landlord wants professional painters instead of us painting - will i have to pay??

[cremeegg12]

Hi All

 

We've given notice to quit in the house we live in. We've been here 5 years. When we moved in, the decorating standard was terrible. It was freshly done, but badly! Rushed and sloppy and cheap paint as it was all cracked. We decorated properly and got the house looking nice.

 

My landlord has announced that we're not to decorate the place just yet (downstairs is fine, but upstairs needs freshening up and my daughter's room needs changing back to magnolia) as it "may be better to get it done professionally".

 

Aside from the fact I'm offended (modesty aside, I've done a very good job in decorating, very tidy, decent paint and neutral colour - she's seen the standard down here so knows I'm not a bodger), I'm worried that she's going to deduct the cost from the deposit.

 

Where do I stand with this? I know sometimes tenants decorate to a poor standard and so the professionals are called in, the cost deducted from deposit, but she seems to be biased towards using professionals even before I've even got a paint brush out! I'm not prepared to pay for a professional job just because she wants one. How would this work if she kept part of the deposit to pay for that..? (deposit paid before the deposit scheme came into play, an agency does hold it so I'm not sure if they had to register it with the scheme, but they didn't tell us about it so I assume not?)

 

Thanks for your help.

[Snorkerz]

If you repaint and return the property to the same state it was in before you arrived (less reasonable wear & tear) then LL would not be able to obtain payment from your deposit, providing it is in one of the 3 schemes.

 

If your paintwork is 'substandard' though, LL would be able to claim that as damage and deduct from your deposit almost all of the cost of putting it right.

 

That's the principle. However, in your instance, LL has to accept a certain amount of 'wear and tear', ie the paintwork should be in the condition of normal 5 year old paintwork - slightly shabby, verging on tatty! I suspect if you leave the place as it is, even daughters room, the LL would be hard pressed to prove to the deposit scheme that he has any extra costs - the paint would need re-doing anyway. Even if he did do so, it would be awarded pro-rata so you wouldn't have the full cost to pay, just a proportion based on how old the paint was vs it's expected lifespan.

[AngelofSol]

When did you last sign a lease with her? Only once at the beginning before the deposit scheme came about or did you sign any tenancy agreement with her after that point?

 

If you did your deposit should have been protected, but probably wasn't. Get back to us here and let us know, there will be plenty of people to tell you what you can do next (options) if it should have been protected.

[Steve__M]

As Snorkerz says, after 5 years the landlord has little chance of proving a need to charge you to repaint, except, possibly for covering over any strong colours you might have used (eg. girly pink?).

[Snorkerz]

AngelofSol has a valid point - if your deposit wasn't protected (and if your tenancy agreement was dated before April 6th 2007, it probably wasn't) then you won't be able to use the relevant arbitration scheme. However, you can quite easily sue through the MCOL website, the onus of proof in these cases is on the LL, so the same advice applies as my earlier post. The only proviso is - do you have a receipt for the original deposit?