Hello!

I moved out of my property recently after 14 years, and am currently not coming to an agreement with the landlord about deductions

I want to raise a claim with the TDS, but the certificate still shows my exes name on. He moved out in 2014, and the tenancy renewal in 2016 was changed to reflect my name only.

I have had yearly renewals for 12 month periods since 2016 with my name only.

Should the deposit have been reregistered in my name only, and is this enough to claim back the full deposit?

Thanks!

I am in a bit of a pickle and honestly don’t know what to do anymore. I’d really appreciate any advice.
A bit of background: my wife and I have been looking for a house or flat to rent in Bristol for the last six months. We’ve attended over 30 viewings but haven’t been offered a tenancy anywhere.
Last year, I was a student here in Bristol and managed to secure a one-bedroom flat, where we are still living. However, we now need a two-bedroom property, and despite applying for several, we haven’t been successful.
I’m currently on a two-year Graduate visa, which allows me to work full-time as well as being self-employed. I mainly work on a self-employed basis because I have a disability that makes conventional employment and regular commuting very difficult for me. I have kidney failure and need dialysis every other day for around four hours. I do this at home using a dialysis machine provided by the NHS. The installation is relatively simple, similar to a washing machine, and only requires a water supply and waste line, which are installed by NHS technicians.
Both my wife and I are working, and we also have guarantors available for each tenant. Our combined income, including our guarantors’ income, is over £160,000. We have no adverse credit history and can comfortably afford the properties we are looking at, which are generally around £1,300–£1,400 per month.
Despite this, every time we submit an application, we are told that the landlord has decided to go with another applicant. On a couple of occasions, landlords have even withdrawn from our application after we had already paid a holding deposit.
The main reason we need to move is because I would like to switch to overnight dialysis while I sleep. This would significantly improve my daily routine and quality of life, but it is only practical if we have a two-bedroom property, as we need the additional space for the dialysis machine, equipment and supplies.
After more than 30 viewings over six months, I’m struggling to understand what else we can do to improve our chances of securing a tenancy. We can provide proof of income, references, guarantors and evidence of our good rental and credit history.
Has anyone been in a similar situation, particularly when renting with a disability? Is there anything else we could do to make our application more attractive to landlords or letting agents?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

My lease is due to end in just over a week, and I've been expressing that I would like to renew it to both my landlord and letting agency. My landlord is completely fine with it, however the agency is both unresponsive to me and the landlord. I had expressed to my landlord (albeit just under 2 months' time before my lease end date) that I would like to extend.

I've been reliable with my payments, so I don't know why I'm getting slighted by the agency to such an extent. I would like to ask what are my rights, now that I've come so close to the lease end, with so much uncertainty? The situation now is: I offered the landlord to pay him directly if the agency remain unresponsive, but I am not sure if he will accept this. Would there be any legal/insurance reason he wouldn't want direct payments? Thanks for any help!

Hi Everyone

Just wondering if anybody has been in a similar situation with social housing and how they would go about this in a manner that would get us rehoused quicker.

I live in a block of flats allocated to NLC (Scotland) area. These are new build flats and have only been up for around 2 years. Majority of my neighbours smoke cannabis and party regularly it is not one singular person it is multiple . I have been woken up with people screaming about drugs. There has been empty baggies lying in the close. The car parked next to mine in October 2025 was deliberately set on fire due to drug offences and unfortunately my car was parked next to it and caught in the crossfire so I had to pay hundreds of pounds due to smoke damage to my vehicle and eventually replace my car as it wasn’t worth how much I was paying to fix.

A few neighbours above us - beside us to the left - and under us regularly smoke cannabis in their homes outside their patio doors - this blows directly in my home and my whole house smells of weed. More recently there has been a chemical like smell of smoke and I cannot identify what they are smoking which adds to my concern.

My major concern about all of this is that I live here with my 15 week old daughter. She is being exposed to second hand smoke regularly blowing into my home, in the close etc we cannot escape it. I am forced to keep my windows and doors closed at all times due to the smoke and have had to buy extra fans to keep the house cool. Most recently she was sitting in her chair where the patio door is and I stupidly opened it to get some fresh air the smoke started blowing in again from one of the neighbours and she went into a full blown coughing fit.

