Landlord charging £160 for dusting and hoovering?

You have to check your contract if your deposit is protected by another company too.

Hi all, lived in a an apartment of 4 and the landlord is charging us £160 for "dusting and hoovering all rooms", which is £40 out of our original £250 deposit each. Surely £160 is excessive?

Dusted and hoovered all rooms before we left which was so much hard work as Henry wasn't putting his work in, had to go over the floors so many times.

Landlord was sketchy, wouldn't pay our bills and electrical and gas company men would have to come around saying we would be cut off, they never did while we were there. But about 10 days at the end of the tenancy where no one was living there and I popped around to clean and the hot water had been shut off. Emailed estate agent about it and got no reply. Can I use that as leverage, as hot water is a basic nessecity?

Original inventory of the place is just a video one of the estate agents going around. We definitely left the place cleaner than when we came in, we also re caulked the kitchen as it was moldy and there was rubbish in on of the storage rooms, which there are pictures of.

Struggling to wrap my head around it, we had no problems with our last landlord so it's our first time coming across this.

Is £160 reasonable, if not how can we go about this?

Was the property advertised as bills included? Because your landlord wouldn't be expected to pay the bills unless it was advertised as such. Also surely if no one was living there or paying the bills (you or them) at the time it's not surprising the water was shut off?

£40 per room for dusting and hoovering is probably a bit on the expensive side but given the cost of professional cleaners which is what they usually use between tenancies, is not completely out of the question if they spent an hour ish on each room. Like I said, on the expensive side but not unprecedented I suppose. Overall I would say focusing on just the cost of the cleaning, it's a bit on the higher end but not out of the realm of possibility.

If challenged the landlord will probably provide a receipt from a professional cleaning company they used which cost £160 to get hired out for a day or half a day or something. The rest of it I think raises additional questions. Note that when challenging items charged to your deposit I don't think you can use "leverage" from other issues during the tenancy; it would just be, they would need to prove that cost was actually incurred and then it be judged as being a reasonable charge (hiring a cleaner would be suitable, hiring one that charged £1000 an hour probably not).

Hi, I was in a similar situation where the landlord tried to charge us (property of 5 people) £155 for deep cleaning of the entire property even though it was left in a very good state. £160 for cleaning is too much unless you left the property in a total mess. You have to check your contract if you're required to leave the property how it was given to you. The landlord is responsible for deep cleaning costs if nothing about deep cleaning costs is mentioned. In many of these cases the landlords just want you to cover some of the costs because they just want to use your money and students usually accept it since they don't want to waste their time. I don't think a video can be used as an inventory since you couldn't even comment/ add thing to the inventory, such as mouldy walls.

The first thing to do is directly contact the landlord/agency and if that does not work then you'd have to raise a deposit dispute. You have to check your contract if your deposit is protected by another company too. Have you taken pictures of the property before you moved out so you can use that as evidence that it was left clean?

Check you contract. Normally the person renting is responsible for all utilities unless specified. You might be on the hook for more than 160 if thats the case!

Just pay it you cheap skate

Did you dispute, we you able to get some money back?

We got to comment on the video and I took additional photos if my room prior to moving in, the floors were dusty then but I didn't specify it as I didn't even think they could charge for DUST.

And I took a video of the place, but it's hard to tell of the dust situation as it's not going to get picked up. Annoyed at myself couldn't take any pictures of it as my phone was low bat so I quickly did a video instead.

Bills included, when the gas and electric company people came over they were saying the house was in £1600 in debt! Not important now though, someome said can't use it as leverage