Landlord asking for termination of contract with letting agent and to deal directly with her

Tenant Discussion
1

Dear all,

My landlady is wishing to terminate the renewal of the contract with letting agent and would like to continue to deal with us directly.
She has offered to reduce the rent and is assuring that the deposit would continue to be protected under TDS.
Could someone guide me if it’s safe to follow her request?
Our main concern is whether it would cause issues while checking out from this house.

Thanks in advance

2

Hi Dew, in theory there is nothing suspicious about this. What are you worried about happening when you leave the property?

Sam

3

Thanks for the reply Sam.
I’m worried if she will argue with us during inventory checkout and try to reduce the deposit amount.
When we checked in itself we found many flaws and they fixed it by themselves and tried not to spend on handyman.
So was wondering if they would give some lame excuses and try to reduce from deposit amount and there won’t be anyone to listen to us.
We had a bad time with our ex landlady and finally letting agent helped us and got our deposit back. There was no TDS representative also even though deposit was protected under their scheme.

4

Hi Dew, if your deposit has been placed in a scheme, then you have the protection of that scheme to ensure your money can’t be held unless you have damaged the property. If the landlord tries to make deductions you don’t agree with, you can simply initiate the scheme’s Alternative Dispute Resoltuion service, and the landlord will be required to submit evidence to prove their claims.

In any case, a letting agent is just as likely to try and make deductions from your deposit as a landlord, so the deposit treatment should not, I would have thought, be a salient factor when considering renting directly from a landlords vs. the tenancy being managed by an agent.

Sam

5

Thanks a lot Sam for the clarification

6

Go with the Landlady .I deal direct with my tenants

7

Hi Dew
I deal directly with my tenants too on most maintenance matters, I really didn’t feel an agent offered value to either myself or the tenant and was best placed to milk both parties. I will say I have a great working relationship with my tenants so they are very understanding on non urgent matters as I work too.
Not all landlord/ladies are villains you know :slight_smile:

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