Can someone please help with this…
I have a tenant about to move out and there is what I call damage to a few things. They have been there for 6 years. House was in perfect condition when they moved in. I live in a house on the same development so believe I know what wear and tear would be like.
Carpets - Major staining in most carpeted rooms, apart from the staining which can not be removed, the rest of the carpet is perfect. If it was not for the staining I would not be replacing.
Walls - they have stuck blu tac and sellotape on the walls and i believe they have put beds against the walls where the kids have continually jumped up and down to leave terrible patches. These patches in most rooms are about 50cmx 50cm. Again I would not need to redecorate all the rooms if there was not this Damage / Wear and tear.
Hob - One of the burners no longer works due to the fact they did not clean it, so the grease built up. Gas fitter was able to unclog 2 of them but the other, he says, is just too bad and the cost would be more than replacing with a cheap hob.
Wooden flooring - this was extremely good quality and now needs to be sanded down and re-stained due to them not following instructions on how to care for it. They were told at start and even given the correct cleaner which they did not use.
I did do interim inspections but they had so much clutter/furniture it was not possible to see this damage/W&T
Due to how long they have been there, would the deposit agency believe this is just wear and tear and needs to be replaced anyway or can I withhold any of the deposit to help with the cost. Deposit was only £750 and I have been quoted around £4,000 to put it all right (Paint and carpet etc plus labour)
I lived in the house first and it was my first home so I spent a lot of money putting the best I could into the property so it breaks my heart to see it like this, hence why I am wondering if I should expect this from tenants going forward. Its my first change of tenants.
You have to take some responsibility for missing damage during inspections. Saying there is clutter is not a valid reason, you may still have identified issues such as flooring and walls and been able to mitigate.
I think most of this sounds like reasonable wear and tear. It’s a family with kids just being a family.
Damaged carpet Id be deducting on, taking into account how old they are. Was the maintenance of the wooden flooring agreed? Maybe maintenance free flooring would be better.
Paint refresh after 6 years is to be expected I think.
If they’ve been good tenants and paid rent reliably for 6 years I’d be thinking spruce up and onto the next.
I never expect a tenant to treat a property the way I would. It does happen, but it’s the exception rather than rule. A factor is it was your home so you’re emotionally attached with higher expectations perhaps.
Firstly 6 years with a young family is a long time so you can expect there to be complete redec needed. You can claim for damage that is beyond W&T if you have an inventory that proves orig condition but you can only claim for things like carpets once you’ve taken into account depreciation and, after 6 years, you’d be looking at replacing some carpets if not all anyway so compensation would be negligible.
Secondly, once you start renting you have to leave your heart at the door. Do what you need to get it back on the market but don’t spend a lot of money putting the best you could into it. Try not to be emotionally attached to it anymore. Hard but necessary.
Inspections for a home with children should be quarterly with the first one being one month after move in. The good thing for you is that you live very close. You’ve now learned what to look for and, in all honesty, stuff like a greased up hob can be seen very early on and Ts given guidance.
I agree
You won’t get money back on decorating after six years .
I claimed for a hob in a similar situation. Due to betterment rules the adjudicator refunded money to the tenant .
The carpet … depends upon what your contract says .
TBH if you want to claim put your case to the tenant and go to court
If not I wouldn’t go to adjudication
These cases tend to go in favour of the tenant and are put down to wear and tear
I understand what you are saying but I actually paid for interim inspections every 6 months, I did not do them myself, but when things are hidden behind furniture as well as their own stacks of clothing etc, which is what I meant by clutter, it is harder to see. The inspection report did come back with comments about not being able to fully inspect due to the furniture which was not able to be moved.
Anyway, lesson learnt.
Ah… I would have seen that as something worth flagging. That shows me that a) the inspections I was paying for weren’t worth the money I was spending because the inspector couldn’t be bothered and/or b) the property is overcluttered and therefore not suitable for the family living in it and we’re into them sorting out the clutter or S21 territory. Either way, I would have wanted to go in myself.
If you’ve paid for inspections that did not flag some of the more obvious issues e.g. hob clustered with fat, ruined wooden floors and large gaping holes in bedroom wall decor then you are within your rights to complain to the company that did them for compensation. If that doesn’t work, then you can escalate that to the redress scheme they should be part of and whose address you can find on their website.
Thank you for this. This is all a learning curve for me. I only became a landlord as I did not want to sell my first ever house for sentimental purposes. Guess I need to toughen up or sell.
As above, youd be expected to re-decorate anyway. TDS assume low grade carpets last 2-4 years, medium grade 5-8 years and top quality 8-15 years. Youd have to lower those figures if they have a pet or if its heavily used. Depending on the age of the carpet when the tenancy began it seems likely that a deposit scheme would award you little or nothing.
