I have seen several news items on the internet recently (eg here) quoting a report from the My Deposits tenancy deposit scheme, which apparently says (I have not been able to find the original report) that tenants are losing out, as 12% of claims are lost by tenants not properly following the terms of their tenancy agreement.
Excuse me, but doesn’t that also mean that 88% of landlords are losing their cases?
Meaning that under this scheme (primarily used by landlords rather than agents), more landlords are found wanting than tenants. Does that not perhaps also indicate that the TDPS was, perhaps, a good thing after all? (Contrary to the squawks of the landlords associations before the schemes were set up, including the NLA which now runs the My Deposits scheme).
Looking around at the schemes web-sites for more news, I see that the Dispute Services scheme web-site states that they are finding that only 2% of cases need adjudication, a lower than anticipated figure. As we do not know the percentage of My Deposits cases which go to arbitration, it is difficult to make much comment. However one could speculate that if there are more disputes in the My Deposits scheme (which is aimed at landlords) than in the Dispute Services scheme (which is aimed at agents), then that would indicate that agents tend on the whole to deal with deposits in a more responsible way than landlords. Needless to say, agents have been saying this for years.
There is also of course the shocking statistic put forward by the DPS of 62% of landlords not protecting the deposit at all (discussed in my post here).
Even though 88% (i.e. most of) of disputes with landlords are won by tenants, I suspect that it is still mostly only the good landlords who have protected their deposits, and that the worst landlords are still getting away with it.
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Hi Tessa
I protected my tenants deposit in September 07, but have just returned from a court hearing and am sad to report that I am now one of the 88% of landlords who lost their cases.
The evidence I had was dismissed out of hand which gave me the impression that the Judge had already made up his mind how things were going to proceed before I even turned up.
Comments such as ‘this is no palace is it’ and ‘perhaps this just hasn’t been the investment you expected’ left me highly surprised.
Most worryingly, It leaves me with major concerns about how to protect myself from this happening again in future. Short of recording a 10 minute video at the start and end of each tenancy (which would still not be able to prove the date it was filmed).
Even the content of the check-in report was used against me, despite there being no check-out report for comparison.