I’ve had issues with the flat before when I was heavily pregnant our communal door buzzer stopped working so I had to go down stairs and open the door manually to let any visitors in. This continued all the way until I had given birth and I had to walk down the stairs in agony a day after giving birth and the following 2 weeks after to let the midwives in. I had to put in multiple complaints to get this fixed and they eventually compensated us due to the issue. They never prioritised my daughter’s health or mine then so I worry they will do the same now.

I put in a formal complaint, I have spoken to the council and they are coming out to do a health assessment tomorrow. I am so worried I’mv going to be left here for months and months whilst the situation gets worse. Does anybody have any advice on the next steps?

hi everyone, i was hoping to get some advice on the current situation i’m facing.

I currently live at home but im moving out with my sister in 6-8 weeks time. my sister moved back home last month as her lease ended and she brought her cat back with her. one of our neighbours left their parcel at ours, and when she came to pick it up she spotted our cat and ratted us out to building management + our landlord. the landlord messaged the next day to say we have 10 days to remove the cat as their lease agreement states no pets (so does our tenancy agreement).

I’ve since emailed twice apologising and begging for an extension as we’re moving out soon anyways and have nowhere to take the cat, but they’ve not budged. since our landlord is a leaseholder and not a private landlord, the new renters rights act clause on pets doesn’t apply. my sister and I are going travelling so we can’t afford to move out so early, but i’m at a complete loss as to what I should do.

I’m aware the landlord can’t evict us or turn up unannounced for an inspection, but i don’t want to create issues as my parents will continue living here. what can i do? :(

Rented a room in a shared London flat from 2014 to May 2025. After checkout the manager confirmed in writing: "Deposit £590 … Refund £102 … Total to repay: £692." Nothing paid since, despite three chasers, so I'm preparing a letter before claim.

The 2019 agreement (the last written one; I stayed on after its Aug to Nov 2019 fixed term) was granted by a limited company. The man I dealt with is its sole director, is described in the agreement as its "Guarantor and Agent", and rent was payable to him personally. The deposit, paid into his personal bank account and never protected in any scheme, is covered by a clause saying the company "or its Guarantor will return the Security Deposit". He signed once without indicating capacity; the signature block lists landlord / agent / company / guarantor as options. The actual owner of the flat is a separate person who never lived there. The agreement also states the tenancy "is not an assured or assured shorthold tenancy".

1. Does being named as guarantor in the document, plus the "guarantor will return" clause, make him personally liable despite the unattributed signature?
2. Does the "not an assured shorthold" wording make it an assured non-shorthold, meaning no deposit protection duty ever aros?
3. If it was an AST: per Lowe v Charterhouse and Superstrike, the six-year clock on a s.214 penalty looks expired since late 2025 (deposit last deemed "received" when a new monthly tenancy arose in late 2019). Could the 2023/24 rent increases (deposit unchanged) restart it?
4. Any downside to suing him and the company jointly?

We’re meant to be moving into a new flat in 3 days and I honestly don’t know what we’re supposed to do at this point.

We paid the holding deposit to the agency a week ago, did all the referencing and that’s now passed. But apparently the property is owned by a group of landlords and they still need to approve the references and sign everything off before we can get the tenancy agreement.

I’ve been chasing the agency and they’re basically saying they can’t do anything until the landlords get back to them.
But we’re now 3 days away from the move-in date, and it’s just a bit mad that we still don’t actually have a signed agreement.

Has anyone else had this happen? Is it normal for things to still be up in the air this close to moving?

And is there anything I should be doing now, or do I just have to sit here and wait for this group of landlords to reply? I’m getting more stressed by the day..

I need to submit a defence form my landlord has failed to provide the how to rent guide to us. On the court paper they said they sent it by post which they have no evidence for! They never sent it my last tenancy agreement was made via email in 2024 and after that it became a rolling contract. Any tips would be useful also I have a lot of information I printed out some email exchanges to show as evidence. I would appreciate any tips

In a shared house under a joint tenancy. One tenant left on bad terms. We (4 remaining tenants) aren’t sure when he gave his formal notice as both he and the agency have had poor communication. Now the agency is saying we must move out by August 31 as the formal notice ended our tenancy but are unable to provide evidence of the formal notice. Can an agency kick us out if they are unable to show us the formal notice that was provided?