If you think the carpet is salvageable, you would be allowed to charge for a full clean of the affected areas.
You’re welcome Harriette. We all start somewhere and it sounds very much like you are starting where I did in 1998 so I sympathise. The way I look at it now is that original house is more like two houses at the same address: the house I lived in is long gone, and the house I’ve been letting since 1998 is, in my mind, a completely different property now. I’m very glad I held onto it and was able to get past the emotional challenges of what early tenants did to it (one being my very own sister ).
A couple of things I would recommend is that you take a look at Shelter’s website as they have very clear guidance on LL and T responsibilities and the legalities. Also, I found it really helpful to join a landlord association and do their training. You might think that doing this is only for people managing properties entirely on their own, but actually, if you employ an agent (or an inspection service), you need to know all the legalities to make sure they’re doing their job right and aren’t going to land you in court. And if you are nearby anyway, you can actually then dispose of any agent and go it alone confidently.
I think your response is typical for people renting out their own homes which they are sentimentally attached to. But once you break that spell and treat it as a business you won’t get so hung up about these things. One of the properties I rent out is our ex-family home of 10 years which I do the maintenance on so treat like a business, but my wife rarely goes there so still has these ideas that everything should be frozen in time like the day we moved in there 25 years ago! One major issue is that the decoration standard for a family home is higher than what you would put in to a rental property, and so you have things like e.g. nice wood floor which you aspired to for your own home but which will only get wrecked by tenants, and you can’t expect them to e.g. pay for a sanding and oiling which can cost thousands.
Unfortunately, the courts and TDS arbitrators do not distinguish between damage and “normal wear & tear”.
E.g. I had a claim against a heavy smoker with walls and blinds dripping with nicotine that a judge dismissed as wear & tear. A simple fresh coat of paint turned into a major fumigation and stain damage exercise, at vastly increased costs. These arbitrators appear unable to distinguish between damage and wear & tear, and the laws are weighted in the tenants favour, so don’t waste your time or money fighting it. When I pointed out the difference in decoration / cleaning costs for this scenario the judge, having already made his judgement, wasn’t going to lose face and amend his decision.
You can, of course, put in a claim to the TDS and allow an arbitrated decision, which will cost you nothing but a little time to prepare your claim submission, but don’t expect much if they’ve been in there 6 years.
From then on you would be well advised to write it off and don’t make it too palatial in your refurb, cheap polypropylene stain resistant carpets etc. which have the added benefit of no potential for carpet moths. I learnt this by long and expensive experience trying to make my properties too special.
The concept that a better finished property will attract better tenants is a fallacy.
I have a 3-bed penthouse apartment that we created for our own use and later decided we wouldn’t use it again so let it with the original bespoke carpets and fittings, even a USA fridge. The current tenants turned it into a junk yard within 2 months, drilled through cedar cladding to install Virgin and built a canopy on our roof terrace decking with bolted down posts, all without permission. I was so disgusted, I ask if they owned a vacuum cleaner, answer yes, do you know how to switch it on was my next question…!
By contrast, we have a tenant of 13 years standing in a large studio flat with polypropylene carpets etc, and it looks the same today as the day we let her in.
Does it not go through abritration in an insured scheme @Leslie1? I’ve never used insured so am unfamiliar with what happens if the T disputes deductions.
It follows the same procedure as custodial but because you hold the money if the tenant does not respond to your emails you have the money without volumes of paperwork trying to get access to it.
It’s a loss less headache
But there is a fee which when you consider the paperwork you go through to get your money in a custodial it’s a no brainer
A few things you need to look at, the initial inventory, the AST, the inspection reports.
Get yourself a good carpet cleaner, stain remiver does it say that the tenant is responsible for cleaning the carpets on departure? My tenant who has just recently checked out left several stains about 200 mil wide various areas of the carpet stated they were there before, I showed them photographs that they were not on checkout and refused to accept the property pack. Two days later, the stains were gone And the property was clean.
There is a recognise formula for depreciation and use of items which all the adjudicators use. You can download this by googling it.
decorating that down to you unless there are massive holes in the walls, it’s a plaster removed as fair W&T
Cooker The tenant has a responsibility to hand it back in the condition near To that to which they received your info & photos of your AST and inventory will refer. Like most landlords we find the tenants do not look after Hobbs cookers or ovens.
You may find that you will be able to agree with the tenant a few agreed deductions,
As stated, tenants do not look After the properties, it makes you wonder what they would do they own them.
Wear and tear is one thing, but leaving a property without à commercial clean is quite another. Walls might get dirty with a few odd marks but blue tack is her responsibility not yours. Also when the hob stopped working for whatever reason she should have informed you, the fact she hasn’t I’d definitely hold back sufficient deposit to cover cleaning & repairs.
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