Mock shock

I had a phone call from the estate agents (the ones letting our current house) on Tuesday morning, while I was at work.

"Hello, this is So&So from the estate agents, how are you?" a bright a sunny young lady beamed down the phone at me.

"Er, fine thanks" I said (What now?!)

"I was just wondering if we could should someone round your property this morning. Would that be ok?"

"Er, aren't you supposed to give us a bit more notice than that?" I said (no you bloody can NOT).

"Oh yes, well someone just popped into the shop on the off chance and we just wondered if it would be ok, but if it's not convenient then we'll get them to make an appointment for another time".

"Yes, please do that, it's too short notice". Ha!

While I had this bright sunny young thing on the phone, I explained that the reason I was insisting on the required 24 hours notice was because someone from their office had decided to just let themselves into the house on Saturday. Cue comedy gasp from girl-on-phone. "Oh my gawd!" she said "I'll try and find out who that was, that's not right is it?"

No it bloody is not. At least they have someone working for them who appears to have more than one brain cell. Just.

Conversely, I had another phone call yesterday from the estate agents who are letting the flat we're moving into, past their closing hours, might I add, "just to let you know that our website is down at the moment so you won't be able to access any of your reference application details, but we're working on it now and we'll let you know when it's back up and running". So polite and helpful - as far as estate agents go, I love Location Location!

More estate agent drama

Second blog post of the day...but I'm so angry I just have to share this!

I was slobbing around in my comfy clothes (you know, the tracksuit bottoms and grubby old t-shirt that you wouldn't ever dream of going out in) and had settled down at my desk to do some work (I'm doing a spot of freelance writing at the moment). B and H left at 4am this morning to go on holiday to Sweden and K is rarely in these days as she's been staying with her boyfriend, so I had the whole house to myself to enjoy the peace and get on with my articles. At about 3pm, I was disturbed by the sound of the front door opening and closing. Strange...

I went out on to the landing to see two women standing in my hallway! "Er, who are you?!" I asked! One of the women looked shocked and embarrassed to see me there and explained that she was from the estate agents and was just showing someone around the house. I had my angry face on (made even more terrifying by the lack of makeup and unbrushed hair) so she hastily added that she'd tried to call all 4 tenants and had got no reply, so she'd got the keys from Mr. N's parents next door and let herself in.

Now there is more than one thing wrong here. Firstly, I had not received any missed calls from anyone, so she clearly had not tried all 4 tenants. Secondly, even if she had called all 4 of us, she clearly hadn't spoken to any of us, so how does this make it ok to get the keys from next door and let herself in anyway?! SO angry! Although this may only be our house for another two weeks, it's still our house, and we should be the ones who decide who comes in. It creeps me out to think that this may not have been the first time people have been looking at the house without us knowing, too! This is just the first time they've been caught.

I gave the agent my number and she called me when she got back to the office. She checked her records and the people she'd been trying to get hold of to get permission for the viewing were Lucy, Caroline and Wendy, whoever the hell they are! She asked if she could show someone else round later and I agreed as although I shouldn't, I did feel a bit sorry for her - she must be new as I've never seen her before. However, I'm regretting ever feeling the tiniest bit sorry for her now as she didn't show up for this second viewing! How can people be so rude!?

Popularity stakes

Three reasons to celebrate!

1) Landlordshelluk has over 100 followers on Twitter! Only a *few* of these are spammers - most of them are people in property, student organisations and people with landlords from hell! :)

2) Google Analytics tells me that we have had 74 unique visitors to the site since we started less than a month ago! It's a small number when you consider the millins of people on the internet, but I'm pretty pleased nonetheless! 74 people have looked at my little site! I *know* the site isn't very good yet, (suggestions please!) and one day I'll find a great blog template to jazz it up a bit, but we'll get there!

3) My landlord has finally given a reference to our new estate agent so we're all go to move in on 15th August! Whoopeeeee!!! :D

Answer the bloody phone!

The landlord is driving us round the bend. Not only did he allegedly not know that were moving out in August instead of October, he's now dodging calls from our estate agents who are trying to get references from him for our tenancy application! He's never been easy to get hold of - he almost never answers the phone, and on the rare occasions that he does (probably because he got distracted and answered without checking the caller ID...) he makes up some excuse that he's "really busy and can I call you back?".

Which he doesn't do for days or even weeks.

His mobile number is the only contact information we have for him. We don't have another number and we don't even know where he lives. As a last resort, we do know that his parents live next door to us, but we don't really want to hassle them because they don't (or shouldn't!) have anything to do with his being our landlord and they're pretty elderly too. We need to get the reference from him soon otherwise we won't be able to move in to the new wonder-flat! Just 16 days to go now!

Independent, impartial legal advice: always read the contract!

Today B got a voicemail message on her phone from the elusive Mr. N! He said he had "only just" got her message (from 2 weeks ago...) and was confused because he thought we were moving out in October, not August!

What a complete prat.

As I may have already said, when we first moved into the property, there were 3 of us, and we signed a contract for a year, which would have taken us through to October 2009. However when K, our fourth housemate moved in in January, we had to sign a new contract (no idea why they can't just add her to existing one!). After the shenanigans that the estate agents had put us through the first time we were unwilling to stay in the property for another whole year and so only signed up for 6 months. Bloody Mr. N SIGNED this contract so it should have come as no surprise whatsoever that we are now moving out in August. Except he clearly didn't read it. What a douchebag.

