A pad of one's own...?

I've just finished reading an excellent article about the buy vs. rent debate on housing. As a long-term renter with no forseeable plans to get on the property ladder (I wish) and an absolute buffoon of a landlord, I could relate and empathise with the words of Penny Anderson, also a long-term renter who commented thus:

"You have no security right from the start. If you ever question anything, if you ever stand up to your landlord, they will not renew the tenancy. The problems begin from the moment you start looking for a rental property, she says, with letting agents regarding tenants (and landlords) as easy prey for one spurious fee after the next.

In Glasgow, the letting agent said I had to pay a £150 'administration' fee. I told him that, in Scotland at least, the fee was not legal. He just laughed at me. While I was there, I saw other tenants being charged upwards of £100 for taking up references. As far as I could see, the agent made £250 for about 10 minutes' work running their details past a credit reference agency.

When you are a tenant, your house is never your home. Everything conspires to make you feel unsettled. You can't decorate it the way you might want it to be, and woe betide you if you put a nail in the wall. I'd give anything to have the money to be able to buy my own place."

I have been living in my current flat for just over three years now. Initially, we obtained the property through an agency, who charged us the customary exorbitant and unlawful 'administration' fee. The agency workers were disinterested, obnoxious and unresponsive, much like our landlord who we now deal directly with due to the agency withholding our rent, resulting in a request from him to 'deal directly with me, from now on'.

Since then, we have experienced ongoing problems with our landlord who refuses to respond to emails about the most basic maintenance requests, tells us one thing then does a complete u-turn and denies ever saying such a thing, waltzes in the flat without the requisite, legal 24-hour notice period and basically talks to us like we're complete reprobates. In May, he finally agreed to refurbish our bathroom, which had sunk to new depths in squalor. Initially, he agreed for works to begin at the end of June. They actually began on 30 November. Today is 10 January and although we now have a functioning toilet and bath, we still do not have a shower, an appliance which we consider pretty essential as working lassies. Who has time to run a full bath before racing out of the house each morning? Certainly not us, and we don't much like soaking in our own filth in a desperate attempt to get clean.

The high point for us was when works first began on the bathroom. We were directed to use the bathroom of the flat below, which was vacant, for the refurbishment period. Not ideal, but we were told that it would be finished within 7-10 days. Three days in we received a text message from our landlord at 1655 in the evening announcing that he "was coming to stay" to do some maintenance work. Alarmed, we wondered where he was planning on staying as we were using the vacant middle flat. We returned late that evening after going out for a friend's birthday to discover that he'd accessed the property and had kipped down in the aforementioned flat. WTF?! When we challenged him on this, explaining calmly and reasonably that maybe we didn't want to share facilities with our landlord, and asking him why he chose the one week in the year that we needed to use the flat to move in himself, he exploded, calling us unreasonable, accusing us of "impeding works" and - best of all- stating that "lots of people in Europe share bathroom facilities"... where to begin? Thankfully, he moved out after three nights. We're still awaiting completion on the bathroom, however.

To add insult to injury, our washing machine has now collapsed, so we've been using the machine in our middle flat until we get a new machine delivered (incredibly, he dealt with this matter relatively quickly, stating that he'd ordered a new machine for us. We were delighted, until he decided that we weren't worthy of a new machine and that we would have to contend with the ancient machine from the middle flat...). We'd put a large sign on the door to the middle property to alert the various tradespeople who stream in and out of the property at will not to lock the door as the middle flat was currently in use (i.e. by us). We also asked the landlord to pass on this information to his contractors. On Thursday evening, however, I returned from work to discover the middle flat had been locked. I called our landlord who said he would contact the tradesperson and ask them to call round and unlock it. Nobody has been round to do this and, despite a series of texts and emails to the landlord (standard), we are now without washing facilities.

The constant failure of our landlord to communicate with us, show us basic respect, respond to our emails within in a reasonable timeframe, address our modest maintenance requests, respect our privacy and the fact that although the property may be his, we've made it our home, has caused arguments between my partner, major stress, upset and tears, and a constant sense of paranoia every time I hear what I think is our door being unlocked (who's coming in this time?). I'm sick of doing admin at work all day only to return home and begin another series of email exchanges with our landlord, thanking him kindly for responding to point number four on our earlier email, but could he please respond to points one, two, three and five, too?

We are impotent to do anything and it's wrong. Millions of other people must be in the same position, if not worse, and laws are flounced time and again. I've contacted the local council and the CAB, to no avail. My next step is my local councillors, who I plan to contact about our ongoing issues and apparent helplessness as tenants, despite handing over the best part of £1K every month. Watch this space...

Penny Anderson, quoted above, also has a brilliant blog on the trials and tribulations of renting. You can find it here - definitely worth checking out.