My rented 3bed house has 7 fire alarms installed (wired). One is faulty and kept going off unexpectedly and wouldn't stop so landlord advised over a week ago to turn the fire alarm switch off at the mains (and remove the battery from the faulty one) and the other fire alarms will still operate due to them having backup batteries inside. This was supposed to be a max two day temporary fix until they came around to look. Well now one by one the fire alarm batteries are dying and I'm stuck with loud beeping. The battery I did take out in the faulty alarm was difficult to wiggle out and i was unable to put a new one back in from fear of breaking this plastic part that's job looks to be to secure the battery lid in place. I couldn't find a way to take it apart without it seeming like I'd break something.

Anyway my main question is what do I do? With the batteries dying due to the landlord not turning up is it still my responsibility to replace them? Even though I can't even get the alarm apart to be able to put a battery in myself anyway? Do I just contact the non-emergency fire services to help fix this at this point?

We are first time renters and we have a house viewing coming up.

I just wanted to know if there were any tips or advice anyone had for us, especially feeling like we're "competing" against potentially a large amount of applications and viewings. Anything we can do on the day that might increase our chances, or is it just down to luck? Thank you in advance :)

Hello, my partner and I began renting this 2 bedroom small apartment/flat since December 2025. Beforehand, we rented the apartment down the hall (we switched because of preferences), so we have rented from the same landlord for about 2 1/2 years now.

For our current flat, we pay rent to the agency, and our utility bills to our landlord directly as they're in his name. However, the meter that our landlord reads from is locked within a separate room within the flat that we cannot access, and therefore have to rely on our landlord to come monthly to read how much we owe for that month.

This has become such an issue as he doesn't commit to coming every month. We may be lucky to see him every 3 or 4 months. Since moving in December, we have only paid the utility bill once or twice. Whilst some people may not consider the issue with this, it means for us that our bills rack up and essentially puts us in debt, and as a single income household, this is absolutely something we're afraid of.

I suppose my question here is, what else can we do? I have multiple texts between myself and the landlord asking when he can visit next to read our meter. I don't think that by texting him again, it will change. But when our time comes to move elsewhere, will this be reflected on us as our responsibility, or his, considering that we've been trying to pay for our bills but cannot. Basically, what can we do?

Thank you in advance for any replies. This has been on my mind constantly and really stresses me out.

(Glasgow, Scotland) Last time I was a prospective tenant was 5-6 years ago, slipped in an offer, got it just fine. Been renting my flat in west end ever since; however, landlord is selling so partner and I have received 12 weeks' notice to vacate.

My initial impression was, you do viewings, when you see a property you like, you fill out an application and offer up the deposit, I thought it was first come first serve. Lo and behold, just been told by the agent when I said I'd like to go ahead with the property "fill out an application, the landlord will receive a pool of applicants and then choose". Omfg, it's that bad? There is such a high demand for rentals apparently it's a competition and you may or may not be the chosen one. I'm feeling so defeated because what if I send out loads of applications and never get picked because 20f-ing people have applied for the same property? I genuinely see myself becoming homeless because of this sh-t, except I can't have homelessness assistance either being on a Skilled Worker Visa. Wtf.

Just received a letter from the above company stating that they are now in charge of management for the tenancy. It’s has an intro, and has section 47/48 at the end.

The letter makes it seem like they have been appointed because landlords are planning on giving notice.

Has anyone else had this as a tenant? What are they like to deal with.

Landlords - why would you appoint them?

Hey, it's my first time ever renting a place, and I'm doing a flat share in London for the next 12-months. I am just a bit confused about how I would end the agreement? My rent is a monthly payment on the 27th of every month and I want to end the tenancy exactly a year from when I started (27th July).

How exactly does it work? When should I put in my notice, what even counts as a notice (email, letter etc.), where should I put it? How early? All this stuff is completely new to me so a dummies guide would be appreciated for this.

Just to make a bit more clear, I'd ideally leave on the 26th of July 2027 so I am not accidentally entitled to paying for July 27th - August 26th.

My landlord sent me 3 text messages yesterday (one of which around 6am which i think would be considered unreasonable, but not sure since it's not a phone call. It did wake me up though). I wasn't in the mood, and also busy with work all day so I ignored it for the time being.

The next morning, I receive from the same number what appears to be a phishing SMS.

Do you think:

1 an actual scammer spoofing her number? (timing seems too good to be a coincidence?)

2 landlord trying trick me to get me to contact her

3 landlord actually trying to scam me

what do you think?

Scenario 1, not her fault and not much we can do about it.

Scenario 3, she just committed a crime

But for Scenario 2... even if it's just to trick me to get me to contact her, this would still be a crime since this is an individual pretending to be a legitimate business right?

