 'get it'.

My friend still lives nearby and occasionally sends me photos of the property. It always looks terrible from the outside. The front garden overgrown to the point it's obscuring the front window. Side bushes completely overgrown. The back garden overgrown to the point plants and trees are growing over the fence and into the shared alley which I'm assuming effects the neighbours access? Everytime I receive a photo I send it to the EA to raise with tenants.

The latest incident is that a fence panel has come off / broken and I can see the amount of overgrowth behind it. The EA reported in Jan that "tenants were struggling with maintaining garden" and it looks like this has directly contributed.

I've escalated this (along with other issues because I feel they're pretty useless) and the response is basically I need to pay for a gardener myself or wait until the end of tenancy and if there's enough evidence they'll charge any works needed from the tenant's deposit. I got a small amount of compensation because they acknowledge they've missed multiple routine visits.

This is a small garden btw - approx 8m x 6m.

So I'm looking for advice.... is this reasonable from the EA? I shouldn't have to rely on my friend taking covert photos but the routine visit reports are sporadic and cover very little (and usually don't mention the outside at all despite being requested to do so). Should I just suck up the cost of a gardener? Are my expectations too high?

Before buying our home, we rented. We once went to view a rental property and were shocked what the LL was asking of the tenants.
All fences front & back to be sprayed with some sort of spray once a year, large area of decking to be stained twice a year, shed to be stained once a year, trees to be pruned, weeds to be killed with a certain weed killer, drive to be power washed numerous times of year, gutters to be cleaned & grass to be mowed.
We never took the rental on as we weren’t prepared to pay the cost of the up keep of the decking etc.
However we didn’t have a problem with mowing the lawn or weeding it’s standard.

The LL used an EA to rent the house out, I was shocked that the EA thought all these requirements were ok to ask of tenants. However, the LL had previously lived in the house prior to renting it out. I think LL are a pit more precious when it’s been their home which I can understand, but think in instances like this if it was me I would hire a gardener.

you won't like this....

1. Your tenancy agreement is a generic set of clauses which clearly have not been adapted to suit your property. Did the agent not bother?. As an "accidental LL" it is obvious you did not see the weakness in your own contract!
2. How does the check in inventory describe the standard of the garden?. Does it refer to any specific plants or layout? Your tenants are required to return the garden to you in the same (or better) condition it was in which they moved in (allowing for seasonal growth)
3. Did you provide any tools to enable them to maintain it? If you did then liability for any accident arising from their use may rest with you, unless you can prove you trained the tenant in their use and the item was "safe" (woe betide you if you left them with electrical items!)
4. Your tenancy agreement has clauses that refer to garden maintenance.
5. To cut the grass (if any) of the Premises with an appropriate garden mower as necessary to keep the grass in, or bring about, a neat and tidy condition. Furthermore to keep the patio areas (if any), paths, garden areas, lawns, flower beds, shrubs or bushes and borders (if any) as tidy and weed free, as at the commencement of the Tenancy.
6. Not to lop, cut down, prune or remove or otherwise injure any trees, shrubs or plants growing upon the Premises or to alter the general character of the garden.
7. BUT there is no grass, "if any" is just sloppy drafting, that wording should have never made it beyond draft stage.
8. There is no explicit statement regarding the frequency with which the initial standard has to be met. The tenants are perfectly entitled to live in a jungle which they cut back to initial standard on their last day. HOWEVER, they are not allowed to cut things. Those clauses are therefore mutually incompatible and, despite tenancy agreements having an implied "expectation" to behave in a "tenant like manner" (ie do minor jobs that any householder would do, eg change a light bulb), the absence of direct reference to a timetable of maintenance removes your ability to cite breach of contract for them living in a jungle until you inspect on check out day.

Wait for them to move out, penalise them if the garden is not per the check in description and in the meantime ignore how they choose to live there. Tell your photographic friend that they risk (admittedly rather unlikely) being sued for breach of privacy if they keep taking pics in the meantime,

Tell your photographic friend that they risk (admittedly rather unlikely) being sued for breach of privacy if they keep taking pics in the meantime,

Yeah - taking photos of your tenants’ property is rather intrusive as to their right to quiet enjoyment!

I think if you can manage it yourself going forward as the management have allowed it to get out of hand so that now its more work than it should be. What kind of communication have you had, regular inspections etc ?

Problem is if you're renting out your former home with a lovely garden it's never going to be maintained to a high standard by tenants so ideally you need to pare the garden back before renting so it's easier to maintain, or pay a gardener to keep on top of it. You're never going to get tenants who will properly garden.

