Deposits, Damage, Dilapidations and Delusional Deductions.....

Even after all these years I am still surprised when a see a tenant whose landlord is claiming Delusional Deductions from a deposit. I am even more flabbergasted by the number of private landlords who don’t feel the need to protect said Deposits at all. I still see numbers of section 21 notices served, but soon find out the deposits are not protected and so have to break the bad news to the landlord that he isn’t getting his property back any time soon. More and more landlords are not having inventories done at the start of tenancies then trying to claim for extremely high figured damages that they can’t prove Repairs, or should I say a lack of them seems to be a trend on the increase too with less landlords willing to put their hand in their pocket to pay for obligated maintenance. Just this week I am dealing with a tenant who reported a boiler not working over 3 weeks ago, so far 1 engineer has attended, condemned the boiler and tenant has been without heating and hot water since, with the landlord stating that he isn’t too worried about replacing it now the weather has got warmer!?! Recently I saw a tenant who had been texted by his landlord to tell him that as his mortgage had gone up the landlord would be putting the rent up as per the next rent payment due, but a whopping £200pm. The tenant was 3 months into a 12 month fixed term (no BreakClause) and landlord has told tenant that if he refused then he would wait until tenant left for work and would change the locks. I appreciate this is only a snap shot of what I see and it is also not a true reflection of all landlords, after all, every walk of life has its bad apples, but I do feel that it is a worrying increase of blatantly flouting the law that is there to protect both parties. Will regulating the industry really help stop this type of practice, or will it be that all good landlords will stand up and be counted (and registered) and all not so good stand back a carry on regardless until the law catches up with them. There is now an increasing trend in lifestyle referencing for tenants which I think is a good idea, but where can tenants go to see how a landlord has previously treated his or her tenants? Most tenancy work well with both parties doing what is expected of them, but there are still the problems of landlords and tenants who don’t.