Question by Scout: Are all Landlords Bad?
Hi,
We have lived in our property for just over 1 year. We had countless issues with the place for the first few months. Light fittings were falling out which was a potential fire hazard, there was damp in the living roo which caused the plaster to fall off and grow fur, we had rats at one point because the landlord had not cleaned out the previous tenants storage from the cellar which was attracting them (we never used the cellar) and finally yesterday found out we have been potentially harming ourselves due to the very old and ancient gas boiler we have. We rented through a letting agency, who would report problems to the landlord, offer them to do it themselves or asked if he wanted to hire people. He would always say he knew someone cheap and he would send them out-we used to spend days waiting in for these workers, and the landlord wouldnt have even bothered sending anyone. It was getting ridiculous. I ended up getting legal advice, as i was feeling intimidated. The landlord would contact us directly which he wasnt supposed to and threaten and shout at us every time we reported an issue. we were advised to get the work done ourselves and deduct the cost from the rent wit written notice. we did this for the damp, the landlord actually rented us a skip so that we could have the delightful job of cleaning out all the rubbish from the cellar. My dad ended up sealing off the points of entry for the rodents and we got a rat deterrer which you plugged in which got rid of them. Anyways, long story short, the past 6 months have been great as we had everything sorted. No more health hazards were in the house!
Yesterday we had our boiler serviced (the landlord didnt even know that this was a requirement) the estate agents had to nag him for two whole weeks and inform him that this was a legal requirement before he got people out. He and two registered gas safety men were round yesterday, i was out but my partner was in and this was the last straw….
The gas men said the boiler was about 40 years old, and should have been re located in the home and replaced before even considering renting the house. The extractor fan in the kitchen which we used every day for the past year has been drawing fumes out of the boiler and spreading them around the house which could have harmed us. No one told us about this before. The landlord was on abotu getting a very cheap boiler, and the gas men intervened and told him that specialists needed to relocate it as there was asbestos in the boiler and that he would need aboiler costing around 1000 to be energy efficient. They described it to him like buying a car, they said “you get what you pay for, if you buy a cheao one, it wont be energy efficient and will break all the time. the ones that are around 1000 are like your Mercedes’, theyre really good, you cant expect people to be living here with this boiler” and the landlord said….get this….”They can have a Skoda for all i care, i dont have to f**king live here do i?”.(for those of you who dont know, a Skoda is a cheap cheap cheap car).
This made me feel sick, that the landlord would just joke about our health and safety like this. So i have decided to move.
My question is-are all landlords this bad? I hear bad stuff all the time and im worried ill have to go through all of this again somewhere else. (im in the uk by the way).
Also, is there anywhere i could report how useless he is so that he doesn’t try renting to someone else whilst this boiler is here? Some one with children could move in and use the extractor fan without knowing 
Best answer:
Answer by Age of Reason
No they are not. Call the Building inspector in your municipality and complain.
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