….here is mine

I have been living in my place for just over a year, I pay my rent and it includes all bills. The place is cheap for a number of reasons, it is a 3 floor house, the ground floor is a one bedroom flat, and I have the top two floors. These have not been properly converted into seperate units, and the place drastically needs modernising. Also there now seems to be about 4 eastern europeans living in the flat downstairs and they appear to have just started a rock band in their living room. I have never met the landlord just dealt with a middle man who lives in one of his properties and collects the rent in cash. I moved in there as we had just had a baby, the gf wasn’t working and we were saving for our wedding so it was all we could afford.

Yesterday the Gas and Electric people turned up at the request of the landlord to install Gas and Electricity meters. This was the first we had heard of it, and as the property is not properly split into flats they wanted to instal one meter for each utility for all of us to share. Also they told us there are arrears on the account and this will be reflected in the rate applied to the meter. This effectively means that I will be paying the full rental value of a decent property to stay put.

I won’t be paying my rent this month and have some viewings lined up for later this week

Why didn’t you just refuse them access until you had a chance to sort it out with the landlord?

My story of dodgy tenants…didn’t pay their rent then fecked off…you’re hardly on the moral high ground are you!?

Sorry should have said, we didnt let them in.

I paid a months deposit up front, this has not been put in a deposit protection scheme, so I will not be paying my last months rent, as I have already paid it and would have no chance of getting it back, and will leave at the end of the month. Thats morally acceptable right?

That puts it in a different light…though without a TDS scheme in place, I wouldn’t have rented from the guy. Guess you get what you pay for (and what you might be able to afford in your case). Just gets my goat when witch hunts on landlords begin (clearly not in your case now…). You’d never guess that I’m a (reluctant) landlord!!
Hate every minute of it and there’s no difference between landlords and tenants in my book – some are good, others not!

my landlord from uni said we had left the house in such a state that they had to pay for a skip and cleaners to clean the kitchen that they had removed not two weeks after we moved out.

£200 each (7 of us) so £1400 for a skip and some cleaners!!

I was renting a house that the landlord sold to a “colleague” with us in situ. No problem there, new rental agreement, no probs. He was hopeless at actually getting the boiler fixed (three visits from his useless mate before they actually called in a professional) but generally left us alone.

18 months in I find out via a solicitors letter that he’s due in the county court as the lender is applying for a possession order. He’s told the lender that it was a plain residential mortgage and that he’s living there – nothing about renting out at all. I checked my legal position and find that as a tenant in that position, if the lender took possession then they could kick me out the same day. Figured it was worth going along to the hearing (as any member of the public can) to see what was going on. He looked rather shocked to see me there. Turned out he’d only made one payment on the mortgage and had been pocketing my rent the rest of the time to prop up his failing restaurant.

Lender ended up proposing (and getting) a suspended possession order on the grounds that he started making payments and paying off the arrears. I gave him notice, made it clear that he wasn’t getting the final months rent as I was sure he didn’t have my deposit (this was pre-TDS) and found a new place ASAP.

He seemed to find someone else to rent it to but, as I found out about 2 years later, he’s transferred the bills into my name after I’d moved out (and paid my final bill) and left that unpaid, which led to various debt collection agencies chasing me. Not long after I left, I saw it on rightmove with the telltale repo “do not use” tape over the appliances. It stayed unsold for about a year after that.

This was all before the housing peak when apparently anyone could make money from BTL. I was shocked at how lax the lender was, both with giving him the money in the first place and their actions after. God knows how many more idiots there are out there who’ve been doing the same.

These days I ask for background/credit checks of a potential landlord because the last thing I need is to go through that kind of stress again. There are way too many “reluctant landlords” out there who don’t want to sell so rent out instead without telling their lenders – it can cause big problems for their tenant if they fall into financial difficulties.

Good landlords: bring cake arround every so often.

Bad landlords: unfortunately outnumber the good ones.

OP, contact Steve Austin of this parrish, he knows his onions when it comes to this kind of thing.