When I moved in to my rental when the garden was over grown with weeds, the contract says its my responsibility to keep it 'as is' and we did... its still full of the mostly the same weeds. I made it very clear when I moved in that I'm disabled, I am not a gardener and would not be fixing it.

It also developed knot weed (not my job to sort, it needs thousands of pounds of professional treatment) and the fence snapped and blew down (heavy storm area) and they NEVER fixed it despite me reporting it for years (once again Im not paying MY money to fix their property), it eventually rotted where it lay.

As far as I see it it all entirely the landlords job to fix. I hear landlords moan that tenants don't 'treat homes as their own', well yes because its not ours to pour money into (its the landlords, they need to treat the property as their investment which means putting money in not just getting money out).

If it was 'my own' house I would have paid gardeners to remove it all and had weed membranes put down and it covered over so it was low maintenance but I'm not paying thousands into making the landlord richer, I saved that money and bought my own house which I am putting money into looking after properly because it is my home and my 'investment'.

While you say your garden was lovely, most are not good gardener and its not their job to be. Making stuff idiot proof and easy is best as a landlord.

That would be wonderful if all professional LLs behaved like this, but plenty are infamous for refusing to do basic repairs.
OP sounds like a responsible landlord who wants the property well cared for.
She is also employing so-called professional agents to manage the property, and they haven't even managed to carry out their routine inspections.

You are a scummy ass landlord. I have experience of referencing potential tenants, which, in turn, means speaking to landlords. Believe me, you will be noted. Pics of the garden? Confusing statements on the AST? I hope they take you to the cleaners

You can’t really expect tenants to do much gardening, if any.

We rented a house years ago & had no interest in gardening so the garden got a bit neglected in the year we were there. I remember the LL took some money out of our deposit over it which was annoying at the time because tbh the garden was not in great shape when we moved in (unlike yours @AccidentallyLordofLand ).

A professional LL would probably employ a gardener to keep on top of the garden or else just expect to keep some of the deposit back when the tenant moves out if it says in the lease the garden should be maintained to a certain basic standard & it isn’t.

You aren't renting a house you are LETTING a house.

I’d not be that happy if my landlords pal was sending them pictures of what is supposed to be my home.

Usually the garden maintenance is in a tenancy as the tenant's responsibility.

@AccidentallyLordofLand Next inspection by the EA tell the EA to tell the tenants they need to take action to get the garden maintenance sorted out.

It is usually for garden maintenance to be the tenant's responsibility in a tenancy agreement which is why they were able to make a legitimate deduction from your deposit.

a deduction from the deposit would only be possible if the check out inventory proved that the garden was returned in a worse condition than it was received in at check in.

whether the tenants breached a term of the contract by not maintaining the garden during the life of the contract does not, of itself, give grounds for a deposit deduction.

I totally agree. But the way the poster said they had a deduction made seemed to suggest they shouldn't have because it was the landlord's responsibility. Indeed many posts here seem to incorrectly believe this. A standard AST lists garden maintenance as a tenant's responsibility so if they don't maintain it to the same level as when they received it then there will be deductions.

Of course they can have it and keep it as a rampant jungle while they live there as long as they hand it back properly. But usually it is easier to keep on top of things and a lower cost to maintain it as they go along. And the same as an internal inspection may throw up things the landlord can ask to be kept in proper order they can ask for the exterior to be so kept too.

@Spirallingdownwards the garden was not in great shape either when we moved in or when we moved out.

Of course I would have expected to have paid a penalty if it was in good condition when we moved in and we let it go but we were only there for a year and it looked unloved from the start.

I expect the LL used the same trick with every tenant but ultimately probably was our fault for not taking photos of the garden when we moved in to show it hadn’t changed much.

Depends on what it is, not pilling rubbush up to make it look like a dump definately. Pulling a few dandelions or trimming a shrub or mowing grass maybe. However its not a tenant job to fix fences, gates, wall, drainage etc... any more than it is to fix the roof.

As I said we had knot weed. Am I fuck paying thousands to get it treated when its been reported several times by me, the agency, every work man ever and so on and he won't fix it.

Its eaten up the concrete foundations and pipes which caused damp but thats not my problem anymore as I moved. The most I can do as tennant is trim the bits I can see... it him that will deal with the thousands in repairs because he refused to listen (and thats if he doesn't get fined as well as if it extends beyond the properties boundary its HIM liable). I didn't even know what knot weed was when I viewed, just thought it was shrub with pretty little flowers.

Fences etc yes I agree LL. Maintenance of garden tenant.