UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hello,

I appreciate anyone taking the time to help me on this, as I am completely new to renting, and in a very stressful time at the moment with this situation.

To put the story in short, myself and my partner have recently begun renting a property, to which we have had the keys for now for a week and a half and have not yet been able to move in due to how disgusting the property is. We have however signed the agreement, and we have the keys for the property.

After our first day in the property quite practically cleaning all day, we noticed a large amount of problems with the property that were not clear before, as we were told we were not able to touch things and had a limited slot of 10 minutes when viewing the property due to COVID.

We made these issues clear to the letting agent and noted that we wanted him to come to the property to view everything we were having issues with, to which he did, and then claimed that we had signed the agreement and we had no way out of it (in short), to which we said we'll seek legal advice. With this, he agreed to have some of the issues taken care of that weren't cosmetic

However, with this we are still not happy with the property due to the shear amount of issues that were present after being there on that day, and the fact the property had clearly not been cleaned since the previous tennants.

The main issues are as follows;

- The interior of the property is showing damp on the walls where water has been previously, which they have simply just painted over to try and hide
- The outside of the property needs reappointing (as per an independent builder's advice)
- The entire property is unclean and filthy from previous owners (the walls are caked in grease and reminiscence of food in the kitchen)
- The cooker is rusty
- Windows are blown

I've attached some photos of these issues for your viewing

Where do we stand with this? As we do not want to keep this property because of the sheer amount of problems we've had in our first week both with the property and letting agents

(Bare in mind this is not a cheap property at £750 a month)

Thanks for any replies

Images (it wouldn't let me attach more than one) - the first image of the wall is a before and after of cleaning

https://imgur.com/a/nqYds73

It's a kind of buyer's remorse you're experiencing. You could have waited until Covid related restrictions eased, but you went ahead and performed a viewing where you were limited in what you could do? The first question would be - "why?" - there must be some compelling reason that made you act without due care and consideration. It's entirely true that you have signed a legal agreement. It's also true that you had chance to view what you were getting into. Strange times and all that, but you did.

Secondly, if you decided to leave it - where would you go, exactly? Most people can't just up-and-leave somewhere like you seem to be hinting at. You'd need somewhere to go. Maybe you made offers on two properties and now you'd prefer the other after thinking you needed the bird-in-the-hand? It really is too late.

It's not your call as to whether a property needs repointing.
The oven can be cleaned and de-rusted with a bit of elbow-grease, which you don't seem against.
Windows being blown doesn't affect their function... they're still windows - they allow light in, keep weather out and you can, mostly, see through them.

There is good news... two pieces, really... the first is that you'll laugh about this in due course - trust me, in five years it'll be nothing but a cool anecdote for you... secondly, consider it an expensive life lesson - as I guarantee that you'll never make the same mistake again! No... three pieces... the cleaning you do now is cleaning you don't need to do at tenancy end... great news! You can leave it in the state you found it (more or less)... so ensure you get a signed Inventory showing the state of it. All you need to do is hand it back in the same it was given to you (minus fair wear and tear).

Good luck - a fixed term is never that long.

These things happen.It's a lesson learnt.I have made the mistake in the past of having a quick look around when a tenant leaves,paying back the deposit in full,only to end up scrubbing and cleaning for hours.If you had originally intended staying on,you could buy yourselves a new cooker,and store the old one.You can also get some excellent stuff on Amazon (HG brand) that does a good job with cleaning them.The repointing is not a tenant issue,my own house is 130 years old and probably needs some attention.The damp may have been caused by the previous tenant's lifestyle,or a leak from upstairs.You can buy products to seal it,then repaint.
Moving again is expensive and stressful,better to start making it look homely and enjoy your life.I agree with Hippogriff,it will be something to look back on together and laugh about one day.I have a lot of that.