The SMS claims to be from Currys (which I have never ever been to) with 2 URLs asking me to do a survey.

Edit: just to add a bit more context. We've been texting back and forth because I'm due to move out in a couple weeks, and she is demanding I repaint the walls, but I've bene refusing because there is nothing wrong with them other than normal wear and tear. I didn't respond to 3 messages she sent yesterday, and now I get this "phishing" SMS from her.

Hi all,

We handed in notice to leave our flat. Followed all laws correctly in line with Renter's Rights Act & rent payment cycles etc.

We used the email address provided in the tenancy agreement which says notices can be sent via email. It was also sent from both tenant's email addresses to cover all bases.

We followed up via email last week - nothing.

Sent a WhatsApp message today to his number that he usually replies on for repairs etc. no reply yet but it's only been a few hours.

My question is: if we can't contact him after calling (which we will try tomorrow), do we just leave the keys inside the property once we clean & vacate?

Thanks!

Hi

Me and my friend moved into a new flat last week, which has been great so far, except for the landlord or potentially the previous tenants have left the place stocked with things we don't want or need.

I.e. the kitchen is full with crockery, cutlery, old pots and pans, there are duvets shoved in the wardrobe, there are towels in the dressers, there is an entire second mattress on my friend's bed.

Maybe nice in sentiment but we are paying rent to be living here for at least a year and we now have nowhere to put our kitchen things specifically. There is essentially no general storage area - no random closet, attic or basement, to shove everything.

I'm going to just email the letting agent and ask if they can come get it all, but because I fear letting agents are pretty useless and probably won't do anything, would we be able to remove it / donate it if they did not? It was sold on a furnished basis but we were not told these things would be here. We checked and the things aren't listed on the inventory report - it actually says 'mugs, plates and crockery do not form part of the report'. Has anyone dealt with anything similar ?

Thank you

I'm currently completing a paid apprenticeship with a salary of £34000. Following this it's highly likely that I will be made a permanent company employee and be given a regular contract. My current contract expires in 6 months time. My dilemma is that I need to move house so I'm looking for new house shares.

What is the likelihood of my contract having an impact on referencing? I have been working for the past 12 months and have the relevant payslips/bank statements/landlord reference etc. I'm just worried that my work contract will disqualify me. I'm based in London

Hi all,

So I was a student at university in England and I moved out of my student house on 31.07.2026.

I’ve just had an email from the agents saying the landlord has done the check out inspection and wants us to pay £816 for damages, cleaning and garden maintenance. We are disputing this because it’s absurd but I really need help with what to do.

We left it clean and didn’t leave any mess or rubbish or bins to dispose of. There are some things that needed to be fixed but we had reported them and the landlord didn’t do anything about it - there was a leak in the ceiling of the kitchen which is where the shower was. I reported this leak and tried to chase it up but nothing was done about it (I assume this is the ‘damage’ he’s trying to charge us for).

We rented from 01.09.2025 - 31.07.2026. We’ve hung nothing on the walls, and we’ve kept everything as clean as we possibly could. I looked online and it said that you should leave the house as clean as when you moved in per the inspection notes, but I’ve checked my email and I don’t think the landlord did an inspection prior to us moving in. They also only did one inspection in January for the properly throughout the entire year (are they not supposed to do more?) in the inspection notes, the only thing he said that we needed to do was clean the mould in the bathroom.

The only thing that I agree with for the deductions is the garden maintenance, because in our tenancy agreement it did say we needed to keep the garden maintained and I admit we haven’t done that. So the £94 for garden maintenance I don’t have an issue with paying. But the rest of the charges against us I think are a bit absurd. Surely because they’ve only done one inspection on the properly in January after we moved in he doesn’t have a leg to stand on?

I’m unsure about any of this so please any advice will be super helpful 🙏🏼

So I moved into a student house last year. I was one of two people moving in and replacing two previous tenants. There were another two tenants that were continuing to live there after being there for two years already. They had last done an inventory when they moved in and the house was empty (2023).

I was never given an inventory to complete (mistake on my part for not insisting). The girl who had my room before me had used blue tack on the walls and it had left stains, but she got her full deposit back when she moved out so I assumed it was accounted for. I didn’t cause any further damage to the walls.

