Updating post from Reddit.
We have a wet room and are moving out on Friday. We've lived in the apartment for over 6 years. The wet room has had an issue where water has apparently seeped through the sealant and caused this skirting board to rot. Landlord did kinda know about there being an issue as he'd installed a curtain before we moved in to reduce water escaping, although the curtain didn't really do much in that regard.
My dad (who's a DIY master) insists it'd be an easy fix and that I shouldn't spend any money on it, bar maybe £10 worth of timber. We've actually already moved out the property now, so I've thought about getting a guy on Airtasker to fix it up for us for ~£60.
Landlord has always been good to us for the most part (replaced broken appliances, only raised rent once, never really bothered us) so we absolutely don't want him to send someone to inspect the property to be blindsided by this. We've already paid for an end of tenancy clean as well.
However, in our various dealings with him, we've been able to tell that he knows absolutely nothing about DIY and will probably freak out upon seeing this.
So we're wondering if we should pay to get it fixed ourselves at an indeterminate cost, in the hope that maybe, just maybe, we get some of our deposit back, OR, whether we should just show him this video (or one that makes it not look so bad), and try to agree with him what he wants to do. The other question with this approach then becomes, when should we tell him? My wife says on Friday (the last day), but I would have thought it's better to get ahead of it and then it gives us the chance to fix it if he really does flip his shit.
As I currently understand, he wants to renovate the place anyway. A friend of his came round to view it and said he'd want to replace the carpets, repaint the walls, put in new fixtures/furniture etc to modernise it, as it was all a little dated even when we moved in.
So what should we do?
As a landlord you should definitely report it as a maintenance issue before you leave. But in hindsight you should have kept asking him to fix it as it’s your responsibility to raise any maintenance issues. This would have also covered your back as you can say you reported it multiple times so it’s not really your fault.
As someone who is fair if a tenant reports an issue and I don’t fix it and it gets worse that’s my problem. However if I didn’t know about the issue and you left the property like that I would be claiming for damages.
Did you not have any inspections?
He only inspected once in the 6+ years we lived there - this was present whilst he was there and he never mentioned it
When you say claiming for damages how much would you be thinking?
I think we were always quite scared of reporting something like this because we weren't sure if it was our responsibility or fault and we were a bit scared
One inspection in 6+ years is kind of crazy. If he had done so he would have been aware of the situation.
In terms of cost I have no clue to be honest. Water can do a lot of damage over time.
Your options
report it again as a maintenance issue before you leave and if it goes to mitigation with the tenancy deposit scheme they may take your side providing you have evidence you reported before. Now the problem is after he installed the curtains because you didn’t report it again it looks like the issue is fixed.
report it but try and diy/fix the problem so that when it compares to your check in inventory it looks the same minus wear and tear.
you just report it and do nothing and see what the landlord does. If you’re not happy with the cost you can always go to mitigation with the tenancy deposit scheme.
Hope this helps a bit. I would personally do option 2 because I’m DIY savvy.
Very helpful thank you. Do you reckon we just get this guy on airtasker to do it ? It's like Fiverr
If you still have a bit of time to sort it out I would get a few people around to give you a quote, this way you would know how bad the damage is and the cost. I don’t have any experience using airtasker but my gut tells me it will just be a botch job without proper assessment.
Also if you have more pictures or videos it might be helpful to see how bad it really is.
Unfortunately that's the only one I have right now. We moved out on the 20th and it's 20 miles away so it's a trek going back. I'll see if I can get him round for a quote.
The missus is right. Probs don't wanna go full bastard and suggest not even mentioning it, which you might as well since you've left it this long and you want your money back lol. If you wanna do damage control and don't mind losing money, go for it and tell them now not the last day (savage).
How would you react though? Any experience with fixing this sort of thing?
My landlord is the kinda guy that would 100% hire someone to fix this for him (probably at an insane cost), partially as he lives abroad
I'm not a landlord just basic human psychology. Obviously if I was a landlord I'd be pissed.
What’s wrong with it?
I’ll be blown away if that costs £60 to fix. To do a shitty job yeah, maybe. These kind of jobs need a professional, not a DIY’er. This looks horrendous.
My dad insists that it looks far worse than it actually is, and your reaction is absolutely what I'd expect from the landlord.
Apparently all that needs doing is taking off the old rotten one (should peel off given the state of it), then cut some new 4 x 1 timber and stick it into place with silicone.
Problem being though, we've not had the chance to do it ourselves and I suspect I'd fuck it up somehow.
A guy has agreed to do it for us on Airtasker too.
Oh yeah I’d mess it up too. I wouldn’t dream of even attempting it. Hope that guy can sort it out
Holy rot batman, what the fook is that?
In all seriousness. Yes. You should report it. Don't buy any of the "you should've reported it" BS because if the landlord knew, the landlord knew. Where you are on the hook is when an issue needed reporting and you didn't, consistently. We've had a similar situation before. Wasn't a wet room. Standard bath. We knew the bath was used for years without a curtain (we know the landlords and their children who lived there before we rented it).
When we were renting it, we reported a couple of times water leaks from the bathroom sink. Eventually they had to have someone look at it and the horror they discovered was about the same as the pics you shared.
They tried making noises about us needing to bear the brunt of some of the cost to remedy coz "as a tenant you have a responsibility to report maintenance issues".
That's BULLSHIT. There is a foot long list of court decisions that say "yes. The tenant is responsible for reporting maintenance issues. But you cannot expect the tenant to know of issues they may not even be aware of".
In our case, we told them they can jog on. They tried coming after some of our deposit, we disputes with TDS and we got it all back.
So, if you were aware of this happening for years and wilfully chose not to report, you may be on the hook. But if everything always seemed fine and you became aware of an issue after x years, it is not on you.
Report. Do not report. It doesn't matter all that much.
What matters is when you became aware of the issue and what precautions you as a tenant took to mitigate such issues...
Don't fold. Never fold.
No. He knows already .
You need to report the issue.
Your assumptions are wrong. A shower curtain installed in a wet room isn’t because there is a leak and it’s a way to reduce the leak. It’s to reduce splashes etc around the room which is more cleaning to do. So no the landlord didn’t “kinda know”.
You should’ve fix it yourself. You need to report it.
If the issue has been previously reported and nothing was done your not to blame.
But you aware of it and it’s causing damage, due to your negligence, because the landlord “kind knows”.
Given what you've just said, it sounds like it'd be better to pay this guy to fix it for ~£60 and then tell the landlord about the issue and that it's resolved?
£10? DIY genius? Nah - that’s a serious wet rot issue right there. Will probably need the whole shower unit ripping out and possibly part of the floor. Multiply that £10 by at least a factor of 100.