So the usual argument has erupted with our letting agent after we moved out of our flat of 2.5 years.

The difference being this time that the actual owner of the flat had contacted me a couple of days after we had moved out to personally thank me and praise the condition we had left the flat in. Apparently though this cuts no mustard with the letting agent who are claiming hundreds of pounds of cleaning will need to be carried out (well, they haven’t given us a figure yet but are intimating it will be more than £300).

I suspect they will find a way to dismiss the opinion of the man who actually owns the property and will still attempt to deduct the money, however I’m sure the deposit must have been lodged with Safe Deposit Scotland, and since the letting agent has provided little or no evidence that the cleaning is actually required (or that the items weren’t already stained or dirty when we moved in) I feel that we would probably have a case.

However, since I’ve probably read one too many copies of Private Eye I can’t help but suspect that the SDS is probably pretty toothless.

At this point I would rather just compartmentalise and move on but unfortunately this whole process gets me so furious it’s hard to just let it go.

Has anyone had any results from raising a dispute with SDS?

Last time this came up I think the unanimous opinion of people who had been through it was that they (SDS) will side with the tenant. If the agent doesn’t have evidence of how clean it was when you moved in, they can’t claim it’s more dirty now than it was then.

In your position I think it’s worth kicking up a fuss. With the SDS. You’ll obviously get nowhere going via the agent.

definitely contest it. I nearly went through this with a letting agent. The place was absolutely immaculate and they wanted £200 for cleaning (i’m convinced this is standard practice)

It is up to them to prove cleaning needs to be carried out (preferably with photos of when u moved it). it isn’t up to you to prove that you dont have to pay.

In my case they notified me outside of the 14 day window so didn’t have a leg to stand on

As a landlord I have not yet had a disputed deposit.

SDS will not release monies until a dispute is settled. I would say therefore it is worth raising a dispute now to ‘pause’ proceedings and letting agent ‘spend’ monies.

From there it is a case of evidence. I now take copious pictures and share them with tenants on moving in and moving out day. This is very helpful in gauging condition. Do you have any?

I presume you also have a set of documents you signed on moving in such as tenancy, repairing standards, grounds for notice etc. This would confirm condition on moving in.

Recently won, but I had letters from the owner/landlady clearly stating that the property was in fine condition and rent up to date. The sleazy, maggoty pieces of crap that were the agency backed down
I am in the process of reporting them to the ombudsman and looking into suing them for dmage to my property through neglecting to do their job.

Apparently though this cuts no mustard with the letting agent who are claiming hundreds of pounds of cleaning will need to be carried out (well, they haven’t given us a figure yet but are intimating it will be more than £300).

That’s odd as my letting agent contact me after a tenant moves out and asks me if I want to make any claim on the deposit based on the report carried out by the inventory company.

If the landlord doesn’t want to make a claim on the deposit ask for it in writing and submit that as evidence when the case is reviewed.

they wanted £200 for cleaning (i’m convinced this is standard practice)

It’s not. They only time I’ve claimed on a deposit was when a tenant signed a 12 month lease then handed the keys back to the agent after a month saying he’d got a job elsewhere. He disputed the claim, I won.

It is up to them to prove cleaning needs to be carried out

I would add ‘over and above a building that has been let for X. no. of years…’

I kind of expect I have to do full clean and redecorate when tenants move out every couple of years…

OK thanks guys, this gives me some hope.

What is worrying me is that the letting agent (one of the larger, if not largest in Edinburgh) is being so blatant about it, which makes we wonder if we are indeed signed up to the SDS. I’ll need to check documents when I get home.

Unfortunately I *stupidly* returned our copy of the inventory when we returned our keys. I don’t know why I did this but it was probably because I was so sure there would be no dispute and wanted to seem as helpful as possible or something. Stupid stupid stupid.

All the written evidence so far is in our favour at least so that’s good. Will wait and see if they reply to my most recent email.

Looks like they’re steaming on with the cleaning despite our protests. Does this change the situation if they have already carried out the cleaning? i.e. does that make it more difficult to raise a dispute with SDS?

