Landlords 'pay for lack of evidence'

News Category: Management

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Landlords must gather evidence as a precautionary step regarding deposit arrangements with tenants, an expert has said.

David Salusbury, chairman of mydeposits.co.uk, a government-approved tenancy deposit protection scheme, recommended that renters take property management steps such as obtaining photographic evidence, compiling and agreed inventory list with a tenant and using bank statements when rent payments are missed.

It comes after some landlords have been forced to dig into their own pockets to pay for damage caused to property by their tenants, because they did not have enough evidence to justify a reduction in their deposits.

Mr Salusbury commented: "The vast majority of tenancies end harmoniously but when problems do arise landlords need to be prepared to safeguard themselves against abuses of the system."

Statistics published by mydeposits.co.uk in October revealed that 38 per cent of deposit disputes between landlords and tenants concerned cleaning costs and 11 per cent involved damage caused to a property.

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