Your Responsibilities

When you move in:

When you take on a property you accept responsibility for that property under the terms of your tenancy agreement. This is an important document and you should read it carefully, it contains details of your liabilities and accountability.  Most of these will be no more than you would expect, but sometimes there may be clauses specific to a property which limit or place restrictions on your use. A typical example of this would be in the instance of a head lease which may restrict your tenancy through covenants over which the landlord has no control over. Typical restrictions refer to the keeping of pets, storage of cycles in communal parts, usage of allocated drying areas etc. 

Rent will be due on the monthly anniversary of your tenancy date and must be paid promptly. Regular late rents or failure to ensure a pyment is made may jeopardise your ability to rent again in the future and may also affect your credit standing.

Rent payments should always be made by standing order directly to the landlord or Agents bank account. The payment date should be set so the that rent clears into the relevant account on the day due, which may mean you arranging for it to leave your account 3-5 days prior to this date to allow for clearing times, weekends or bank holidays.

You may not assume use of the deposit as rent at anytime during the course of the tenancy.

When you leave:

If you wish to leave you must provide written notice in accordance with the terms of the Act and your contract. A minimum of one full months notice is always required for periodic tenancies (some contracts may ask for two months) with such notice taking effect from the next rent day.

Before you leave you must ensure the property is as a minimum, in the same condition as you found it. This means that the property should be fully and thoroughly cleaned at the end of your tenancy to a good standard. There should be no evidence of your habitation of the property when you hand the keys back at the end of the tenancy, i.e no crumbs in cupboards, bags of rubbish, left possessions, hair in sinks etc. If the property is not cleaned to a satisfactory standard the landlord is quite within his rights to charge you for the cleaning – he is not obligated to allow access after the end of the tenancy for you to go back and correct. Please therefore pay close attention to this area, it is often the cause of disagreements!

An inventory check will be undertaken only after you have left the propery. You will be advised immediately of any areas which are of concern to the landlord and will have opportunity to respond. We always try to ensure that both parties are fair to each other and will offer impartial honest advice at this stage if there is any disagreement. This is the advantage of renting through a professional qualified Agent!

If there remains a dispute then it is possible for the matter to be refered through the TDS to an independant arbitration service who will make a decision based on the facts presented and which will be binding on both parties. The disadvantage of this is that it can take weeks or even months for a decision or a resolution and it is not always to the advantage of the tenant! The deposit sum in contention is held back during this time which may be inconvenient.

We strongly recommend that a reasonable agreement is negotiated and Simply lets will assist both parties to achieve this whereever possible.