Yep, I did this at my last shared house. Landlord complained we had left it a tip, but it was cleaner than when we moved in. We had photos etc. from when we moved in and when we left. Filed all this with the deposit people via their website, pretty easy but a bit time consuming. Then couple of months later I got an email saying yup you’re good we’ll release your deposit shortly.

Absolute sub-human scum. Letting Agents, TV License inspectors, Bailiffs. How they sleep at night is beyond me.

Absolute sub-human scum. Letting Agents, TV License inspectors, Bailiffs. How they sleep at night is beyond me.

Over reaction of the week.

Ha, although right this second not a million miles from how I’m thinking at the moment Gary!

I keep asking what actual purpose the cleaning serves given that the landlord has expressed his delight at how well we had cleaned the place.

All they have told me so far is that ‘unfortunately he may only have given it a quick look over and may have missed things’ which doesn’t really seem to be the point. However, I keep expecting them to come back and say that they have to clean to a certain standard for the benefit of the tenants moving in after us, to which I would counter that if the owner of the property is satisfied with the condition, so also surely would the new tenants. The person who paid probably the best part of £300,000 to buy the flat is probably going to be the best judge of its condition…

I’ve contacted him since (apologising for taking advantage of his initial gesture) and while he has agreed he might have missed some points, he still seems to be on our side and stands by his original comments. Wonder if that will change when the letting agents have a word with him… 😕

*Bookmarks*

I have a feeling I might end up having to make use of the SDS soon. I moved out of my flat just under two weeks ago after being a tenant of just over 5 years. I’ve left the place spotless (and a new tenant is moving in today).

Problem is, during my entire time as a tenant I didn’t ever pay for the electricity supply. The landlord instead had a single meter covering me and two downstairs retail premises, and even though I repeatedly asked (on a monthly basis for the first year or so) for details as to how he intended to apportion usage, I never got a response.

Once one of the units downstairs became vacant after a couple of years he then finally installed separate meters in each unit. So again, I asked him (in effect as my electricity supplier) as to how he wanted me to pay, i.e. monthly, quarterly, annual etc. Again, never got an answer, so after 1 year, submitted the updated meter reading to him. Did the same again at the end of last year (in October), and again, nothing as to how I needed to pay.

Only now as I have moved out has he gone back over his bills and come up with a bill of just under £1,300. I’ve made them aware of the back billing code as operated by utility providers which states they can only charge for a maximum of a rolling year of use, so I have offered to pay for all of 2016 and what I used in 2017, and have this deducted from my bond. Problem is, I suspect they will just keep the lot.

I’d be interested to hear what landlords on here think; personally I think it should be a lesson to him to not be so astonishingly badly organised in keeping on top of billing his tenants and accept that I’ll pay for the last full year.

Over reaction of the week.

Nope. These people need to be eradicated. 😉

I keep asking what actual purpose the cleaning serves given that the landlord has expressed his delight at how well we had cleaned the place.

I’d say the purpose is to line said letting agent’s pockets once the ‘self-employed’ Polish cleaners have been paid their £6.20.

Yep, Deposit scheme.

Our old landlord tried to withhold our deposit because the carpets looked like they were 3 years old after we had lived there for 3 years, and apparently hadn’t been ‘professionally cleaned’. Got all our money back in the end.

The person who paid probably the best part of £300,000 to buy the flat is probably going to be the best judge of its condition…

Well to be fair not everyone’s standards of cleanliness are the same. It may be clean to the owner and to you but might not really be proper clean. I’m not saying you haven’t cleaned it properly but the owner might not have looked at the state of the oven, checked skirtings for dust, etc.

Aye, I can see what you mean, which turns it back into a good old fashioned argument about ‘how clean is clean’?

It would actually be easier to accept if I could convince myself that we *did* leave the place dirty, that way at least I wouldn’t feel like I was being scammed.

Anyway, will see what SDS documents we have tonight, if they’re going to scam us I might as well make it difficult for them…

Dont forget, you are allowed “reasonable wear and tear” so, its unreasonable of them to expect the property to be as it was when you moved in.
Im pretty sure they have to provide a full breakdown of what work is required and why.
Im guessing its standard practice to do this, in the same way as insurance companies make the first offer silly low.

Aye, I’ve never met a letting agent who has made any allowance for wear and tear. This place came with a deep pile, cream coloured carpet.

