Rental property advice

[ColchesterFC]

i hope for your sake the deposit is held in an external scheme, know of one agent who used to tell that to tenants but hadnt deposited with the scheme. do you have a receipt/notification from the deposit scheme?

good luck finding something better, the rental mkt is horrible currently

I've just been through my email and checked. We were sent a certificate of registration for the deposit scheme so looks like that should be ok

 

[fundy]

I've just been through my email and checked. We were sent a certificate of registration for the deposit scheme so looks like that should be ok

good news for sure

good luck with finding something else, looks like i may be in the same boat short term and have 2 weeks to sort, not much fun

 

[Deleted member 18121]

Yeah good lucky with finding something new. As I said we were in same position and ended up taking a rental that was £210 a month more expensive....purely because there was nothing suitable on the market.

 

[ColchesterFC]

Mrs Colch has just received a call from the council Environmental Health department who are coming to attend the property next Wednesday morning. He asked what problems we were facing and when she told him said that it sounds like he will have to issue an improvement notice to landlord. It's good that he sounds like he'll be coming in with a mindset to find in our favour. Fingers crossed. If he does serve an improvement notice that means the repairs have to be done, we can't be issued with another Section 21 notice for at least 6 months and with a 4 month notice we can't get kicked out for at least 10 months. By then we will almost certainly have found somewhere else to rent or preferably to buy.

 

[ColchesterFC]

We had the Environmental Health inspector visit yesterday to look at the house and received a copy of his report today, which has also been sent to the landlord and the letting agency. He has submitted a Notice of Improvement which means that the landlord has to carry out the repairs that are in the report. These include removing and replacing all of the carpets in every room including fitting underlay and fitting proper water resistant flooring in all of the bathrooms instead of the current carpets, replacing the kitchen worktop and cupboards that have been damaged by the leak, repairing or replacing all of the windows in the property, replacing the front door and the back door with A-rated UPVC quality ones, replacing the sliding door from the lounge to the garden, replacing the shower cubicle in the en-suite, draining down and power flushing the central heating system and carrying out a legionella risk assessment and repairing the shower in the second en-suite.

The work has to be started by 13th September and completed by 6th December. Failure to do so will result in fines and a possible criminal record, as well as the council sending in their own contractors to complete the work and then billing the landlord for it. It also states that all of the work has to be carried out by a "suitably qualified" professional so he can't do his usual thing of getting a mate in to do the cheapest job possible as they will be coming back for another inspection once the work has been completed.

It is going to be very hard not to mention the fact that this could have all been avoided if the landlord had spent £200 or £300 replacing the kitchen worktop as we requested at any point in the last two and a half years. Now he's facing a bill that could easily be well over £10k to get the repairs done.

And the best bit is that because the Notice of Improvement has been served it invalidates the Section 21 notice we were served to vacate the property. The landlord can't serve us with another eviction notice for a minimum of 6 months and then has to give us at least 2 months' notice which takes us up to April next year, by which time we will be in a position to buy our own home.

 

[Tashyboy]

Good news indeed, If and when the work gets carried out, it will be a lot of upheaval for yourselves. There is a hell of a lot to do. Good luck with it all.