RESIDENTIALlettings

Avoiding disputes

’s Practitioner blames agents

and their landlords for the deposit debacle. Here’s a simple guide to good management.

T

enant deposits have been an important element of residential letting since time immemorial.

They protect agencies and their landlord clients, provide no benefit to tenants and, before recent legislation made greed and fraud more difficult, were the cause of much injustice. Many tenants were unable to recover

deposits wrongly withheld unless they had the courage, funds and skill to have recourse to the courts. The trade bodies did not initiate legal

protection of deposits. It took years of lobbying and protest from Shelter, Citizens Advice Bureaux and the support of local authority housing departments and tenant relations officers to persuade the government to tack legislation onto the Housing Act. Seasoned property managers will

remember landlords who made excessive claims at the end of each tenancy. When pressed for estimates to justify costs of cleaning, repair and redecoration many quoted their own time and materials in place of professional competitive quotations. Agents who cared were between a

rock and a hard place because they are required to follow the instructions of the principal – the landlord. It took courage to resign instructions or to advise a tenant that a landlord’s claim was unjustified and they should sue for recovery of their money. There were few

The need to protect deposits has given birth to a bureaucracy; slow, cumbersome, costly,

inefficient and unjust. Contact between agents and their landlords and tenants has been lost and much goodwill lost with it.’

48 MARCH 2010 PROPERTYdrum

such cases, only those sponsored by Citizens Advice or neighbourhood law centres ran the course, usually with victory for the tenant. The need to protect deposits has given

birth to a bureaucracy; slow, cumbersome, costly, inefficient and unjust. Contact between agents and their landlords and tenants has been lost and much goodwill lost with it.

AVOIDING THE DISPUTES

Is it really reasonable to expect a claims handler looking only at pieces of paper and photographs to come to a sensible conclusion every time – or at all? Disputes do not arise at the end of a

tenancy. They are almost always caused by problems that are evident before a tenancy even begins. Short cuts to save time, instructions that would have been better refused, and poor back office administration all cost money in the long run and lead to loss of reputation. It takes little skill to recognise a property

in poor condition. Harder, perhaps, to recognise a greedy landlord who insists on a rental level that will result in voids and a waste of showing time and travel. It is always less costly to refuse such instructions even in difficult times when the property stock is low. There is an art in presenting even the

humblest property – extra work for the inventory clerk perhaps, or a negotiator visiting to get a feel for the rented home. Apart from cleanliness, do the other essentials check out? Light bulbs, curtains dressed, furniture set out to look like a home, locks that work – all with keys – and no unwanted mail left on the door mat. It’s all common sense. Practical steps need to be supported by

good administration. Once a tenancy has been approved, tenants, often renting for the first time, need a faultless service and a thorough understanding of what they need to do on the day of settlement and signature of the agreement. A simple folder of information helps.

Page 1 deals with completion, how to pay, and what forms need to be signed in addition to the tenancy agreement. The inside pages are a tenant’s guide to housekeeping – how to avoid condensation, stain removal tips – with space for hand written entries that deal with local quirks: rubbish collection days, Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68