logo 020 3745 5931

Introduction to The Ultimate Tenant Protection Guide

Since April 2007 all landlords have the duty to submit your deposit in a tenancy deposit scheme, developed by the government, no more than a month after receiving the deposit by you. This is particularly helpful for every type of tenants and for those on short-term lease, as well. When leaving the property, your landlord needs to give you back the deposited money, but there are some conditions before this happens. If you want to receive the full refund on the deposit, you should make sure that the property looks just like when you moved in, even better if possible. Otherwise, the deposit might slip away from your hands. Not only cleaning is important for the case of returning deposits, but the state of the property (as there are no damaged furniture; no broken items; the interior is the same as when you moved in) is important as well. When living in a unit on a lease, you have to be careful with it and the way you live in there, because it might be necessary to leave earlier and if everything is not the way it should be, you will not receive the full refund on your deposit money, even within ten days after you leave.

According to a survey, done by Rent.com, more than one-fourth of tenants end up loosing their deposit money, because they violated any rule of their contracts. If you want to avoid troubles, you should make sure everything in the contract you follow strictly and do what you are expected to. Violations of the contract include: not paying your rent regularly or being late with the payment; not paying bills, when it’s actually stated in the contract that they are your responsibility; having pets if it’s not allowed to have them living with you in the rented property; smoking inside the property, if it’s forbidden; being too loud tenant and disturbing other tenants/neighbours; being hostile to your landlord, not giving him access to the property, even when they sent you a notice for the visit; breaking/burning/spoiling parts of the interior of the property; not cleaning the property thoroughly when leaving. These situations might cause problems with your landlord and the results will not be positive for you. As long as you avoid breaching the contract, you will not be placed in similar problematic situations.