Advice

The Skulls

Hi all; first of all i hope this is in the right forum if not the Mods please feel to move as appropriate. I'm looking for advice for something that recently happened to me my wife & family; we rented a house in Dublin in November 2010 & signed a 12 month lease however not long after we moved in we noticed some minor issues in need of repair. The house alarm kept going off at night despite the fact we weren't using it at all, cue call to the letting agent who after a week of receiving calls from us sent an engineer to sort the problem. Engineer left but 2 days later theres another fault with the alarm (really old system according to the engineer), cue another week of phone calls; alarm eventually sorted. Cooker stops working Xmas week so after a few days we got a new cooker installed so top marks to letting agent there.
Then fuses start blowing when certain items would be plugged in to use e.g. kettle, bottle steriliser etc. After a month of hearing nothing we eventually get a visit from an electrician who spoke to my wife (i work shift) who told her that the wiring in the whole house would eventually need to be redone within 6 months but it was ok for now. Then we noticed some discolouration on the bathroom ceiling above the bath but figured it was just a little damp & nothing to worry too much about. Until my wife was bathing our toddler & flakes of paint & other detritus started falling into the bath! We immediately rang the letting agent as we were afraid the ceiling would eventually burst whilst one of us would be under it at some stage. No answer, fair enough he can't answer every call so we emailed him & left him a detailed message about the situation, we heard nothing. I myself went to his office after a fortnight in case he was on holiday but i was told he was out of the office & they didn't know when he'd be back. Its only now i feel as though the staff in the office were fobbing me off.
After 6 (thats right) of absolutely NO contact from the letting agent we sent him an email asking if he could ring one of us with an update; that email was sent at 10am, at 3pm we got an email saying the landlord (whom we never met) required the property back & was giving us 35 days notice. Needless to say we were stunned & gobsmacked. My wife was inconsolable as she put so much effort into turning it into a home. We immediately started looking for somewhere else to live a found a place within the locality, however to pay our deposit we needed our deposit back from the letting agent; he eventually coughed up about 2/3's of the money as he said the landlord stated he was owed 6 extra days rent from us (untrue) & he wold be deducting these monies from our deposit.
When i informed the letting agent that what he was doing was illegal he hung up on me. We moved our stuff out, got our money; borrowed the balance from my mother (thanks Mam;)), & moved into another place. Less than 10 days later i see the same property up for let on a well known lettings website & i'm a bit annoyed to say the least. It now appears quite evident the property was not required for a family member to reside in (the reason given to us for notice being served), also in the event that the property comes back onto the rental market i am supposed to get 'first refusal' which i have not. My question is what can i to about this? I want some form of redress for this? i don't want this guy to get away with this & do it to somebody else, especially in these economic times. We were registered with the PTRB thankfully & i have emailed them today but i'm just wondering does anyone here have any advice on my rights & entitlements & what my next step should be?

Thanks for reading & my apologies for such a long post.

quozl

Talk to threshold.ie and then continue your conversation with the PRTB.

First obvious thing is that you signed a 12 month lease so therefore he cannot give you notice to leave, even for the reason of allowing a family member to move in. That IS a reason for terminating a part4 lease but you didn't have a part 4 lease. The fact that it was then advertised again for rent would have made it not an acceptable reason even for a Part 4 lease.

I think it is illegal eviction as you did not know your rights and the landlord lied to you about what your rights are. I am definitely not a lawyer so talk to threshold and then make a complaint to the PRTB.

I would also make a complaint to the PRTB about the witholding of your deposit. There are specific reasons a landlord can withold a deposit, considering your post I doubt that he has given one of them, and proof of it. The burden of proof is on the landlords side, especially if he broke a fixed term lease!

TBH, Threshold and the PRTB will tell you where you stand much better than an internet forum. Good on you for not taking it lying down.

bensonx

well first of all you shoulnt have left the house when they gave you 35 days 'notice', but you have already so no point saying that except for future reference, irrelevant but i bet i can guess who the letting agent was.
They cant treat people like this and you have a strong case if you wanted to bring one, get onto threshold and citizens information, they had no right to evict and defo no right to keep your deposit! get threshold to send a letter on your behalf, should sort it out, dont accept this treatment from anyone!