My last post on my Eircom woes actually made me feel better. I guess it’s good to get it out and if it’s somewhere online, even if it’s only read by a handful of people, it feels even better. So, I thought, if it was good for that one, maybe I’ll try it with the other big frustration that’s going on for me right now…my old landlady.
Haha…the risk of this is that she reads this blog. I doubt it, it’s highly unlikely because otherwise she’d know about the cat wee incident and we’d have heard all about it before now. So, I’m going to risk it.
We have had a very good track record with our landlords. With a lot of our landlords we became good friends and we’re still in touch with them. One couple we were tenants of even came to our wedding. So, I think we’re good tenants, yes, the cats can be a pain, but we’ve always taken care of whatever damage they might do and it’s always been minimal.
Enter our latest landlady…from here on in I’ll call her Mrs. B (use your imagination)…we should have heard warning bells when she haggled our rent from our offer of €1,100 a month to €1,125 (yes, that’s €25), but we just thought it a bit strange and agreed. Later on she pulled out the horror of a kitchen and had a new one installed. We were out of the house for five weeks while it was being done and yet we got no rent reduction for that time. Again we said nothing because we were just so happy to see the back of the old kitchen. After it was in, she told us that now we had a nice new kitchen they’d be upping the rent come the end of the contract in June. Ok, we thought, we’re moving anyway, but Matt started to worry about our deposit.
When it comes to Matt and me, he’s definitely the pessimist and I’m the optimist so I hoped he was wrong about this one. It’s not looking good though. In the run up to giving back the keys at the end of June, we cleaned the house from top to bottom. Matt filled any holes we might have added to the walls for pictures and painted the hall and living room. He cleaned the carpets as well and we made sure the whole place looked just as we’d found it…better even. I thought she surely had to give us our deposit since there was nothing she could compain about. ha!
I wasn’t there when Matt met her to hand over the key, I kind of wish I had been. She looked at all our hard work, took the key and when Matt asked about the deposit she told him “Sure…as soon as you wash the blinds and clean the kitchen…” Ooookaaay, eventhough when we moved in I had to pay for cleaners to come in and clean the kitchen (I was 8 months pregnant at the time) and wash the windows. Matt brought up the kitchen palaver and her response was that we had gotten off lightly with that one since she could have put up the rent after that had been done but she hadn’t. Aww, ain’t she so kind. Nevermind that she could have done no such thing before our contract came up for renewal.
So Matt, bless him, got out the basin and the Ajax there and then and cleaned some more. Mrs. B told him she’d be around in the next few days to inspect his work and then she’d see about the deposit. GRRRR! This is where I want to slap her. A deposit is not meant as a ransom to your tenants to get them to do your bidding. Will we be walking her dogs and cleaning her toilet next?
We handed over the keys a week ago and still no sign of the deposit. I don’t even know what we can do if she refuses.
**Update. July 10th: Mrs B is still holding onto our money. Matt spoke to her today to ask point blank “When can we expect our money?.” There is some rubbish along the side of the house that we had told her we would clear this week. A lot of what is there is debris from when the kitchen was installed that they never cleared and some is garden debris from the tall trees that are all around the garden. I don’t believe any of this is our responsibility and really, our part of it is just a crate of bottles to be brought to the bottle bank. Her response to Matt’s call today was “As soon as the rubbish is cleared, the money will be transferred to your account.” I really wanted to get heavy with her, but Matt wants to take the high road (this is a compete role reversal for us!) and fulfill our end of it before starting to play the lawyer card. So, I’m going to go along with him on this one….for now.
**Update. July 14th: Well, the rubbish has been gone now for four days. We rang her on Tuesday to tell her it was gone and she brought up the Waste Charge. For my non-Irish readers, here in Ireland there is a charge for having your non-recyclable trash/rubbish taken away…this includes a pick-up charge and a weight charge. I paid our outstanding bill before we left and put some extra in to cover any pick ups that might not have shown up on our account yet. I even spoke at length to the Council over a week ago to make sure we were all paid up, they assured me it was settled. Mrs. B claimed on the phone that she had rung the Council and we’d not paid our bill. We were able to come straight back at her with the receipt number of our bill for the exact amount. “oh, um, I’ll get back to you when I check this number with the council.”
