Landlord Issues

[elbmek]

My son and his family rented a house that was not cleaned before they moved in by the landlords, the Church. When he moved out over a week ago, they insisted that HE foot the bill for cleaning even though the place had been cleaned, thoroughly, and the carpets had all been professionally cleaned.

He had been told to leave as the Minister wanted to have it for herself.

The walls were covered, in part, in damp, which affected the two tots health and my son always had a cold. In one room the plaster fell down. He told them on every inspection. I understand he also complained to the Church. Where does he stand? They left him a crappy house, he left them a clean one considering the damp etc. The kitchen was covered in grease, pans lft in cupboards had mould in them!!!

He has agreed that a door needing replacement is down to them, but not the cleaning. They will not refund his deposit until this is sorted.

[P.Pilcher]

Re: Landlord Issues

Right: for a start this deposit should have been protected in a government approved protection scheme and your son should have received the "prescribed information" as to where the deposit was being protected within a few weeks of taking up his tenancy.
If there is a dispute with regard to the refunding of the deposit then the landlord will need to produce an inventory, duly signed by the tenant, containing photographs which shows the state of the property immediately prior to the tenant moving in. A further inventory, indicating the alleged damage needs to be produced when the tenant has moved out. If the first inventory has not been taken and signed then the landlord has absolutely no case to retain any of the tenant's deposit and any legal action to claim some of this deposit will fail.
The tenant is recommended to write to his landlord, demanding return of the deposit (within, say, 14 days of vacating the property) as he is liable to a fine of 3x the deposit as this has not been protected.
The landlord will then either return the deposit as requested or protect it. The tenant can then use the scheme to indicate that the amount of deposit to be returned is under dispute and this will then be resolved by the scheme's dispute resolving mechanism or the small claims court. In either case, the absence of the inventories described above means that the landlord's claim will fail, particularly in view of what you have said above.

This could well be a case of the church assuming that the law of the land does not apply to them! - It does.

Oh - and I assume tha the tenancy commenced after April 2007 when this law came in. If not, the tenant should claim the deposit by taking small claims court action when the same principles apply.

P.P.