I currently rent a cr*ppy little 1st floor flat which I share with my GF. Which we are happy to do as we only generally return there to sleep and store belongings.

We have lived here for coming up to 5 years now and we are having issues with our landlord. I’m hoping that it’s not just me being unreasonable here.

At least once or twice a year we have a leak coming through our ceiling at different points, each time it is botched together by the landlord. to the extent that when the waste pipe broke (that was over our bed), his resolution was to just put in an extra couple of corners in the existing pipework, (so it now zigzags).
This has happened to our waste pipe shortly after and he did the same, now everything drains incredibly slowly.

Water came through our mains operating smoke alarm (with a 9v battery backup) with a different leak. This leak happened whilst we were out to work. Apparently it is our fault that the alarm was going off for several hours before anyone noticed. The landlord came removed the fire alarm. It was replaced almost a year later.

Our old style water heater (uses a coil type heating element), brakes down once a year with just weekend usage. The last ‘plumber’ he called couldn’t close the bleed valve properly, so simply stuffed it with loo roll. This is the same plumber that couldn’t fix a leaky toilet so told us to turn the water valve off for it after each flush.

Now we have a leak in our ceiling, going through the mains switch for the shower (its a pull-chord on the ceiling), which happens whenever upstairs uses their bath. No-one has done anything other than telling the flat upstairs to not use their bath. This is day three of this problem. So neither of us can use our showers.

With the latest problem the landlord has insisted that we wait in all yesterday and someone would be out. When we queried at the end of the day why no-one has been we were told that “as I have not heard to the contrary I assume the plumber has already been and the problem has been resolved”. And now as the problem still remains it is being made out to be my fault?

Also, have I mentioned the wall sockets that are not attached to the wall (never have been, and they don’t seem to intend to fix this). The front door lock (to the building) that doesn’t (lock that is), the list goes on and on.

Am I being unreasonable here to be annoyed?
If I just up and move it’s not resolving the situation but moving away from it, which I’m not a fan of doing. So what can I do?

I don’t want to start withholding rent for repairs either as there are legal implications for this.

Advice? please? anyone?

Speak to a solicitor.

Sounds like he’s a right bungling amatuer. I’d withhold rent or pay a reduced amount. There’s no way you should put up with that.

Maybe you could offer to fix stuff and knock it of the rent?

the landlord won’t change which you should realise if you’re still waiting for stuff to be fixed after 5 years.

time to move on…

http://www.communities.gov.uk/documents/housing/pdf/138307.pdf

Might be some useful info in there.

I don’t think you are being unreasonable in being annoyed. I’m surprised you have put up with it for such a long time!

Not exceptable document and take photos particularly of this.

Also, have I mentioned the wall sockets that are not attached to the wall (never have been, and they don’t seem to intend to fix this). The front door lock (to the building) that doesn’t (lock that is), the list goes on and on.

I don’t know where you stand legally with regard to withholding rent. Speak to C.A.B or shelter or similar. I’m both a landlord and a tenant and am amazed that there are people still in business who operate like this.

Write down everything that needs doing. Put this in a letter to the landlord along with a reasonable timeframe for it to be fixed, and reminding him of his legal responsibilities (good details on the Shelter website). Make clear that if it is not fixed in that timeframe, you will pay for repairs yourself and deduct them from your rent. Send it recorded delivery so you know it’s turned up.

Thank you all, and thank you wallop for that PDF link.

I think my first move will just be to put everything into writing and send it to them via registered post making them aware of any outstanding issues, including how long it has been unresolved for. Then give them a little while to come back to me, before taking it too far. To be honest I think any solicitor will tell me to do the same thing anyway.

Once they acknowledge the letter I shall give them the option of repairing it themselves or how I can be reimbursed for any repairs I have to do myself (inc withholding rent if I have to).

This is all I can think to do, but I know it will further destroy the relationship with the landlord, so either way I will have to move on, but at the moment at least getting the shower fixed is a priority, though it does make me go to the gym more often :).

The whole experience has stressed me out no end as I feel Like I shouldn’t have to take ownership of these problems. Its currently effecting my sleep, as I just cant relax there anymore, so its also effecting the relationship with my partner. So I would like to ge tthis resolved quickly to be honest.

Again, thank you for your advice people.

