New

Rent Refund After House Flooded, Landlord Taking Money Out Of This For Damages

Hi all. My partner and I are renters and in October last year our house got flooded and became uninhabitable. For clarity, we rent through a letting agency so have no contact with the actual homeowner/landlord.

In our tenancy agreement, it stated that if the property were to become uninhabitable, we would not be required to pay rent for any days we could not live there.

This was confirmed by the letting agency upon telling them the house had been flooded.

Several weeks later after the house was inspected, we received our deposit back in full.

In November, I remembered we had not been refunded the excess rent. We paid rent on the 28th of each month for the following month, and we got flooded on the 20th. This means there were 11 days of our rental period where the house was uninhabitable. We paid £650 per month so by my calculations we are owed £230.65.

I contacted the letting agent to chase this up and they have been in some contact with the landlord over this.

The landlord came back to them in March to say the insurance would not pay out for one of the kitchen cupboards as it had been ‘modified to fit a dishwasher’ - it had a hole cut in the back to fit an extension lead through - something which was already there when we moved in so was not done by us. Unfortunately I don’t have a photo to prove that but that’s not important.

The landlord is saying they will be deducting the money for this cupboard from our excess rent which he should’ve paid back to us months ago.

I’ve been researching and I seem to understand it like this - the landlord cannot use overpaid rent to fund repairs or damages. This needs to be deducted from the deposit before it is released.

Is this true?

Would I have a leg to stand on if I took him to small claims court?

What should my next move be?

Thanks in advance.

submitted by /u/theajayx
[link] [comments]

Back to Listing

credit:

Rent Refund After House Flooded, Landlord Taking Money Out Of This For Damages

Popular Products