Like millions of others who live in London, I rent.
Owning a city home sounds great. But when you crunch the numbers ita s simply unrealistic.
Take the average ?￡367, 785 London house (yes, thata s the staggering average price now). A 10 pc deposit would set you back ?￡36, 779 in one gulp. Repaying the remainder at 5 pc a year would work out at ?￡1, 935 a month ( see our mortgage calculator). Too expensive by half, youa ll agree - even if it is an extreme example.
So I rent.
Recently, on moving flats, I was reminded of one of the major problems with renting: stumping up the deposit. Landlords typically ask for six weeksa rent from tenants, which traditionally has been a fallback to cover monthly payments that go missing.
Usually the landlord has a mortgage to square off; ita s a simple necessity to have something in the kitty in case a tenant fails to pay up.
However, I increasingly hear of greedy landlords raiding this deposit fund for their own gain. They cite poor treatment of the property, which may have broken a nasty condition written into the contract.
Some landlords even whack down deductions for what you or I - or any right-minded observer - would class normal wear and tear.
I recently heard of a case where a wobbly toilet seat and a minor mark on a carpet were deemed a ?￡200 expense. The worst kind of landlord, though, doesna t even bother matching their demands to reality. For example, one former landlord tried to charge me ?￡140 for 'professional cleaning' of a flat which had been scrubbed, wiped, dusted, washed, hoovered, and shampood (carpets) to a very high standard by a professional company just days before for a similar cost. Or how about the case of a friend charged ?￡300 to replace a sofa which had been damaged by previous tenants? The list of attempted theft goes on.
This greed, aside from the obvious injustice, I blame for causing a serious problem when you move.
To avoid living on the street, you have to sign a contract on a new place before leaving your current one. When doing this, youa re forced to put down a NEW deposit, too. Yet landlords, set on siphoning off some of your hard-earned cash when you move out, wona t return your current deposit until youa ve moved out, even if youa ve paid your rent to the end of the contract.
This means renters are forced to dig deep into their savings - or beg and borrow if they have none a just to move flat.
There are plenty of decent landlords out there for whom this will make frustrating reading. But the holding of deposit cash until someone has left a tenancy seems a highly unfair system to me. Put simply, tenants - already hit twice by outrageous agency fees on moving in and out of rented properties, remember - are being treated as cash pi?±atas.
Herea s my suggestion. How about the landlord conducts a thorough check of the property two weeks prior to the move-out date. The whole deposit is then returned to the tenant, minus any deductions deemed necessary. These are held by an independent deposit scheme until after the move has been completed. They can then be disputed or agreed and used by the landlord for repair work. That way, the tenant at least has some immediate cash to put down on the new place and the landlord is no worse off.
This system is still open to abuse by greedy landlords, but it seems a great deal fairer. Which is why, sadly, I doubt it'll ever to catch on.
Dan Hyde, Money Mail reporter
d.hyde@dailymail.co.uk