Our response to spills of any kind would have put SEPA to shame, and we didn’t let anyone in without taking shoes off etc. And yet they are still claiming for carpet cleaning.

Etc. etc. I told myself I wouldn’t just turn the thread into a rant about letting agents! 😀

Just take a Stanley knife, cut out the carpet and take it with you. You’re paying for it.

Aye, I’ve never met a letting agent who has made any allowance for wear and tear. This place came with a deep pile, cream coloured carpet.

Funnily enough one of my flats has cream carpets throughout. The last tenant, who stayed there for 2 years, got the carpets cleaned the day he left, he didn’t need to do that but he wanted to. That’s my version of clean 🙂

Sadly absolutely standard and I have experinced exactly the same. The letting agent typically makes a comission on the cleaning fyi. If post tennancy professional cleaning is written in your lease then you are probably stuffed. If it’s not then you probably have a case given what was said. I have been told the deposit scheme generally leans towards the tennent.

Good luck

I had to contest the deposit with them after a landlord tried to take £1,000+ from our combined deposits when I was living in a student house in Leeds while doing my PhD. We won.

General consensus is that the onus is on the landlord to prove damage, of which charges have to be agreed at the time of moving out.

MissJ had recourse to the SDS arbitration when her landlord charged her and a bunch of others a truly ridiculous amount of “damages” after they moved out, including charges for replacement of “missing” items clearly visible in the move-out photos, charges for “moving furniture back to original position” in the 100’s of pounds – truly scum. Luckily they were awarded nearly all the deposit back.

makes we wonder if we are indeed signed up to the SDS.

Dunno about that Scotlandshire but AFAIK it’s a legal requirement South of the border. Question number 1 is, have they already broken the law?

I’ve no idea about these things but I’d have thought a letting company acts on behalf of a landlord? Ie, they should be sending in cleaning companies at the landlord’s request, not under their own steam (cleaner)? If he’s said it’s fine, what’s it to do with them?

Oh and when we moved out of our last rented property, it was a requirement of our tenancy agreement that the carpets were professionally cleaned.
The fact that I managed to break to oven glass whilst cleaning it for the final time was a tad annoying though when we moved out. We got our deposit back less the cost of the door.

makes we wonder if we are indeed signed up to the SDS.
Dunno about that Scotlandshire but AFAIK it’s a legal requirement South of the border. Question number 1 is, have they already broken the law?

I’ve no idea about these things but I’d have thought a letting company acts on behalf of a landlord? Ie, they should be sending in cleaning companies at the landlord’s request, not under their own steam (cleaner)? If he’s said it’s fine, what’s it to do with them?

My problem is my landlord is also the letting agent… I think I may as well wave goodbye to the deposit.

I contested, lost. Although I was off my face on prescription painkillers at the time and not really able to clearly put my case across.

My advice “One Picture Worth Ten Thousand Words”.

In my case I moved into a flat in Spring, it was nice enough, nothing fancy, 6 months later and when Autumn arrived it was obvious the heating wasn’t up to the job and the flat had a damp issue. I called the LL, fobbed off, called again fobbed off, this when on through all of winter – tenancy was up in Spring.

Then when he showed his true colours, all the nicey nicey words of a small-time BTLer trying his best went out the window. He wanted new carpets, redecoration the lot – £900 worth to fix the “mould issues”.

How this was my fault is still, 8 years later completely beyond me. They claimed I refused to heat the flat, left it vacant for weeks on end (I was working away Mon-Fri 3 weeks a month for 2 months), didn’t open windows.

We went to SDS – I explained how the heating didn’t work, how I’d complained, how I didn’t think it was possible to grow mould intentionally and still maintain a comfortable environment, etc.

His version was less than 100 words, but contained a before picture (which was actually date stamped 2 years previous to me moving in) and pictures taken after – they moved all the furniture to expose the mould behind it and make it look like it was all over every wall.

Case closed, I paid £900 to paint over their damp problem for the next sucker.

Hmm, yes, this is probably why my letting agent is so cavalier about the whole thing, they probably have reels of brightly lit photos of the darkest corners of the flat showing stray eyelashes or skin cells or something.

All we have is the original inventory, assuming I can get it back from them.