We’ve heard nothing from her since then and, as of this morning, no money has yet shown up in our account. I think it’s time to call a lawyer…
14 replies on “And While I’m At It”
One of the obligations of a landlord/landlady is to ‘return deposits to the tenant (unless the tenant has not paid the rent or has damaged the dwelling)’. See the link below if you want more info.
http://oasis.gov.ie/housing/renting_a_flat_or_house/landlords_rights_and_obligations.html
Get onto threshold. I had a similar probel with a letting agency keeping my deposit to pay for waste charges which I already paid because they refused to, even though it wa their responsibility. Also they took €50 for cleaning even though when I moved in I know the place hadn’t been cleaned. Threshold really helped me out in contacting my local council who helped me out.
Hello Betty and John. Thanks for that info, according to those links there is definitely no reason for her to keep the deposit. If she tries I now know where to go at least. Thanks 🙂
I don’t know much about the law in Eire, but wondered did you get any photos of the way you left the house as evidence?
No, I didn’t, and I’m kicking myself because I did think about it at the time.
Don’t know how things work over here, but I’ve found in the past in the States that a nice, succinct letter that laid out what the law was and what the remedies were, followed by a not-so-veiled threat that those remedies were going to be pursued was always enough to get the deposit back double-quick.
My brother had a landlord who remodeled the apartment after he and his roommate moved out. When my brother asked for the deposit back, the landlord refused because he’d used it for the remodeling. This landlord was apparently under the misapprehension that deposit money was actually a special landlord home improvement fund.
I spent an hour in the library looking up the law and then wrote up a letter for my brother to send. My brother had his money back within 24 hours of the guy getting the letter. Some landlords honestly don’t know and some just hope that you don’t know what to do and just slink away quietly.
Best of luck in your quest! Let us know how it goes.
As soon as you get your deposit back, I hope you´ll publicise the name of the landlord, so that others can be warned.
That is disgraceful conduct. You are entitled to charge interest on the money from the day on which it was due to you. I think you should point this out to the landlord.
Thanks Ann, I’m glad your brother got his money back. I think it’s true that a lot of landlords who do this are chancing their arm in the hopes we give up. I have a friend of the family who is also a property lawyer so I will be ringing her straight away if the deposit is delayed anymore.
Welcome back from your holliers Omani…did it recharge the batteries? I don’t know if I’ll publish the name of the landlady…much as I’d love to I’m a big chicken. Thanks for the info on the interest…I had no idea…she’s such a skinflint that might be just the kind of leverage we could use.
Wash the blinds? That would be my que to load the attic with dead fish.
In Norn Iron if people can’t get Legal Aid “gun hire” works out cheaper. I reckon it’s a bit messier and not that good for the eardrums.It creates more problems like what to do with the body.
Hopefully you get everything sorted out soon as these things dragging on might ruin the summer a bit for you.
That landlady is making my blood boil. She doesn’t know how lucky she is with such good tenants.
I can’t believe the landlady is jerking you around like this. Best of luck in recouping your deposit.
OH, it is good to hear that you had a satisfactory ending. Your advice is excellent and I’ll remember it when we come to move out of our rented place soon.
I slipped up by not taking photos on day one but the place we moved into was pristine. My concern is: what is fair wear and tear? I must dig my contract out.
As for whether I am refreshed after the holiday: no. It was hard in the sun with two ill people. One week isn’t long enough but, in an oven, it is enough. The main thing is that it was different from everyday life. I’ll draw on that, I hope.
Good to read you again.
From Matt.
Goddam it Bob where were you when I still had a key?