The landlord involved in this tenancy deposit claim will be reflecting on her decision to try and unfairly keep a £1,200 deposit which ended up costing her a whopping £12,000!
Our clients rented a flat in South East London from March 2021 for 3 years until April 2024. They paid a tenancy deposit of £1,200.00 for the property, signed a total of 3 tenancy agreements over that period and had no rent arrears.
As mentioned in several of the success stories we publish, the tenant approached Tenant Angels looking for help to get their deposit back. The landlord was attempting to keep the entire £1,200.00 deposit citing cleaning as the main issue.
In order to make deposit deductions, a landlord must provide some form of proof to back up their claim. The landlord in this case failed to carry out an inventory at the start of the tenancy, the flat itself was dirty when the tenant moved in and worse still, as the landlord was abroad, there was no checks between the previous tenants and our clients. Despite all of this, the landlord was adamant that she would keep the entire deposit!
Ordinarily, a tenant would be able to raise a dispute via the tenancy deposit scheme which the deposit is secured in, but guess what, the deposit was not protected.
When the client first approached us, whilst it was clear they had a case, there was a potential grey area over the tenancy status. The property was a house, converted into two flats and although the landlord spent most of their time living abroad, when back in the UK, the landlord would reside in the flat downstairs, whilst the tenants rented the upstairs flat. Our concern was the landlord would try to argue that the tenants were actually lodgers, it would be a longshot on the landlord’s behalf, but we like our cases to be watertight!
Following a thorough review by our partner legal team, the tenancy deposit protection claim was good to go!
In just 6 weeks, Tenant Angels and the fantastic legal team managed to secure a massive full and final settlement of £12,000.00!*, of which our client’s received almost £10,000.00 after fees and costs.
We spoke to one of the tenants once the settlement had been finalised;
“I am so, so happy with the outcome. I only contacted Tenant Angels because the landlord behaved just awfully towards us when we asked for our deposit back, so to secure such a huge pay out, I just can’t thank Tenant Angels and the solicitor enough!
Tenant Angels were knowledgeable, always available to speak to and just really helpful. When speaking to Tenant Angels, it gave us hope and we felt like we spoke to people that had been through the same situation as us which was comforting.
There is no way I could have handled this claim on my own, the stress alone was too much. Our relationship with the landlord was pretty good right up until we moved out and she just became hostile but I’m thrilled its all over and I didn’t have to speak to the landlord at all during the whole process or since.”
*All claims are handled on a no-win, no-fee basis
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