UK Landlord Forum / Life

Good Day Everybody,

I recently moved out of a 4-bed house in London and we left the place in a clean condition, in my opinion.
I asked the landlord to come for a 'walk-around' but she said that it wasn't needed.

The tenancy ended 24th July, on 12 August I was told that the deposit would be returned when evidence was received that all bills had been paid.
On 15th September I received my £3800 deposit minus £306 for cleaning and £328 for steam cleaning.

I had thought that I should have been informed of such charges within 10 days of the end-of-tenancy.

In a phone conversation the landlord claims that the house was in a "terrible" state and needed a lot of cleaning.
She also states that the house was similarly cleaned before we moved in - I am now trying to contact one of the previous tenants to prove/disprove this.

Can anyone please advise me on this, especially as to the legal situation ?

My thanks in advance,
Peter Owen

Raise a dispute with the Deposit Scheme where your deposit was protected. Advise your Landlord before you do this that you will be doing that and, you never know, their mind might suddenly change.

Have a read of OFT356 and their view on Cleaning Charges...

Quote 1:

Quotecleaning charges - a requirement to pay for cleaning at the end of the tenancy may be unfair if it is vague or unclear about the basis on which money will be demanded, or the extent of the cleaning involved. Such a term is more likely to be fair if the amount of the charge is expressly limited to reasonable compensation for a failure to take care of the property

Quote 2:

Quoteexcessive cleaning charges - as a matter of normal practice in short lets, reflecting the common law, tenants are expected to return the property in as good and clean a condition as it was when they received it, with fair wear and tear excepted. We therefore commonly object to terms that could be used to make the tenant pay for the property to be cleaned to a higher standard than it was in at the start of the tenancy, or that require cleaning regardless of whether or not this is necessary for the tenant to comply with their normal obligations with regard to the state of the property

Hopefully that is enough assistance for you to be getting on with a reasonable challenge if you genuinely feel it is that.

To me this sounds like Agency usual add ons at the end of a tenancy.

£600 + to clean is in my opinion taking the Micheal.

The fact that you ended the tenancy in your mind leaving it clean, offered them the chance to check, you should be home and dry.

I would check with a professional cleaning company like Absolutely Spotless whether 600+ for professional check-out clean of a 4-bedroom house is in line with the bill you have been given.

Did your ex-landlord get a 3rd party inventory done? If the house was professionally cleaned prior to your occupation and can be verified, the expectation might be (assuming it's worded in the AST) is that the tenant does a professional clean on check-out or pays the cost thereof. If there was no professional 3rd party, you definitely have a case as its the landlord's (biased) opinion against yours.

To Everybody.....
My thanks for the info, very useful and has given me a "way forward".

Apologies for not coming back sooner but have been in France for a bit - now off to japan tomorrow !
Again my thanks.

Peter

Oh boy, this sounds like the standard "lets just rip them off one last time" trick a third of the landlords use...


Anyway, you can immediately raise a dispute in your TDP over the money. Their ruling however, will be highly influenced by the end of tenancy inspection / inventory report.
If you never did a check-in and check-out inspection, it will be hard to determine who is right and who is wrong. If you have any written communication regarding the end of tenancy cleaning and it helps your plea, supply a copy to the TDP.


Be sure to check if your deposit was protected in the first place. If that went wrong, you just got a helluvalot richer...


Hope it helps, be sure to tell us what happened
Regards,
Bob Tenant @ Bob's Tenancy Cleaning London