The Joys of Renting (Renting a Home)

Member Name: Belladonna

Product:	Renting a Home
Date:	13/05/01 (422 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Should be less hassle, Easier to move

Disadvantages: Dodgy landlords/letting agencies, Just as expensive as owning

I left home for university in 1990 and have rented various houses/flats since then to the present day. From student accommodation to living with a resident landlady to renting whole houses with the other half through both private landlords and letting agencies, I feel like I’ve been there, done that as far as renting goes.

We are about to move again, relocating from London to Cheshire and hopefully this will be the last time we rent as we aim to start looking to buy as soon as we move.

Landlady in residence

Until fairly recently (the last 2 – 3 years or so), I wasn’t bothered about ever owning a house. Renting suited me just fine. Rubbish at DIY, completely uncreative, hate gardening etc. It seemed to me that renting was the ideal way to have it all – live in a nice flat/house, while someone else worries about finances if the boiler breaks etc. However, my recent experiences of renting change all that.

I moved to London about 4 years ago. I arranged to lodge with a friend of a friend who had 2 spare rooms (my friend rented the other one). I had never lived with the landlady/lord in residence before and was a bit apprehensive – having heard a few horror stories from friends and having watched my boyfriend’s landlord, supposedly an old mate, treat him like something offensive he had trodden in.

The arrangement I was in actually worked quite well. She was fairly easy going and we kept pretty much to ourselves. I intended to stay just a few weeks but ended up staying 18 months. However, I was always conscious that it was her house and by the time I left was a bit peeved that she had spent very little of my rent money on redecorating/ refurbishing the flat (which was crying out for a new bathroom and kitchen) although managed to fund herself at least one decent bottle of wine every night (but that’s another story). The atmosphere was occasionally tense, but I think that i
s to be expected with any house share (You’ve seen Shallow Grave etc yes?) Interestingly the friend who I heard about the room from also lived there for about 18 months and left shortly after I did. Her reason – the flatshare with the landlady, who she’d been good mates with since school days – over 20 years, was putting an incredible strain on their friendship.

Think twice if you are ever considering renting with a friend who is also the owner of the house.

Letting Agency

The 18 months following the above, I rented a 2 bedroom house with my husband to be. We did this through a letting agency. And what a letting agency that was.
My naïve and limited understanding of letting agencies in 1999 was that they were generally a good idea. A kind of middle-man to liaise between us and the landlord I thought. Someone who would sort everything out while we just lived there happily and went to work.

Well, not that particular letting agency.

They did nothing. Unless you count telling us that a house was for rent and giving us the keys. No doubt they took a considerable chunk from our rent every month to pay for their service, but unfortunately I have never actually worked out what they provided.

Unlike the letting agency we have signed with to move North, this one did not negotiate with any of the utility companies etc. More annoyingly, whenever there was a problem with the house, and there were quite a few, some of them fairly minor but a nuiscance none-the-less, it always took at least 2 phone calls and then a letter before they would attend to it.

An example of one of the problems we had was that of condensation. Green blobs of mould started appearing on the walls in October 1999. Phone calls and letters followed but nothing was done, other than an unhelpful: “Leave the windows open when you go to work”. Yeah right, leave the windows wide open (and they wer
e large windows) in the heart of Peckham, SE15 – one of the most impoverished, crime ridden areas of London. Why not just leave a note on the door saying: “Burgle me!

By February 2000 still nothing had been done and I was a pregnant woman by this time i.e: not someone you should deliberately annoy, so I phoned environmental health who came out pronto and wrote a scathing letter to the letting agency to give them a kick up the backside. Someone came out pretty quickly and discovered that lots of the vents had been wallpapered over. But, it was someone sent by the landlady and not the letting agency. All they did was forward my letters on to her!

Another major gripe about this renting arrangement was that the letting agency had obviously not made a proper contract with the landlady. She would turn up unannounced and would also send workmen etc around with little warning. On one occasion she phoned to say a surveyor was coming around in 20 minutes. My mum answered the phone and didn’t know what to say. Having just come out of hospital with a 5 day old baby this wasn’t really a convenient time but I had no say in the matter.

I could go on and on about this letting agency but I will restrain myself. But I will finally say on them, check your contract carefully, ours had a clause in it that if you left early, you had to incur the costs of finding new tenants. After our original year was up, they tried to make us sign a further 6 month contract with this clause in it again. This makes it very inflexible to move as you are tied to a certain date. I was told by the tenancy relations department at the local council that this was not a standard tenancy agreement.

Private Landlord

For the past 7 months we have been renting via a private landlord who advertised the flat in Loot – the London free ads paper. I have heard and experienced lots of problems with private landlords eg turning up unan
nounced and letting themselves in with their own keys, not returning the deposit etc but fortunately this arrangement has been conducted in a very business like way and apart from problems with the property such as the boiler breaking we have had no problems with the landlord as such.

To rent or not?

Renting seems to me, more often than not a complete gamble. There is no way of knowing whether a landlord or letting agency is trustworthy, even if they are supposedly already your friend. But my main reasons for wanting to move on from renting and buy are twofold:

1. Renting is no cheaper than buying. Especially in London. If it was I would happily rent forever. But it galls me that my husband and I are more or less forced to leave London because we can no longer afford to rent or buy in the area. Our new home in Cheshire will be £50 less than we pay here. Not that much you might think, but in Cheshire that will find us in a 3 bedroom modern semi, with a conservatory, garden, and a garage. Here we have a 1 bedroom Victorian flat, with rotten window frames, a carpet that might have been new in 1972, and with ancient gas appliances that failed the annual gas safety check.

2. Perhaps I’m paranoid but it seems to me that if you are over 25 and still renting you are treated in some way as an inferior citizen. Or perhaps I’m just getting old and wishing to assume some responsibility for my home. At least when we buy our own home we can decorate to suit, no longer will we have to put up with other people’s dubious taste in home furnishings. Even though we have rented unfurnished for the last couple of years, it is amazing how someone can spoil a room with a heavily artexed ceiling!


If you are renting, be it through choice or not, my golden rules would be:

1. Read the contract very carefully.

2. When you first see the property do an inventory with the landlord and make a note of
any damage to the landlord’s fittings and furniture, that way you will be able to have more argument for the return of your deposit.

3. Know your rights. I have sought advice on more than one occasion from the Tenancy Relations Department of the local council. It only costs a phone call, yet I have received invaluable advice about various problems to do with contracts, responsibilities of landlord etc. Knowing your rights and the proper terminology really helps when dealing with landlords and letting agencies from hell. I assume most councils have this department but if not I understand the CAB are pretty helpful too.

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