Despicable
by Notebook
We're probably going to delay buying a house for six months as it's just a little too mental now. I'll go see a broker in a couple of months to get a view of what kind of mortgages are out there as I'm pretty sick of dealing with the bank directly – and I used to work in banking. It's just a different world now.
We've been in this apartment for a year at the end of August. So we'll have to decide what to do. It was only meant to be for a year. MBH definitely doesn't want to stay much longer. After seeing the broker I'll have a good idea whether we just accelerate the house buying or look to move into a rented house for a year.
MBH took a call today from the Letting Agent. I am still pretty fuming when I think about it. So I avoided getting onto the phone to them straight away as it would have been messy. The summary of the call was along the lines of “Is MBH going to take out another twelve month lease on the apartment?”. MBH's response was surely it was a rolling lease? The Letting Agent then said “Our clients don't like those so we need to know really quickly or you'll have to be out by the end of August“. This of course panicked MBH and she said she'd have to speak to me first. She was super worried that they'd give us notice to leave.
There's two things that really got to me here. First, is that somebody stressed MBH (I get very protective). The second is that statement above is absolutely and irrefutably BOLLOCKS. You see Ireland has the Residential Tenancy Act of 2004. That act states that after six months a Landord or their agent can only serve notice unless (amongst other things) a tenant has not kept to the agreement, the landlord wants to sell the house, or they want to live in it, or they want to renovate it to such an extent that it needs to be empty. The only thing that happens on an annual basis from that Act is a rent review.
I find it absolutely despicable. No doubt there are people who don't read agreements or know their rights and would have just taken that at face value. MBH assures me the woman wasn't being rude about it (she doesn't think it was the agent we dealt with but a secretary type). I don't care. There is no legal or legislative basis for making a statement like that. It would of course have only been done over the phone as putting anything like that in writing would have been suicidal for the agent.
But it's the nature of Ireland right now. MBH asked me why they would have done that? My simple response is that it's much better if you can tie somebody to a twelve month lease than be waiting for three months notice from a tenant. So it seems our agent (or their secretary) is quite happy to have a go at pressurising people into such an agreement. Even though it goes against a tenants rights as set out in legislation.
Unfortunately for them I read things. Fortunately for them I'm not making the call until I've calmed down a little as the injustice infuriates me. But I will make the call tomorrow – and I will enjoy it.
A house we lived in we had to move out of because the landlady was doing the place up. We were bankrupt at the time and literally had no spare money so to get the first month’s rent for the new place we skipped the last month’s rent on the house. This wasn’t a problem as the deposit we had paid was one month’s rent – no-one was losing out here.
Day comes and the landlord walks round, wipes his finger along a hard to reach window edge and declares that we’ll have to forfeit the deposit as we’ve left the place dirty. Says he’ll have to “get the cleaners in”. I’m standing there saying What? She’s having the place gutted, plaster off, floors up, new wiring, new heating, new bloody everything and you want to keep the money because it’s a little dusty in one spot?” Yep he says. Then we told him there was no deposit – he didn’t know. It’s all just scams. I would never ever trust anyone to get a deposit back.
I hope you have fun tomorrow when you call – after feigning ignorance first maybe.
I’ve been there in the UK with deposits as well. Very similar to when you take a car hire back and you go through the same pain. It’s subjective so it’s a definitiion of clean. But in your case bloody ridiculous because they were gutting it. Akin to saying “This car has a scratch…doesn’t matter that we’re scrapping it”.
The thing that galls me in this instance is the sheer audacity of it. It’s a Legilsative Act. The claim goes directly against that. That’s the problem in Ireland with Banking and Property – horribly corrupt and grab what they can get. Losers in this situation would be naive and vulnerable people who don’t know better – and that pretty much sickens me.
No intention of pleading ignorance at all. My first question will be along the line of asking them to point out in the agreement and the legislation where they think they can get away with this? Hint: it specifically says they can’t. That’ll be an interesting response for sure
Then I’m going to carefully explain how they need to always call me and never MBH. But there will be no need for that because I want everything to come from them in writing – which they will never do because, well, how stupid can they be? But if they did then I’ll be hysterically delighted to throw it over to my solicitor – for shits and giggles. If I’d spoken to them late this afternoon my second line of questioning would have been around exactly how big of an idiot they actually were and what went wrong to make them that way … not too productive I’m guessing.
The rest of it I’ll just riff
Tonight I’m kind of hoping somebody will have a go at arguing, I’d enjoy that. Because the Act and it’s contents are very helpfully hyperlinked http://www.irishstatutebook.ie/2004/en/act/pub/0027/index.html which saves me printing it. But it will most likely just be a “Nevermind” and a note on file saying ‘NEVER CALL THIS GUY’.
[...] Just a quick follow up to my last post. [...]