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Legal dispute with Landlord

S

Steed Train

Clive Wilson
I recently left a rental property and have now entered a dispute with the landlord who is threatening to take me to a small claims court.

When we moved into the property we noticed a big damp patch on the wall and in the bathroom, we asked someone to take a look at it and a bloke came in and painted over it.

About 8 months later fungus appeared in the bathroom and a brown dust covered all the surfaces. We reported it to her and she got in builders who discovered a dry rot infestation beneath the floor and the bath. The net effect of this was that the entire bathroom had to be removed and lots of floorboards costing her 7000. We could not live in the property for two weeks. We agreed with her after alot of back and forthing that we would not need to pay two weeks rent.

2 months later now we are moving out she is claiming its now our fault the works were so extensive as we did not notify her earlier. She is threatening my deposit and saying she is going to start legal proceedings to reclaim her costs for the work. Does she have a case? I feel like we told her when we moved in and she got it painted over so how can we be liable?
 
Steed Train said:
I recently left a rental property and have now entered a dispute with the landlord who is threatening to take me to a small claims court.

When we moved into the property we noticed a big damp patch on the wall and in the bathroom, we asked someone to take a look at it and a bloke came in and painted over it.

About 8 months later fungus appeared in the bathroom and a brown dust covered all the surfaces. We reported it to her and she got in builders who discovered a dry rot infestation beneath the floor and the bath. The net effect of this was that the entire bathroom had to be removed and lots of floorboards costing her 7000. We could not live in the property for two weeks. We agreed with her after alot of back and forthing that we would not need to pay two weeks rent.

2 months later now we are moving out she is claiming its now our fault the works were so extensive as we did not notify her earlier. She is threatening my deposit and saying she is going to start legal proceedings to reclaim her costs for the work. Does she have a case? I feel like we told her when we moved in and she got it painted over so how can we be liable?
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Sorry, I'm confused, who called in the guy to look at the damp patch, you guys or her? if it was her and especially if you have email/ written evidence of this, she has absolutely no leg to stand on.

If you guys did it unilaterally without telling her at all, bit more of a problem but the onus is on her to provide evidence that this is your fault. The burden of evidence is on her.

Call her bluff. Loads of landlords are utter tacos who ll try to rinse every penny out of you. They either often don't follow through or end up losing cos they have no evidence.
 
Steed Train said:
When we moved into the property we noticed a big damp patch on the wall and in the bathroom, we asked someone to take a look at it and a bloke came in and painted over it.
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Did the landlord provide the instructions to paint over the patch or you? If you, I don't think you should be getting that sort of repair work done anyway, not your responsibility.

If it was the landlord, they got nothing.
 
I cant see how you can be in any way responsible - She has a legal right of access to view her own property. She didnt use it - tough brick.
You are not her agent and under absolutely no obligation to report anything to her unless it is something you have broken yourself.
 
The ex-missus and I had a similar, if not identical problem to you. We noticed a large damp patch in our ground floor bathroom when we moved in to a flat.

Put it down on the inventory checklist (did you do this?) clearly saying it was there.

We kept the window open/extractor fan on whenever we were showering/taking a bath... but it was winter... damp patch just grew. We told them as this started - via email (and kept the email) - and they did the same CLEARLY inadequate thing... sent a bloke round to paint it over.

Didn't work as it kept getting worse - it was a cold sodding winter and there was clearly a LEAK coming from ABOVE our flat which along with the condensation was just gonna make it worse. We told them it was getting worse, via email... yet they still did nothing. We followed this up and they did the same thing AGAIN!! We wrote back saying we didn't think this was good enough, but they did nothing further... just didn't responsd.

Then we moved out a year later... lo and behold they try and blame us for it all, and try to take our whole deposit away. I wrote two politely but strongly worded letters, which I can paraphrase the message of as: "f**king jog on". They basically relented and apologised in the end, and we got our deposit back!

In the letters I basically broke down the timeline of events as I described above. Included all copies of the correspondence we had with them and basically said: problem was there before we moved in, we told you repeated times (and I have included the proof) but you didn't deal with it adequately (and we told you this) and that is your fault, not ours.

In your case... I think they're being a typical landlord, total c*nts. They don't have a leg to stand on and are trying to pull a fast one.

my advice would be to you. Write a comprehensive email/letter detailing the sequence of events. How long was it after you moved in that you notified her of the leak? Or (even better) did you put it on the inventory checklist when you moved in, notifying them of it?

Hopefully you have copies of how you informed her on the first occasion what was wrong? Even if you don't, and it was all by phone, try and remember when you called exactly and who you spoke to. Clearly as you couldn't live there for 2 weeks and you didn't pay the rent for that period they already have shown some kind of acceptance that it wasn't your fault.

Show a proper trail of when you have notified them and they won't take it further. As they know the small claims court will tell them they’re wrong.

Plus is your deposit covered by the Tenancy Protection scheme? it should be. If so mention that to the landlord. They will soon relent.
 
I am a Landlord myself although I have an Agency doing the Management work but I have to authorise any works etc.

I love how these Landlords dont fix anything, painting over it hahahaha - I crack up. Simply put these Landlords are putting off work, doing cheap jobs and in the long run it will cost them SO much more to put the thing right.

Its like having a car, and the radiator goes, instead of repairing it properly they repaint the car... eventually the whole engine fudges up. What happens? instead of paying a few hundred for the radiator they now have to shell out 5k for a whole new engine.

ike I say im a Landlord but when anything goes wrong I fix it immediately as id rather spend a couple of hundred quid than 5k etc.
 
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