This year was my first time as a landlord so any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I rented out my house to a family, and to cut the long story short, they messed up the place totally. Main cause of the mess was not ventilating the place and having another family staying in the front room.
They then left with two months left on their contract and also left all their mess for me to clean up.
All-in-all it has cost me over £3k to redecorate and clean up. and around another £1.5k in rent they decided not to pay. Their deposit was just £1.7k and they have now disputed me taking it and only offering to settle for £500.
My options are now to
Let Mydeposit handle the dispute (which I am worried about having read through this forum)
Take them to claims court, knowing they don’t have anything to give me.
How should I proceed, if anyone has experienced this before?
She just came back with a counter offer of £1k. I think you may be right, I might just take it and learn my lesson going forward not to listen to sob stories and good recommendation from estate agent.
I am actually using Open Rent for the first time and doing viewings myself.
!k That is good go for it Forget the sob stories ,be tougher . Head not heart. The sob stories are usually liars and you are not their social worker People like that are barge pole material
1 my deposits are a waste of space, they won’t help you, just keep the deposit and if challenged by the tenant then threaten with small claims court for big sum
2 courts and deposit companies will pay out on unpaid rent but getting anything else is like getting blood out of a stone
3 this is a life lesson, we are all softies when we start renting so treat this a a lesson. who was who said “failures are the pillars of our success” some wise old greek.
Yes–all sound advice above ----also I served a small claims case but vs my Letting Agent and some of the issues stemmed from their refusal to arbitrate on my behalf vs the rubbish tenant they found for me [who it transpired was son of the maintenance guy] hence they were NOT neutral nor objective plus although I paid for the protecting the tenants deposit they registered it in THEIR name but refused to assist ME so my hands were tied behind my back!
I digress -however --the small claims Court say they DO Not get involved in Landlord Tenant disputes re damages----
Forum please check this and confirm my i understanding -----rent arrears :yes but damages : No
so take what you can as suggested above here
Good Luck- we all need it in this game
Ended up settling for £1300 of the £1700. Could have kept pushing but the back and forth was even a waste of my time which was more important to get to property ready to rent out again.
Better outcome than I expected. Thanks to these replies.
The only time I’ve had disputes over the release of a deposit with a deposit protection service was when they were related to the costs of making good with the ubiquitous wear & tear allowance.
If this tenant owes you £1,500 in rent, which I presume is indisputable, then you can confidently claim that from their deposit and expect to receive it. You can also include your costs for remedial works and likely get the whole deposit returned to you assuming you have suitable evidence and have taken account of the W & T allowances necessary, for the remaining £3,000 clean-up costs.
As for the rest of it, if they have no money to pay a court judgement then there is not much point in pursuing a claim through the County Court, aside from slapping them with a CCJ to teach them a lesson, your choice.
I did once have a CCJ paid years later when a tenant subsequently realised he needed a clean credit history, so there is potentially some hope, but only if you’ve got lots of patience…
If you do go down the CC route instead of the DPS arbitration route, make sure to note in your claim that you require the court to direct the release of the DPS sum to you, including all the relevant details of that deposit.
Don’t forget you need to immediately dispute the release of the bond to the tenant if they have already requested it and decide your direction from there.
I am providing this as it was a learning lesson for me too despite being successful at adjudication for rent arrears
In his dispute the tenant alleged the house was not fit for human habitation ( but he left his heroine wrappers and empty lighter fluid cans for me to clean up !) . He alleged there was no electric in the house and he was in my employment for no salary.
The adjudication report reads:-
6 To prove this claim the landlord or letting agent must show: • when the rent was not paid; and • for how long. 7 A tenant does not have an automatic right to withhold rent. However, sometimes a tenant submits that the landlord has not properly maintained the property which has led to a loss of enjoyment or use of the property. The tenant may say that they withheld rent because of this loss of enjoyment or use of the property. 8 When I consider a defence to rent arrears on this basis, I must take into account: • whether this was a pre-existing issue that the landlord should have been aware of; • whether the tenant reported the issue to the landlord; • after the issue was reported, whether the landlord was given a reasonable time to carry out the repair, taking into account any vulnerabilities of the tenant and the severity of the disrepair; • if there was a delay in completing repairs, whether the landlord took steps to keep the loss of enjoyment of the property to a minimum; • whether any action or inaction of the tenant contributed to the disrepair; • whether it would reasonably be likely that the tenant would have lost some enjoyment or use of the property because of the disrepair; and • to what extent the overall enjoyment or use of the property was affected?
Fortunately I submitted:-
Bank statements, contemporaneous emails , text messages of rent accounts, email from national grid ( after I called them out when he left as there was no electric ) as the fuse had blown after his attempt to bypass the meter and images of a meter change by utilita as the cable was black and there was evidence of tampering.
The tenant provided no evidence.
I didn’t realise that rent arrears could be offset by claims of poor habitation but was lucky enough to have submitted record of meter change and email from national grid for confirmation of their attendance and reason for such ( which I got because of the tenants allegations)
Next time I’ll keep a video diary if I have to call out the networks!
Yes
I was able to refute his allegations
I was in two minds whether to send the evidence
Now I’m glad I did
It was just another 10 hours of paperwork to build my case for money he owed
Hardly seems worth it
Sorry to hear this. I’ve had the same so here is the real story. 8 Month tenancy ending 1 Mar 2023 - Won the case to retain the full deposit from TDS - its a long and infuriating process. Used the NRLA form informing them of my intention to retain the full desposit - DO NOT use the desposit scheme to adjudicate - been there done that - they are pro tenants. Took out MCOL for the balance being 3000 sterling, just last week I had court hearing #3 and its adjourned - my claim is now about 5500 - 6000 sterling and my next court fee is 340 - so about 500 in fees. I have pushed them to settle, they think they can lie their way out of this. If your tenants have no money they cant pay you - I would provide evidence and try to get full deposit back, then do MCOL - assume they wont respond and get a CCJ that will ruin their lives for years as they ruined your property. Or ditch the MCOL and take the 1k. I can confirm the courts are backed up. My next and I hope final hearing could be August so 18 months ! Best of luck.
Kudos to you for sticking it to them, although some would say it’s throwing good money after bad, I disagree as you see from my earlier post there is always the possibility it will impact their lives to such a degree they pay up. However, I never paid solicitors fees in this connection, only the MCOL fee.
You could limit your fees if you don’t pay a solicitor. It’s really not that complicated and, after all, you will be providing all the evidence the solicitor presents.