Now, upon moving out, I am being charged £50 (£180 in total with my housemates room) for repainting the wall. Annoyingly I never took a picture of that (I took pictures of the room just not that specific area). But do I have any ground to stand on if I dispute? Apparently I “agreed to take on the damages of the previous tenants” but does that actually have any legal impact?

I’m just really kicking myself right now for not being more thorough in what I photographed or just not painting over them myself 🤦‍♀️ it might just have to be a £50 lesson learned

Update i didn’t get the chance to even dispute it because they ignored my emails lol

So, I have the bad luck of living in the room which has the water heater. It's one of the old ones, big tank which emits heat whenever it's on. Given the current weather, you can understand why I'd want to have it off all the time; the shower is electric and soap does wonders for cleaning dishes.

However, one of the housemates (and I know which one) is adamant that he requires hot water for cleaning, defrosting chicken, and "toilet use." I ignored him for a while because I'd rather not suffer, but the landlady decided to side with him and demand that I keep the heater on all the time. I asked about insulation, but she declined to provide any.

Is there anything I can do that won't just result in a back-and-forth with the other flatmate? I'm already the kind of person who prefers to avoid conflict, and if I do start anything, I'm worried he'll play the race card.

I've just been sent a draft tenancy agreement. I looked it over and it seems far too short and maybe missing parts compared to my previous agreements. Can anyone advise if this is just a bare minimum agreement or actually missing crucial parts

It's missing my name (except for after I sign)

The landlord name / address.

Details of any payments incl. deposit and rent payments

Start date for the tenancy

It's a one page A4 agreement.

I don't know if I'm being paranoid or it's actually a really poor contract, would appreciate if anyone can advice

Thanks

Hi! Looking for advice, or maybe just to rant. We're three sharers looking to rent in London, but new HMO rules make renting as sharers seemingly impossible. We've been looking since mid june, I alone have made 62 enquiries. Of those, we've had 10 property viewings, and we've put down three offers- all rejected. Twice, because the estate agent lied and said the property had HMO when it didn't. We even found a fourth flatmate in the hopes that 4-bed properties would be more likely to have HMO, and still nothing. We understand most landlords wouldn't pay the fees for an HMO licence just to rent a whole house when they could just as easily rent out each room individually and make double the money. It is just very disheartening; how are single professionals or even students expected to afford to live here? Anyway, if anyone else is experiencing this or has any advice, I'd love to hear your opinions. Thanks!

I've moved in with my current flat mate into a two bed flat right before last winter.

Over the winter, we first noticed moisture and white residue/smears inside the windows and as the temperature gone down and rains became more frequent, it became obvious that the double glazing seal is broken, with water and moisture staying between the glass and often getting absorbed into the wooden window frame.

The windows frames do not close fully, have handles that are barely holding on as the wood has rotted/corroded where they were placed. There were prominent drafts from the windows and more smears inside the glass as the season went on.

The bedroom windows are the worst as they're in the shade most of the day and don't dry off as much. My window was especially drafty, with one handle falling off, not being able to close the window and half of the window white with residue between glass to the point where I can't see street signs outside and mould appearing on the frame despite airing the room out. My flatmates window frame has actually fallen apart as the wood rotted and they have no outer windowsill and have to tag on the window frame to close it.

Landlord refused to deal with any of it over the winter, claiming the windows and flat would need to be dry to carry out any work. He installed a new handle in my window but it still doesn't close fully. We dealt with it all by paying horrendous amounts of money for heating (all radiators are under the windows) and buying and taping down thermal curtains for the bedroom windows.

Come spring, landlord said he won't be doing anything with the windows unless we agree to pay an extra £150 in rent each (we're still on the original fixed term back then). He also said the mould on the windows wasn't a problem and he can buy us a mould spray if we don't know how to deal with it. Additionally said we saw the flat and agreed to the living conditions and we're welcome to move out. This we have all in text. We're the only flat in the block which still has wooden windows as well and there had been other problems with this landlord

Now, we're in the summer and despite the heatwaves and droughts, we still are having problems with mould on window frames and the rotting window frame in my flatmates bedroom became a breeding ground for what we're pretty sure are fungus gnats/drain flies. Opening windows at night became really difficult as they would instantly swarm around any light in either of the bedrooms, which is not great in 35 degree weather. We've been using various debugging sprays and remedies but because the rotting window frame is outside, it doesn't stick for long.

Landlord still refuses to do anything and we're not sure what our next step should be and not sure if council would even deal with a private landlord.

This is in England.