The Property Ombudsman

General Discussion

It has been a long time since I posted anything on here, but I thought I would share my experience of using the TPO. Prior to self - managing my rental I had a letting agent fully manage my property. To cut a long story short the management of the property was very poor, communication was impossible and it cost approx. £12,000 to refurb the property to a rentable condition. The conduct of the management company was awful and they refused to take any responsibility for the poor state of the property or the loss of the deposit through the DPS. I must also make it clear that the tenancy was over 9 years, but our original letting agent sold the company's portfolio to the current letting agent who managed it for the last five years. Therefore the questions over what was damaged and wear & tear was very blurry. That being said, I pursued a case with the TPO because of their constant attitude of absolving themselves from their obligations and the poor service received. Now this process took about a year, but yesterday I finally received their opinion, which was that the agent was at fault on many, many aspects on the TPO Code of Practice for Residential Lettings (2016). Compensation was awarded, not as much as I was looking for, but it became a matter of principle in the end rather than trying to recover my costs. I just wanted to share my experience to help anyone else who might be in a similar situation. After renovating the property, I rented it out again, but made sure I did everything I could to ensure that the tenant was a 'good' tenant and so far my luck is changing! I will never, ever advocate the use of a letting agent to anyone as you still end up doing all the running around. So I might as well do it myself and pay myself too for doing it!