On the other side of the coin.

When I was a postgrad student sharing a house we went six months hearing/seeing absolutely nothing of our (sweet but slightly frazzled) landlady while our rent cheques piled up in the kitchen drawer uncollected. Nothing went seriously wrong with utilities etc. requiring her attention so this was just a bit odd rather than a serious problem.

When she finally came round she left a very apologetic note full of weak excuses – overworked, mum was ill, had to take the horse to the vet etc. etc. – but she did promise to try harder and collect the rent on time in future.

Always wish I’d kept that letter & had it framed. 🙂

Several years ago whilst renting, I was woken early one Saturday morning by a call from the landlord to say he was giving my notice months and could I be out ASAP. On pressing, it turned out I’d done nothing wrong – he’d left his wife, needed somewhere to live and mine was the nicest flats of the ones he owned. He was a good bloke, so I’d said I’d do my best to get out inside the month. Chatting a bit more it appeared that life at home was not good and he REALLY wanted to move in the next few…. long story short, he offered me the equivalent of 3 months rent in cash, plus the deposit back no-questions-asked, to get out ASAP and I was gone inside 3 days. Every cloud has a silver lining…. 😉

Ok, in the interests of fairness my last landlord was top class.

The only piece of paperwork exchanged between us ever was a post-it note to say I had given him a holding deposit, he said that me and the missus seemed ok so he didn’t need a deposit from us just pay the rent when we move in. Fixed any problems within a day or two, and popped in for a chat or to go for a quick drink from time to time.

after graduating i moved in with some slightly mature students in cambridge (poly not posh uni ones)
our landlord was a maths teacher at the local 2ndary/6th form school
bills were all inclusive but for a maths teacher he was **** useless at calculating how much we each had to pay
he was also big into his pills, so on a thursday night we would all be sitting in on the playstation he would appar and bully us to go out clubbing with him -as hed already dropped a couple and neede some mates
whenever he bumped into any former or current students his response was always be F~”* off!
and his criteria for selecting tennants was dubious, he told us one guy worked at fulbourn psychiatric hospital, when he eventually dissapeared owing a lot of rent the landlord actually fessed up that he was a patient there but didnt want to scare us, the sheer amount of porn and the holes hed cut in his mattress/ wallls did scare us when we broke into his room- hoping we wouldnt find a body

My last student house was awful. Landlord barely spoke English and what he did speak was almost unintelligible. House was a total wreck with holes everywhere, mice, droughty windows, damp and a front door that wouldn’t have survived a good kick, or slamming too hard for that matter.

Wiring was insane with only 3 separate circuits – the downstairs lights, upstairs sockets and burglar alarm were on the same circuit. The mrs dad’s an electrician, he went ballistic when he saw it when we moved out!

To boot the landlord would turn up at all hours, unannounced and wander around the house having let himself in. Being students we didn’t have the cash to change the locks. Oh and the guy who lived in the attic kept stealing mixing bowls and measuring drugs to cut coke in…

Current landlady is a friend from work who emigrated to Australia. I look after her flat and pay her rent, she deals with issues rapidly and efficiently and gives me relatively free reign to decorate/improve (within reason).

I will never be going back to a shared student house…

If your landlord hasn’t put your deposit in the TDS you can sue him for 3 x the value of the deposit..

Sounds dodgy, I’d be looking at an early exit too. With you and the gf, then a collection of unrelated folk in the lower floor you could well have a House in Multiple Occupation status, which can be very naughty if unlicensed and you could apply to get all your rent back if the landlord gets done for it. Best to move on if the place isn’t that special and you can get somewhere else.

If your landlord hasn’t put your deposit in the TDS you can sue him for 3 x the value of the deposit..

Depends on the type of tennancy, I asked and apprently it didn’t apply to my tennancy, but mine was different to the OP so best get your own advice.

