Problem with returning deposit and TDS

[tenmillionmilesaway]

Hi,

 

I have read through the faqs and posts, but am still unclear about some things.

 

Let me give you some background first.

 

Me and 3 friends rented a 4 bed flat in london from September 2008, cant remember the exact date, but do have it somewhere. Our total rent was £32240 pa, with a deposit of £3100. We moved out on 13th April 2009, using the break clause in our contract and the landlord was fine with this. However they are now trying to make deductions from our deposit totalling £550, for several things, some legit, some were broken damaged when we moved in, and some that we feel should be covered under fair wear and tear. They have not provided us with an itemised list of each item and its cost. We have however said that we will pay for things that we can agree are our fault.

We had check in and check out reports done by an approved agent, and the landlord only seems to be taking into acount things in the check out report. We have not received a copy of either report, although im sure when we can get in contact with the guy that did them (same for in and out) he will send them to us.

 

Questions,

1) Should our deposit have been placed in a TDS? The landlord is now holding the deposit, which was realsed to him by the letting agent. Our tenacy agreement contains a specifc clause stating that the deposit must not be realsed to either us or the landlord without written concent from both tennant and landlord.

 

2) We signed an Assured Shorthold Tenacy Agreement, but after digging around abit it seems that these can only be used for rents below £25000, is this correct?

 

We have offered the landlord half the amount he is requesting to be done with everything so we can all move on, but he had rejected this. What options, other than paying the full amount do we have?

 

Thanks for any help you can give.

[Planner]

It will all depend on where you all on the same tenancy agreement i.e. jointly and severally responsible for rent etc OR did you have a tenancy agreement each and paid the portion of rent as specified in your agreement?

 

If you where all on the same contract, then you are quie right, it isnt an AST and theres no requirement for your deposit to be protected.

[tenmillionmilesaway]

No, we all signed the same agreement, but did pay our share of the rent individually.

 

Our contract does say "Assured Shorthold Tenancy" in big bold letters on the front, and does make reference to the agent not releasing the deposit without written consent. But I assume that this will all count for nothing.

 

Is the landlord still bound by the check in and out reports? I don't actually believe he has seen either since he has been out of the country since before we moved out.

[Planner]

No, we all signed the same agreement, but did pay our share of the rent individually.

 

Our contract does say "Assured Shorthold Tenancy" in big bold letters on the front, and does make reference to the agent not releasing the deposit without written consent. But I assume that this will all count for nothing.

 

Is the landlord still bound by the check in and out reports? I don't actually believe he has seen either since he has been out of the country since before we moved out.

 

If you didnt sign individual agreements and the contracts says something along the lines of paying £XXXX a month (which you then work out and divide between you), it cant be an AST (no matter what it states on the front) and is instead a common law tenancy.

 

Subsequently there is no requirement for TDS. The option you have would be to raise a county court claim for the deposits return against the LL (or LL and agents as co-defendants).

 

There is the added difficulty of the landlord being abroad.

[nicb_111]

My problem partly relates to this. So I hope someone can help because my flatmate and I are ready to tear our hair out.

 

Basically I moved into a one bed flat at the end of August 2009 with a deposit of £300 which I paid and signed the contract and heard nothing more.

 

Note that my landlord is English but he lives in Dubai. His son did live in the flat next door but he moved out to Dubai as well.

 

After 4 months my friend was looking for a place to live and the 2 bed flat my landlord's son had lived in was free so he agreed to let us move in there at the start of December 2009.

 

A new AST was signed and the deposits were £200 each. He kept my original £300 and said my flat mate could pay him £100.00.

 

We carried out the inventory ourselves as there was no agent, and the landlord was obviously not about!

 

The flat was disgusting and my flatmate is a fanatic cleaner, so she set to and cleaned the entire place and then wrote an email to the landlord complaining. He followed this us by saying he would pay her £100.00 for the cleaning.

 

He got an agent for the place by around end of April 2009 to start of May 2009.

 

We have since moved out of the flat at the end of May 2009.

Before we moved out we tried to arrange a date to do the inventory with the agent but they said they would only do this during weekdays between 9am and 5.30pm.

We both work 9am-6pm which our landlord knew as well as the agent.

Conveniently the agent had been happy to come to the flat at 6.3pm previously to take photos to advertise the flat and on a Saturday to do an EPC!!

 

Therefore the inventory was carried out the week after we left, without us.

We are since being charged for cleaning of the flat, although this is for dust! They are trying to charge us around £30 to clean this. Note that we cleaned the flat before we left and dust takes less than a day to gather.

 

We have agreed to pay for the oven to be cleaned and for a new freezer draw as we cracked one, although it is purely cosmetic damage. We offer £75.00 to bring this to an end. ( £40.00 for oven cleaning and £35.00 for drawer, after finding a quote online).

 

Our landlord has rejected this and wanted to take around £153.00 off our deposit, and then includes the dusting!

 

We sent photos we took the day we left the flat but yet our landlord says all it shows is that we left the place tidy.

 

It may sound petty, but we don't see why we should have money taken from us when we have already carried out the task.

 

Note that he also wants to charge us £26 for a new lamp which we apparently dented - yet it still works!!

 

We have since been told about the TDS, which we knew nothing about and the landlord gave us no info about. We never recieved anything saying it was in a scheme and the contract says nothing except , "the landlord will get the interest on the bond".

 

Please can someone help us and give us advice of how to proceed. We are willing to take this the whole way but we need to know if we have a leg to stand on.

 

 

SORRY FOR THE ESSAY - I RANT WHEN ANNOYED!! LOL

 

thanks in advance for any help.

 

Nicki

[Filthy Monkey]

Hi Nicki, sorry to hear of your problems. Hopefully somebody will give you advice to sort them out. However, I would suggest moving your post to its own thread, as responses can get very confusing with two problems in the same thread

 

FM

[nicb_111]

i would but i don't know how to!

[Lia7769]

Ten Million miles away - we are going through a similar problem (but worse). From what I know, your rent P.A exceeds the threshold to qualify for a TDS. I may be wrong, but I'm sure you shouldn't be on an Assured Shorthold Tenancy agreement as your rent is too high to qualify for that. So maybe that would null your contract full stop?