Tenant was misrepresented by letting agent
Letting Agents

John and Lila
John and Lila
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6 Posts
3 years ago
0
Hello, our letting agent misrepresented the tenant they put forward to us.
  • The tenant disclosed having two dogs on her original application and this wasn't mentioned to us, the letting agent hid it from us until we asked repetitively to see her original application last month.
  • From what we heard from neighbours, the tenant seems to have a certain amount of bad debts, which could suggest the tenant's credit score was probably rather low, despite we were told she was credit checked and passed - we have asked to see the original credit checks being done and the letting agent said they are not allowed to share this due to GDPR.
  • In addition, the paperwork related to the guarantor wasn't done properly and we are waiting to hear back if this will stand in court.
  • They didn't do any other viewings of the property as they said they had already vetted this tenant a few weeks before and she was ready to move in straight way.

Tenancy was Apr-Nov20. The tenant left with %C2£700 rent arrears and we had to spend thousands of pounds to bring the property back to a rental standard, some of the damages were caused by the pets (e.g. faeces in the carpets). It also meant the property was empty for a couple of months when we were doing the work. During the tenancy we received several complaints in writing about the pets who were barking all day long in the back garden and not looked after. We asked the letting agent to go to the property in several occasions (to assess the pets situation, to assess a neighbour's complaint about the backgarden tree), which they always refused.
If the letting agent had presented the tenant to us accurately, we wouldn't have offered her an AST.

If we go to the Redress Scheme of the letting agent, what can we expect to claim back? Would there be a fixed amount we can claim for their wrong-doing, or would it be proportional to the financial loss?
Thanks.

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