Once rented a remote house on Anglesey from a bloke who had set himself up hiring out horse and carriages for weddings. He would collect deposit from would be happy couple and then the scumbag wouldn’t turn up on the day! The problem came when he gave his address as the house we were renting. It all started with us getting odd phone calls late in the night and ended with some burly blokes coming to the house late one night and pleasantly explained the situation to me! They suggest we move out asap as they were going to torch the house. We moved out sharpish!

Depends on the type of tennancy, I asked and apprently it didn’t apply to my tennancy, but mine was different to the OP so best get your own advice.

Yeah tis true, I just assumed he was on an AST as almost everyone is…

My landlord owned a student letting agency. Collected about 500 deposits and folded the business, leaving everyone about £250 out of pocket. This was before the days of protection schemes.

To add insult to injury, he reopened the business in the same premises within 2 weeks under a slightly different name. Not sure whether he’s still knocking around, or whether someone’s done him in (not a huge loss to the world).

Two sides to every coin. We had a house we could’nt sell, needed to move to a bigger home (new baby etc). We decided to use the rent on old home to help pay mortgage on new one.

We had a number of tennants as time went by, all were good people until Alex turned up. She was the sole tennant in the two bedroom house. She claimed the chimney didn’t work- yet managed to burn most of the staircase ond kitchen shelves on the fire, as well as the back panels from the kitchen units. She brought in a HUGE dog- you could have put a saddle on it- and it laid correspondingly huge eggs that she didn’t clear up, they just accumulated outside. Which is where she dumped all the ash from the (not working?) coal fire. She regularly broke the door glass on the Rayburn and burnt through the grate bars- and I was paying to fix it- not cheap. Within four months of moving in she was in arrears on the rent. We spoke to her, tried to get a repayment scheme going- to no avail. All she did was treat me like a fool and my house like a dump- a dump of her own making. She complained to the local council- who advised her that she was in the wrong. Eventually, seeing that I had little other option I visited with a bailiff friend to try to sort things out. We found the inside of the house to be terrible. The new carpets were torn, stained and burnt. The paintwork was terrible, the doors had holes in them. Furniture was missing- presumably burnt.

It took me five days to dig up all the sh1t and ash from the remains of the garden. I filled SO many coal sacks with this noxious mix. I spent another week making good doors etc, and a fortnight decorating.

If I priced it up it comes to several thousand pounds.

It took too long to evict her. Cow!

Wife and I were desperate for a place a few years ago. She found a two bed flat that was okish(decor was very 70’s) Arranged to meet landlord. He seemed a bit shifty and when we queried about our two cats he said ok. Then said we had to leave a larger deposit. I wanted out, but TOH wanted to give it a try(we were staying with a mate and her daughter in a 2 bed council flat). I asked if the flat is quiet as I was often having to work early mornings. Of course he said yes(turns out we had a couple of drug dealing scum bags). To cut a long story short, we gave our notice after I threatened to throw the drug dealers son off my balcony(he was climbing) at 2am. Landlord started to make up stories that we had soiled his 70’s shagpile carpet. So to keep the peace we had it steam cleaned. No good. He also charged us for other various “damages”. My wife convinced me to walk away and forget the scum bag. We lost a lot of money and I swear that if I ever see him again I will have a nice little chat 😈

A landlord of a student house we lived in decided to invest in dodgy nightclubs in Leeds instead of irrelevancies like “paying the mortgage”.

We were about half an hour away from being evicted by the men from Halifax, but somehow he persuaded them to relent and we were spared. The people living there the year after weren’t so lucky…

I’ve been renting property out for over 25 year and had very few problems.
Some tenants do believe though that you are there to do everything for them,including one tenant who phoned me when a light bulb went.
Now i have everything in writing as to who is responsible for what so everyone knows where they stand.I would never take a tenant on “cash in the hand,stay as long as you want mate”.
One property has just cost me 10k to make lettable due to the actions of the previous tenant.My solicitor said its not worth taking action as you’ll never recover the money.
Its pretty simple really.If the property is badly maintained,rundown,with no type of agreement available,leave it alone.