Landlords beware—there’s a new regime in town. Mark Loveday reports
Anyone involved in the residential lettings market will be familiar with tenancy deposits. Typically a tenant is required to pay a month’s deposit against failure to pay rent or comply with other tenancy obligations. In central London this may mean tenants coughing up hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds, never to be seen again until their tenancies are over.
The Survey of English Housing recently indicated that 32% of tenants who paid a deposit had it returned only in part or not at all. Of these, 45% believed that the deposit had been withheld unjustly. These disputes don’t seem to have worried litigators much in the past. Woodfall—Landlord & Tenant devotes about seven sentences of its five volumes to the subject of tenancy deposits. However, from 6 April 2007, that may change with the implementation of the Housing Act 2004 (HA 2004), Ch 4. The legislation aims to remove the risk that rogue landlords and agents might misappropriate deposits, and provide a quick and cheap means of resolving disputes.
The basic regime
The legislation applies
