UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi, can anyone give my any advice, I was looking after my fathers house after he moved in a residential home, I was unsure whether he would stay so I decided to put the house up for rent.  I wanted to manage the tenancy myself I sorted out the tenancy agreement and I protected the £600 deposit into a scheme.  I am a novice and made the mistake of thinking that this was for the term the tenants were in the property and I would cancel when they moved out and pay the deposit back, I didn't realise that it had to be protected at the beginning of every tenancy agreement.

At the end of the first 6 months tenancy, the tenants informed me that they didn't want to take the tenancy out for another 6 months, instead they were looking at buying their own property, but as they hadn't found anything they asked could they take the tenancy out on a monthly basis.  At the time I thought they were reasonable people, but it turned out that they weren't.  I gave them a further 5 month on a monthly tenancy.  I even let them stay in the house for the last month whilst they did work on their new property.

When I took over the house the house itself was not too bad, the usual things the decorating needed freshening, new plastered walls had been drilled, but they had made such a mess of the back garden, I had to get a professional in to sort the problem out as it was beyond me.

I have withheld the deposit, which is nowhere near what it has cost me to put things right, the tenants have now informed me that they will take me to court for the deposit plus what else the judge will award them for not protecting their deposit.  As said earlier I did initially protect the bond and my intention was always to pay the deposit back until I saw the state of the property.

For the last month I put the house up for sale, the tenants were obstructive and awkward and the state of the garden cost me a number of sales, this is evidenced by the house selling 3 days after the garden was sorted,

Although the Deposit Scheme is law, if the intention was completely innocent and I made a mistake, will this be taken into consideration.

Many thanks

Louise

Quote from: lucyloo101 on February 26, 2016, 04:32:57 PMAlthough the Deposit Scheme is law, if the intention was completely innocent and I made a mistake, will this be taken into consideration.

No. If you have made an error you will be liable. The Court must find against you - the only grey area is the amount of penalty. Ignorance, innocent mistakes, cavalier attitudes etc. - none of that will get you off the hook.

However, your story is interesting... you appear to be talking about a tenancy of 11 months in total - 6 months fixed term, then 5 months rolling (SPT). In this day and age the deposit does not need to be un-protected and re-protected when a tenancy moves beyond its initial fixed term.

So... when was this tenancy? And are you saying you un-protected the deposit after the fixed term but didn't re-protect it or what?

For example... I have Tenants who moved into a property in Aug last year... their initial fixed term was 6 months, before that fixed term was up I asked them what they wanted to do, they said they wanted it to go periodic, I was OK with that, the DPS (who I used) allowed me to set the tenancy as now being periodic - the deposit has remained protected throughout and there was nothing I really needed to do.

Ok thank you for that, I will look into it further.

If they do take me to court I will counter claim for the damages and my losses.

Regards

Louise

I think the problem I am going to have is that I didn't unprotect it, I just thought it rolled over until they moved out and then I had to unprotect it.  Hope that makes sense

Louise

It does. That's what I said.

Louise,

What deposit scheme were you using?

In a court the question is always: Was it sensible for you to assume that you were doing the right thing?

If you were using DPS this means that the money was not even in your account. Which tells me that you were unaware of having to inform the scheme that it was rolling. I would call your scheme and really understand what happened and what were your rights and obligations.

If indeed you assumed that the scheme was valid and you can prove this, then I don't believe you will be fined. Maximum you might not be able to recover the deposit to pay your costs with the garden.

Make sure you keep the receipt of the works undertook and if you have a picture of before and after tenant that will also help you enormously to try and recover these costs.

Finally, you can't simply withhold the deposit, it needs to be an agreement between you and the tenant. If you can't agree this needs to be sorted through the scheme itself. Read here for more information: http://bit.ly/LF1_tenancy_deposit

Good luck sorting this out and let us know how it goes.

Lais from RentSquare
Rent made simple
www.rentsquare.io