Thankfully we are signed up with SDS and I’ve found all the relevant login details, so that’s a start. Also the letting agent hasn’t yet made a claim on the deposit, don’t know if that’s good or bad.

I wonder how they can pursue us for any unpaid invoices if the cost of the work exceeds the deposit (which is what they’re suggesting it might). I’ll need to dig out moving out documents, if we signed up to professional cleaning then perhaps the game’s a-bogie 🙁

New to the landlord game, I thought I’d given the house I’m letting out a decent clean, the letting agent phoned me up before tenants moved in to tell me off in not uncertain terms as to what a crap job I’d made of cleaning it — so it’s feasible they expect the top drawer state when the lease ends (kind of like the military marching state of accommodation..)

****

They’ve just sent me a copy of the checkout report.

When you see it presented as professionally as they have, with plentiful photos, it seems pretty hard to dispute that at least some cleaning is required 🙁

I guess I should have known that we hadn’t cleaned it as well as we thought, turns out two days cleaning of an already pretty clean flat simply isn’t enough, I guess that’s why there are cleaning professionals, and cleaning amateurs…

Still, at least we can afford the money, or at least hadn’t budgetted for getting it back, and at least now I don’t feel I’m getting done over quite so badly… Silver linings etc.

turns out two days cleaning of an already pretty clean flat simply isn’t enough, I guess that’s why there are cleaning professionals, and cleaning amateurs…

This is why I always just got pro-cleaners in at my expense at the end of a tenancy.

Saves the “agent premium” and has previously been zero come-back*.

* I have not rented for 6 years now so things may have moved on.

Quite often you’ll get screwed on the deposit, hindsight and playing dirty is the way to go, leave with 1 month in arrears.

When they ask for the last months rent, assuming the deposit is one months worth of rent, kindly inform them you’ll pay it once the deposit is returned.

Checkmate.

Estate agents and letting agents are vampires.

Carpet cleaning? Windows inside and out cleaning? Grass cut?

When they ask for the last months rent, assuming the deposit is one months worth of rent, kindly inform them you’ll pay it once the deposit is returned.

An obvious solution. But if memory serves I think the law is rigged in favour of the agent/landlord on this.

Arbitration service will only look at evidence of both sides, so photos of inventory compared to checkout. The contract will state obligations of both parties.

When my tenants leave i dont really want to get involved, i ll get the exit inventory done, if it varies from initial inventory less fair wear and tear, i m afraid any remedial work is their cost.

My last tenants left the flat in a disgusting state, it was due a refurb and they had been there 5 years so no deduction. Sadly 5 years of no cleaning it was a health hazard.

OP – The letting agency don’t begin with an “R” and end with “& Co”, do they?

Had a similar issue, agency wanted £600+ retention from the deposit to cover deep clean, redecoration and gardening fees. The only thing we’d done was damage a doorframe maneouvring the settee out of the property, and we were happy to pay for it. We disputed, it went to arbitration, they ended up with exactly the amount required to repair the doorframe.

Nah, it’s the other lot with the red minis, not the green ones 😉

Only now as I have moved out has he gone back over his bills and come up with a bill of just under £1,300. I’ve made them aware of the back billing code as operated by utility providers which states they can only charge for a maximum of a rolling year of use, so I have offered to pay for all of 2016 and what I used in 2017, and have this deducted from my bond. Problem is, I suspect they will just keep the lot.

They can’t use the deposit for this. It can only pay for damage/cleaning.

On cleaning, I’m pretty sure we were told that our “check in fee” went towards having the flat professionally cleaned before we moved in. And we were also told that the flat had to be cleaned to a professional standard when we moved out, otherwise they’d take money out of the deposit for it. When we moved in it obviously hadn’t been done. Not filthy, just normal, like the landlord had quickly gone round with the vacuum before moving out. So they charge the new tenants for cleaning, they charge the departing tenants for cleaning, and they don’t actually do any cleaning.

Nah, it’s the other lot with the red minis, not the green ones

Ah, DJA. Good to know, sadly I will shortly be renting again in Edinburgh. I managed to get full deposit back from Braemore after a 6 year tenancy, which was remarkable. It did nearly kill us cleaning the place though and we were still finishing off when they came round.