Minor whinge

[chrisvenus]

Sometimes I hate being the contact person for the house. I'm fairly sure our letting agents hate me. I certainly hate any contact with them because it invariably consists of them saying they are waiting on us for something or that there is an inspection and telling us it had better not bein as much of a state as last time. And then I get to piss off my housemates by telling them we have to do stuff.

I'm goign to look forward to having a house of my own when I finally do and I can leave this shit behind.

I am dreading what's going to happen if the house isn't in a good state. I'm sure nothing bad. I am not sure they are actually allowed to kick us out for the house being in a state or anything like that but I'm going to get told off and I'm going to get miserable about it. So instead I am cancelling the vast majority of any spare time plans I have so that I can go and tackle the mammoth job of sorting the garden, hopefully with some help but on my own if needed. I don't think I can cope with another conversation with them about how we aren't looking after the house and so on. :(

Comments

[secretrebel.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I hate being the contact person for the house. I'm fairly sure our letting agents hate me.

Oh yes. I know this one. At Shadow Gallery the agents hated me so much that when hendybear went in to see them they asked him if he also found me as annoying as they did! It was the way I insisted we had working central heating and such that really got their goat.

I'm goign to look forward to having a house of my own when I finally do and I can leave this shit behind.

I hate to dillusion you (nah, actually i love it ;) but it just gets replaced with a different lump of shit. The things you become responsible for then eat into your free time. Boiler servicing, house surveys, property insurance, windows with dry rot.... All that jazz.

I am cancelling the vast majority of any spare time plans I have so that I can go and tackle the mammoth job of sorting the garden

You know that unless the landlord/agents provide gardening equipment you're not obligated to do this, right? And also, that you can't mow the lawn unless the ground is dry and right now it's flood central in Oxfordshire.

I'm going to get told off and I'm going to get miserable about it

Don't. Seriously. Just don't. Let them say their piece. Say "thank you very much and good day" and then completely and totally forget about it. Any damage to the house is going to come out of your deposit when you leave and if it doesn't damage the house, who gives a flying f*ck? How you choose to live is your own damned business.

[chrisvenus]

I think the trouble is that I'd rather have shit like Boiler servicing, etc. because then they are totally my responsibility and I'll feel less like somebody else is shouting at me to get stuff done. I agree with your final statement. I have intentions of getting in professionals to do it before we move out if needed (I figure it'll probably be cheaper than them getting professionals in) but they think that is not acceptable. Also there is the fact that although I don't use the garden much I know krys would like it to be clear if we ever get some summer sun so its not *just* because the landlords are shouting that I am doing it.

And we have raised gardening stuff with them. There is no lawn as such though so no lawnmower required, all we have is a couple of flower beds (that they kindly installed and I don't know why because we never implied that we wanted to put flowers in themselves and they didn't do it) and a pebbled area and a patio. The patio is fine but the pebbled area and the flower beds have weeds growing out of them in monstrous proportions. The exercise will mainly be to chop all off and then grab them and rip them out the ground. The only real tools needed are likely to be secateurs for some of the tougher ones and gloves to stop hands getting ripped up.

I do always have the ultimate thing that our contract says the garden must be left in the state it was when we mvoed in. At least it did at one point though that might have changed in more recent versions. Given it was a jungle like this when we moved in I'm not too worried.

Oh, and the other thing is that if I have my own house I can patio the whole bloody garden so that I don't have this kind of problem. Or get grass which at least seems to have less chance of weeds growing through and maybe I'd have a shed to keep a lawnmower.

They hate me for other reasons than this kind of thing though. Darren, the housemate from last year, although lovely *never* got around to filling in the paperwork to give them to have him added to the contract. I repeatedly said I'd get him to do it and get to them and then had to repeatedly field calls asking why it hadn't been done. We are now in the same position at the moment that they sent us a copy of the contract (with no cover letter I hasten to add) and have started complaining because they sent it a month ago and we haven't returned it. They do seem nice enough about it often and it helps when they e-mail rather than phone me (that I seem to have got them to do now). I have actually been on the phone and done the cartoon style hold it away from my ear while the rant happens from the other end.

Gah! I just need to rant lots. :)

[quisalan.livejournal.com]

*hugs*

I hate house inspections so much. I hate people coming in, poking around the house and telling us they disapprove of how we chose to live our life.