EDIT: Oh, did I forget to mention that getting in touch with them is increasingly difficulty, apparently if I have water gushing through my ceiling leaving a voicemail and hoping they get back in touch with me soon is their desired course of action. Phoning their ‘business partner’ whos number is listed on their website as the contact number is apparently not correct. Further to this I had a voicemail last night stating that the correct course of action is for us to have called a person we have no contact information available for.

The landlord is not going to change easily or quickly after 5 years – so either move or use a lot of time and energy fighting for himto do the repairs

Bloody hate renting! We had to chase up the status of our deposit (£550) after having moved out at the start of May. We were told we’d be informed of the situation 10 days after moving out, it took 6 weeks. And after that six weeks, the landlord decided that not only were they going to withold our deposit, but we owed them another £227 for repairs.

We’d lived in the house for five years so admittedly it wasn’t quite as pristine as when we moved it, but all of the furniture was in the same condition and we cleaned everything vigorously. The only real issues were that we hadn’t had the carpets professionally cleaned as we were supposed to according to the contract, and the garden was overgrown.

Unfortunately we were a bit restricted by time and circumstances as we were given two months’ notice to leave because the landlady wanted to sell, so were desperately trying to find somewhere else to live, plus the near £2k we needed to move (£700 months rent in advance, £700 deposit, and over £400 of letting agent admin fees).

The letting agents has said that the landlady isn’t ‘willing to negotiate further’, which is funny because she hasn’t negotiated at all – we’ve asked for a more precise breakdown of the costs, but we’ve been told we’ll have to take legal action. I suspect that she wants to completely refurbish the house prior to reselling it and has bumped up our costs to do that.

I suspect this included stuff that was the letting agents responsibility to fix – the ceiling in the bathroom kept on peeling because they’d never do it properly, just kept on painting over the peeling paint instead of stripping it and doing it from scratch (we had them in 3 times to do it), the locks were a bit iffy and the previous tenant had damaged the work surface in the kitchen, which was hidden when we did the initial inventory because they’d put a chopping board on top of it. That one really drove home the importance of properly checking the inventory and making amendments. 🙁

Sorry, slight hijack there, hope everything gets sorted.

Sounds like your landlord is utterly useless. As TJ says this is unlikely to change soon, so unless they were to put the management of the flat into the hands of a competent agent(yeah, I know…), for your sanity it’d be time to move on.

[Tongue firmly in cheek mode]I can do you a decent three bed semi in Doncaster, £500pcm, ready end July if that helps[/Tongue firmly in cheek mode]

Leave. Vote with your cash and feet.

Find a better landlord – ask around mates etc for a good one and then approach them with a ‘have you got another place?’. We never advertised our places in Sheffield, only ever filled by recommendations (we used to pay cash or vouchers to tenants who filled the place as they left) – meant we got better tenants and they got a landlord someone recommended.

why are you still there after this long? Do whatever it takes to get out.

In fairness to the LL (unless they also own the lease to the flat up stairs) the leak from the upper flat is not his problem to fix although the inconvenience it’s causing you is.

Regardless of the legal technicalities, your choice is a simple one. Move to somewhere better (there are more bad tenants than there are bad landlords, so finding a good one is easy) or stay and have the hassle of dealing with things.

I assume that after five years you’ve moved on to a statutory periodic tenancy so you’ll only need to give one months notice to quit.

In fairness to the LL (unless they also own the lease to the flat up stairs) the leak from the upper flat is not his problem to fix although the inconvenience it’s causing you is.

No, but we had this over the winter – a small leak put down to overfilling bath upstairs, but then it happened again. I went and saw the other landlord, looked at both flats and agreed that he should do the remedial work that week, using a proper plumber. Within two weeks upstairs had a new shower and our bathroom ceiling had been replaced (not with my permission, but that is another srory…).

Time to move on. Just be sure to cancel your direct debit to the landlord in good time to make sure you have the upper hand with the deposit (tell him he can keep your deposit in lieu of your final months rent if its the same value)

If that landlord is rubbish because they really dont want to spend anything on the place they you will be fighting a losing battle, if they are rubbish because they are just lazy then you might be onto a winner. I had a landlord who would never get round to fixing anything, when I offered to organise it all and get done what needed doing then take it out of the rent he jumped at the chance.

I bought a receipt book from WHSmiths, did the work and submitted receipts from generically named companies that were listed in the yellow pages with multiple companies sharing very similar names. That saved us a few quid, and he even asked if we could give him numbers to get other stuff done elsewhere…..we said we couldnt rememeber which one we had called