Here is a blog clinic item from some international students in distress
My flatmates and I are international students and we rented a flat (with all the bills inclusive in the rent) from September 2010 and the tenancy was supposed to end in July 2011. Due to our landlord not paying gas and internet bills, we were evicted and has to vacate the property by the end of March as the property was to be taken away. The agent was our personal contact and she promised to return our deposit at the end of April. And now it’s already June, she still hasn’t return the deposit.
We tried contacting her but our calls were not returned /answered and text messages were rarely replied. She made a lot of excuses of being away and not being able to do the payment. This apparently has always been the case for the past few weeks. With a lot of effort in contacting her, we told her that we would report to the relevant authorities if she does not return our calls and deposit within that week. With that, we managed to get a reply from her saying that she had already made the payment at the very same day and it would take 4 working days for the payment to be deposited into our accounts. Now it has been one week and we still have not receive the deposit. We haven’t been able to get in contact with her ever since.
We didn’t know that there would be a scheme to protect our deposit as we are first year students and this is our first time coming to UK. At the beginning of our tenancy, we didn’t receive any form from the her since she also didn’t inform us about this scheme. All we have is the receipt of us transferring our deposit through internet banking in September last year.
Please advice on this matter. Will it be possible if we report it to the police? And are there any chances that we could get our deposit back?
I am sorry you have had such a bad experience in your first time in England. Your landlord should have placed this in a tenancy deposit scheme but clearly did not. Unfortunately the penalty which was supposed to apply is no longer available for people in your position but you can still sue the landlord and the agent for the money through the money claims online service in the County Court.
Although if your landlord and agent are in financial difficulties (which sounds likely from what you say) it may prove impossible to actually recover the money.
I agree that this is a very far from satisfactory situation and is something the tenancy deposit scheme was designed to protect. The Police I am afraid will be unlikely to help you. However you may be able to get some assistance from the Citizens Advice Bureau or Shelter.
My feeling however is that you are not going to see this money again. I am sorry.
Welcome to renting in the UK folks. A completely unregulated mess of a system.
As is so often case you seem to have an agent whose relationship with the truth is in the middle of ongoing divorce proceedings.
I dont understand the connection between your landlord not paying thier bills and you being evicted though. The 2 are in no way legally connected.
The only recourse you had is through deposit protection but as that law has proven to be about as effective as 3 round title fight with Mike Tyson
Thank you for the advice Tessa. We have been dealing with the agent and never in contact with the landlord. Maybe we will keep trying because the deposit was 900 pounds, which is a lot of money for us students.
Ben Reeve-Lewis: I’m not sure how the law works and the relation between the two. Probably because the landlord had a lot of outstanding bills for more than one year until ‘final reminder’ letters were sent to our flat during our tenancy, which we had forwarded them to our agent. We were not sure what happened since but few weeks later we received a letter stating that the property had to be confiscated from our landlord during our tenancy, thus our eviction.
Ah now that is interesting. What you say suggests that either the property was repossesssed by the lender, the landlord went bankrupt or it went into what is called LPA receivership.
You dont mention when this happened but if it was repossessed since October 2010 then the mortgage lender should have sent a letter out to you before the court action giving you the opportunity to approach them to ask for up to a further 2 months to stay on, under a law that came in last year called the ‘Mortage Repossession (Protection of Tenants) Act 2010.
If it went into LPA receivership then commonly the receiver will allow tenants to stay on, paying the rent to them, which they use to pay off the landlord’s debts. Whichever method was used I get the impression that someone wasnt telling you the full situation
Sorry Anon. I re-read your original post and you did give a time frame.
If your landlord’s mortgage wasnt buy to let then the bank should have sent a letter addressed to “The occupiers” informing you of repossession action impending, called a “Notification of execution of warrant”.
I do agree with Tessa, I dont think you will see the deposit again. Find out if your agent is signed up to a scheme such as ARLA, RICS or the property ombudsman. If they are I would make a complaint to the governing body but, as is the case in the UK agents dont have to have any accreditation at all, so any old scammer can set up, which is scandalous I think
I am so sorry to read this tale of what has happened to these international students renting in the UK. Most of my tenants in London are international students (usually older, mature students also working) and understand the difficulties facing them. I cannot even advise going to any particular lettings agency (in London) as they all seem to have their shortcomings. I encourage any prospective tenants of mine to check out my profile page on the National Landlord’s Association web page as at least that may be of some comfort. I do know there are many good landlords out there, but how is an international student or visitor to the UK meant to find them if they are unaware of associations such as the NLA.
Yes Yvette, I would say that the NLA standards are the best. they are closer to the issues raised in the defunct Rugg recommendations.
The trouble is that tenants have to search for the property, not the agent’s accreditation.
I for one, would be happy if the NLA standards were made mandatory for agents