UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi all,

Would appreciate your advise on our current carpet issue.
We are moving out of a property after 4 years and there is a burn mark on our carpet. I contacted the landlord and said that the burn was our error and we would get the carpet replaced - did he know what the carpet was.
The landlord gave us the carpet information and we have found that to replace the carpet in the room will cost £600. My only question is are we liable for the full cost of replacing the carpet? Whilst I appreciate we do owe something the carpet was down before we moved in (not sure how long for) and a friend advised that we should only be liable for the life left in the carpet.

Are we better off offering the landlord a proportion of the cost and if he rejects it leave it up to a deposit dispute. I don't want to be unreasonable towards the landlord but at the same time we don't have £600 (insurance will only give us £300).

Advise would be very much appreciated - thanks

Your friend is correct: you are not obliged to put the landlord in a better position than he would otherwise have been. Let's assume, or the sake of argument, that a carpet has an average useful life of ten years. The carpet wasn't brand new when you moved in but presumably wasn't noticeably shabby either, so let's say it was two years old. You've been there four years, so the carpet's done six in total. If you knock 6/10 of the £600 cost off as reasonable wear and tear, you're left with £240.

Now, there's a lot of assumptions in there: maybe an average carpet lasts fifteen years, or only eight. Maybe it had been down for five years already, or only five months. You'll have a better idea of what state the carpet is in (aside from the burn mark, obviously) but offering to go halves with the landlord sounds reasonable, and would probably be viewed as such by an independent adjudicator, if it came to a dispute.

The concept of how an asset depreciates is easy to research, but Simon has given you a scenario that is easy enough to break down. What I think this does is give a benchmark or a yardstick to aim for - one that is hard to argue with. However, Simon's other suggestion of going halves seems more realistic to me. The value of an asset may be, for the sake or argument, £1,000... but the cost of replacing that asset is not necessarily £1,000... because there's all the arranging of the replacing that goes with it, the preparation, the hassle, even the choosing... all which will not have been necessary if you had not, accidentally - of course, burned the carpet. So I really like it when a Tenant errs on the side of generosity (unless responding to unnaturally unrealistic requests / demands from a Landlord who doesn't play in the same way).

The kind of problem I perceive that you have here is simply this - you've already owned-up to the issue (good on you) and verbally committed to the Landlord that you will replace like-for-like (even gooder on you)... but now you are in the situation where you're having second thoughts and are about to de-commit from what you said (not so good).

You obviously had the best of intentions. It would be so nice if you were able to not step back from that now you've found out the cost.

Thanks for your replies.

I went to the carpet shop to look at the carpet today and turns out the carpet the landlord says it is is a completely different green to the carpets we have and much better quality. The shop confirmed that the carpet the landlord has stated has only been available for a year and so it can't possibly be the same carpet as we have been in the property for over 3 years. I have asked the landlord for a copy of the invoice he got the details from so will see what he comes back with!

I think you may consider your original offer to pay the full cost of replacement well and truly rescinded. The most charitable way of looking at it is that the landlord has mis-remembered the details, but it does look very much like he's trying it on. You are not required to put the landlord in a better position than he would have been had the damage not occurred. If he wants to use that carpet this time around, then fair enough, but the most you should be required to pay for it is a reasonable proportion of the cost of the old carpet (or one of similar quality).