Hey all.
I am shortly moving out of my University rented house after living here for 2 'academic years'.
I was just wondering what me and my housemates' rights are considering the very iffy subjet of 'general wear and tear'.
We have all completely blitzed the house. Any walls that have had posters on them have been touched up with the paint that the landlord left under the stairs and everything has been cleaned.
There are a few issues that the landlord keeps bringing up though:
= The carpet on the stairs and upstairs landing is a light beige colour and on high traffic areas such as the stairs, there are a few slightly darker marks. We scrubbed the stairs using a washing machine powder solution and got them as spotless as possible, to a very high standard but the landlord keeps hinting at us hiring a professional steam cleaner "just in case I get my own quote and I have to take more money from your deposit".
Isn't this just general wear and tear, if we have scrubbed it and the odd faded mark still remains?
= In my bedroom, there is a tacky plastic curtain rail and the screw which was holding one of the clips on to the wall (just stuffed in the wall with no rawl plug) came out a while back so one side of the curtain rail (if you can call it a 'rail') droops a bit. Am I liable for this considering it just fell off during the closing of a curtain?
= The handles on the fridge/freezer also just fell off a while back from normal opening. The landlord is trying to make us buy new handles for it.
= Another issue is that the old, brittle plastic toilet seat had a crack in it which we duct taped. Out of compassion we decided to buy a new wooden toilet seat for it to replace the cracked one. We have removed the old seat but cannot get one of the securing bolts out because it is very corroded and we do not have the tools. What are our rights for this?
Is it the landlord's responsibility to spring clean the house to the standards for new tennants? He's giving us the impression that we should leave it in a perfect, spring cleaned state as when we moved in 2 years ago and doesn't seem to understand the concept of general wear and tear.
Also, on top of that, there are a few issues which I am not sure are liable grounds to defend ourselves. These are things which the landlord has done which we believe breach laws in regards to renting property:
= After signing our original contract and paying not only a desposit, but half price 'holding rent' for the university summer break, we discovered a year later that one of our new friends we met actually rented the property for 2 months, after we had paid and before we actually moved in. Is this illegal?
= He never provided us with any information or proof as to where our deposits were held. It was only to my recent understanding that he cannot legally hold the deposits and must provide tenants proof of where these deposits are stored?
= None of the appliances have safety testing stickers or certificates and there is no fire extinguishing equipment or fire doors in the house.
= We had a chat to the previous tennants (who were Japanese exchange students). They asked if we could pay them £50 for the brand new washing machine they had bought the year previous. We were fine with this to help them out but we lost contact with them. It was only when we actually moved in and those students had left for Japan that the landlord started asking for this money, which we gave. Should he have proof that he has actually given them the money?
= Our contract says he will give 48hours notice prior to inspecting or showing visitors to the house. There have been many occasions where he has turned up out of the blue though and once when he even came into the house while we were away and confiscated our garage key (which contains some of our posessions).
Sorry for the long question but I'd really appreciate some advice on this matter.
Can you please provide an answer to what our rights are and an answer to the elements which we believe we could use against him.
Any answers will be greatly appreciated :).
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