Repair Bill . Letting agent inspections

Landlord Discussion
1

A toilet leak led to rotten floorboards in bathroom and a £2000 repair bill. Should my letting agent not have seen this in their regular inspection?

2

possibly. It’s very hard to give a yes/no answer to that. A leak from a toilet might well have been invisible and causing extensive damage until it came to light. You’ll need to give us a full history of this before anyone can advise you.

Also, are you pursuing the agent for costs? What do you hope to gain from posting here? That’ll help guide responses.

4

you are trapped here forever. there is no escape.

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5

Leak under a bathroom floor covering is not easily seen

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6

Did you go out and look at the damage yourself or did you believe the estate agent’s workman ?

They are very good at making work …

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7

@Zing
How often are the inspections

if its a small leak over time it’s hard to spot tho. Unless you have bare floorboards how would they see even a stain? If it was at back or covered by a mat?

And in a bathroom there can be water on the floor or stains from splashes from the shower or bath

If you have photos of the floor showing before issue occurred and when identified, and a plumber or maintenance person who can say categorically it should have been obvious more than eg 3 months earlier, then maybe..

Best

8

Delete your OR account?

9

Well the inspections are quarterly so I guess I can’t blame them. Apparently insurance doesn’t cover it either as it was a slow leak. Is there anything like an annual check up can be done to protect against this kind of thing?

Thanks for the replies!

10

I dont think so. Some things like pipework fail at random times and are buried behind walls, under floorboards and there’s no wait to cheaply check they are all ok every year. For gas central heating you can check if the pressure needs regularly topping up. For water if there is a meter and the bills suddenly increase there could be a leak somewhere. Otherwise it’s hard to ‘do a check up’ as it would need to be invasive all over your property.

best

11

nah… this is just one of those things. £2k seems a fairly large amount for that kind of issue though. What did it cover?