You guys keep talking about the money. Ye are just like my LL!! After the money. I don’t care about the money. I will take much more pleasure from seeing a dodgy LL being exposed in the media for having rat’s nests all over their property!!
Money comes and goes. Reputation lasts a lifetime!!
My apologies. We’re not all about money. I thought the reply to me that said a win was all about money was from you. Didn’t realise it wasn’t.
Still confused about why you started talking about a solicitor and now seem to have ditched that despite quoting from legislation.
The LL will appear in an online article that will come and go. It’ll likely never be seen by anyone who is going to rent from them. You stayed too long to claim the place was a real danger to your family. You could easily have completely vapourised the rats by taking a flamethrower to the garden. You didn’t. Move on.
I can’t understand why you didn’t arrange to get rid of them yourself if it was that bad? And recover costs even?
Why put your family through it? Could’ve easily been sorted or move out.
Did landlord fulfill all of their other responsibilities?
We tried sorting it ourselves but the poison you get in retail shops doesn’t work. We complied with lease by informing LL every time rats were in the house. Id we hadn’t complied with lease we would have a different issue.
The issue got progressively worse over the last year and we were in the process of buying a house.
It was LL responsibility to sort out the issue. They needed to sort it. Why should we have to incur costs and hassle moving cause landlord has not fulfilled their statutory duty by providing a safe environment for us to live in.
I guess you are all LLs. I see you jumping up and down about tenants blocking sinks on another thread. But you expect me as a tenant to incur moving costs and extra deposit etc…
I’ll send ye on the newspaper article. Lazy LL rents out rat den to family.
As I said Money. Goodbye . On and on and on and on. Waste of time// I am sure the rats will travel down the street.
A pragmatic approach has its place.
Pursuit of a bad landlord can often create 10 times the work of just dealing with the problem. (Works other way round also).
Plenty of landlords here condemn bad landlords.
I just spent £8,000 getting rid of rats and repairing all damage, probably the landlord didn’t want to face these costs and hoped it would just go away.
Wow, was the bulk of that cost the damage?
In all your time did you ever cut back the foliage before you threw the rat bait?
In three years did you ever maintain your garden as per your lease?
What’s the point of renting a house with a garden if you don’t want to maintain it ?
In my situation the tenants left the food source (dry pellets of dog food) in the garage, that brought the rats in, but no matter how fast we killed them they kept returning. Once we killed 9 in 2 days with snap traps. They were under the floor, so we had to rip up the floorboards in one room and tiles in another to get to where they lived. Then we found the builders had left a redundant pipe that led into sewer uncovered when they moved an old toilet, so in effect there was a motorway open to the sewer and a non-stop flow of sewer rats. So then we had to bung all the redundant pipework, valve the pipes that still operate. Meantime they had gnawed through plasterboard in three walls making tom and jerry holes along their ratruns, so we had to get builders to close all other possible entry points, repair walls, put floors back, redecorate from all the damage in taking up flooors (including new skirting boards), then the cost of several exterminators, drain inspectors, finally Rentokil spent a month completely exterminating the little bstds. The tenants moved out and we had 3 months void.
So if someone says they have dogs…
Every landlords nightmare. Hats off for managing to sort such an extensive issue.
Oh, and vermin damage is not covered on house insurance.
So if someone says they have dogs, you need very clear rules about where they keep the food and how they dispose of the poop.
Hi
I unknowingly acquired a tenant with a dog.
I made her sign Tessa’s pet agreement and added on 10% to the rent ( clause in contract permitted this) .
Her AST expires in July and she is actively looking to move ( which is good for me as I have allergies and the house smells of dog).
This was my first time with a dog
What do you mean about where they keep the food?
There was no mention of this or disposal of waste on Tessa’s website
People who feed their dogs kibble is a magnet for rats if it’s stored on the floor or the lower cupboards or if they have a garage but any food source that’s left at ground level or not stored properly and bits of it are all over the floors you can bet you’ll attract rats.
Thank you
Everyday is a school day !
Even if they leave food in the bowl and leave say a sliding door to the garden open then rats will come in and get the food. Obviously not the food in cans, but the dried food (kibble) that comes in bags that rats can easily bite through. So you need to find out what dogs eat, and if its kibble, agree rules for its storage.
do send us a link to the published article!
As a tenant reading your post I’m puzzled at what’s going on. So you took a house that you knew had a rat problem and that the main issues were they were housing in the long grass in the garden and brambles etc is that right? So can I ask what garden maintenance did you do in the property for the last 3 years? Did you not cut back the brambles and mow the lawns regularly? Because I don’t understand why you never got rid of the overgrown state of the garden. I’ve never rented a house with a garden that wasn’t my responsibility to keep tidy and maintained so it’s sounds to like you’ve just let them (the rats) have free reign over the garden’ if you didn’t bother about the state of the garden why should a landlord pay for extermination just for the rats to just keep coming into an unmaintained garden because they will come back if you just let your garden out of control and I’m sorry but the tenants are responsible for maintaining the garden. Also if you knew the problem was an ongoing one when you moved in why in the hell have you stayed there for 3 years???!!! And only now deciding to get a solicitor to do what for you exactly? Because you don’t mention what your case would be? Same question with the reporter why only after living in the property have you decided to get this out in to the public domain? I think you are going look a bit silly if you’ve not maintained the garden or located their food source then people are just going to be a little confused as to what you’re trying to achieve here. I know I’m not the only one wondering what it is you want to happen now after moving out after living there for 3 years? What the end goal here?
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.