I will talk to R about it. Sorry about cutting you off earlier but I'm not really allowed to take calls in work :-/.

[chrisvenus]

That's no problem. I had assumed that you were getting pissed off with me and were cutting me off because I was annoying you (as well as at work things). It was only meant to be a quicky but I think I got carried away. AS you can tell by my ranting. :)

I think part of the reason we get so many inspections though is because we keep "failing" them and so they re-inspect us much more regularly. Hopefully we can give them a good one and get them to take us off their must inspect more often list.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Could you just offer them a bigger deposit in exchange for leaving you alone? I really don't understand what it matters what state a house is in if they're not showing it and you're not damaging the fabric...

[quisalan.livejournal.com]

Could also be they want to check for flood damage. Kinda of coincidental with the large amount of property damage going on atm that they demand to come and see us.

Guess we could just get R to hang around with his shirt off if the inspectors are female.

Bugger. Will need to move the pole too, probably in case they freak and assume it's perminant.

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

If it helps, it seems to be a university town thing, letting agents get used to doing it because students trash places. Never had one in Northampton or London.

[narenek.livejournal.com]

Get some Pathclear/groundup or similar gunk from B&Q apply it to monster weeds and wait for them to wither and die (you may wish to wait for a couple of days of sunny weather to it doesn't get washed off the leaves)

Dead weeds are a lot easier to pull up than live ones and killing the roots off makes it take longer for new stuff to appear.

Some of these products (pathclear specifically I think) claim to stop new growth for a while as well.

Bit more effort to begin with, but ultimately less hassle in the long run.

[chrisvenus]

There is a weed retardant mat under the pebbles which means the weeds are either on top of that and thus easy to pull or have had to come through a hole and so have a narrow point. I've done this once before and they didn't take much to pull up at all. Trouble is I was doing it without proper gloves and it was all a bit annoying. And its all grown back.

I may well salt the ground to stop the weeds coming back. Maybe just with weed killed though. Its not like ther is any grass to worry about... :)

[undyingking.livejournal.com]

You can probably get a gardener to pull up the weeds for no more than ten pounds an hour, via a card in a shop window or similar, if you're not especially keen to do it yourself?

[chrisvenus]

That may be true.

[scat0324.livejournal.com]

I've forwarded you the contact details for my mate Tom, who does exactly this sort of thing

[scat0324.livejournal.com]

Note to self: Read whole thread before replying

[scat0324.livejournal.com]

The patio is fine but the pebbled area and the flower beds have weeds growing out of them in monstrous proportions.

If you really want to get it back to bare earth, use Round-Up (or another glyphosate based weedkiller) - the ground is suitable for replanting as soon as the weeds have died. I'd glyphosate it, and then buy some weed-suppressant material from B&Q and cover over the raised beds with that. If you then decide you do want flowers or something, buy some bedding plants, cut a cross-shape in the material, and stick the plant through, but it will stay neat and tidy in either case.

[evath.livejournal.com]

As for the being kicked out, since it's unfurnished, from talking to people renting out unfurnished properties, in-practice they can't throw you out. This left a person my mother worked with homeless. Furnished is a whole different story. Furnished is a whole different story.

Of course I am not a lawyer and I'm sure the above isn't fun. So meh.

[lathany.livejournal.com]

Yes, I don't miss the days when I rented in London. They're trying to bully you into making the place as neat as possible; I don't imagine that they hate you just that they reckon this method'll work.

Best of luck with the garden.

[cjholding.livejournal.com]

I loathe letting agents, when I was renting in North London we were told at our inward inspection that professional cleaners would not be necessary as the property had not been professionally cleaned before we moved in. When we moved out (having spent a week cleaning the house) the outward inspection reported that the property was in need of cleaning and that "just because it wasn't perfectly clean when we moved in didn't mean we could leave it that way."!

The landlords got cleaners in the day they re-entered the property and tried to bill us - this is contrary to our contract which stated that we would be given a selection of quotes to choose from and the opportunity to seek our own contractors. They also charged us for a new oven; which really pissed me off as it was filthy when we moved in and I cleaned it twice. Letting agent basically ignored all our complaints and sided with the landlord.

In light of this if I ever rent again I'll not bother trying to clean the property and just get in commercial cleaners at the end of my tenancy.