Happily though, we have found a new flat in Stoke Newington and put down a holding deposit! It's above a shop on the "ever-popular and trendy Stoke Newington Church Street" and so far so good with the estate agents too! The lovely Ava of Location Location informed us today that the landlord had accepted our (reduced rent!) offer and is willing to meet all of our conditions including replacing the washing machine and general maintenance. Hurrah! Really looking forward to moving and hope the new landlord isn't as idiotic as the current one!

Student security

Just a quick little snippet today from my friend Jenny as it's way past my bed time...

"My student house in Coventry got burgled in April 2007...landlady didn't fix the broken back door until May 2008!"

Wow. That's actually ridiculous.

Beware the Gumtree property scammers!

I feel like I'm the last one to know about this scam, but I'm going to post it anyway!

H and I were doing some scouting around on Gumtree to look for flats and houses to rent and came across this one advert offering a 3 double bedroom house, with all mod cons, garden, all bills and furnishings included for £820 per calendar month - in Angel, N1. Now, for those of you who might not be aware, Angel is a very trendy and classy area of North London. Zone 1 = expensive. The sort of place where there is a Waitrose and all the ladies shop in Monsoon or Whistles and "do lunch". The rich daddy of a friend of mine is renting out a one bedroom flat in Angel for £1400 per week. This puts the flat mentioned in this advert into perspective. It seemed like an absolute bargain and too good to be true! Well of course, it was.

Thinking there was a typo in the ad, H emailed the landlord to confirm that the rent really was this low and not £1820 per month, or even £820 per week. This is the reply she got...

"Hi,
My name is Olivia and I have the flat for rent and I’m a private landlord.
The rent is 820£ per month including all bills electricity, water, gas,etc and the concil tax .You can rent for short time or long time as you need to stay even for 1 or 2 years. The payment in advance will be for 3 months(2460£) and you don't need pay the security deposit..In case you want it, let me know so we can arrange the transaction.Rental price is lower because i want to rent the apartment fast as possible.
Everything it's like new in the flat and the flat is fully furnished, newly refurbished and also benefits from wood flooring. You have internet connection, phone, washing machine with dryer,tube station only five minutes,private garden, cable TV and most important parking place.Please let me know what your intentions are....when you intend to move in?how long you want the contract to last for?how many people would be living in it and some other things you feel i should know.
Get back to me"

I feel a bit silly now because when H forwarded this to me, I was like, "hell yeah!!". A pretty steep deposit, but worth a look, surely? H was one step ahead of me. She replied to "Olivia" and asked if we could arrange a viewing...

The scam began to unfold. "Olivia" was based in Liverpool, allegedly, and had had "too many people wasting her time and money spent on train fare to and from the North", so to show that we were seriously interested in the flat, she asked us to deposit £500 into a Western Union account for a family member, and to email her the receipt as proof. Thought: does anyone ever use Western Union for anything legit? At its very mention, alarm bells start ringing. A simple Google search for "gumtree property scam" revealed that this happens quite a lot and if money was in fact deposited into a Western Union account, this "Olivia" needs only to take the receipt to any Western Union outlet and claim the money for herself, probably from Nigeria or wherever he/she is based [scams always seem to come from Nigeria for some reason!].

Not surprisingly, the amazing flat in Angel doesn't actually exist. Nice try, Olivia, or whatever your real name is!

It's a legal matter, baby

The title is a line from a song by The Who, which is what I am now humming to myself as I write...

Interesting - and of course, rantworthy - developments today! Firstly, a quick anecdote to further endorse the stereotype that all estate agents are arseholes (as if we really need to emphasise that!). Today, at 6pm, my housemate H and I were supposed to go and view a property which we were kinda hopeful about as, from the advert at least, it seems to meet all our criteria. At 5.55pm I was still on a bus and wouldn't be arriving in Stokey for another 10 minutes or so - H was in the same situation. Out of courtesy, cos I'm nice like that, I called the estate agent to let her know that we would be a little late...

"Oh...didn't you get my message? I wasn't able to pick up the keys from the landlord today and won't be able to do it now until 11am tomorrow morning".

In other words, she forgot. Neither me or H had had a voicemail, a missed call or even a text message to say that the agent wouldn't be coming. RUDE!!!

Anecdote 2 for today, which is likely to be a series over the next few weeks, months or maybe even years, is that we have decided to take legal action against our landlord [fanfare please!]. Now, I have to admit, I am a little uneasy about this so let me explain further.

The rent for our house is £1500 plus all bills. When we moved in there were only 3 of us, so this was stretching our budget quite a bit, but my friend K moved into our spare room which eased the burden of our outgoings considerably. When we signed the new contract upon K's arrival to the house, we noticed something unusual...our contract said that the rent was "£1500 per calendar month, inclusive of bills excepting electricity". Hang on...!? We queried the estage agent (who, remember, from previous posts, is a retard) and she was adamant that the contract was correct. "I mean, it is the norm for bills to not be included, so we have obviously had to draw up a special contract for this arrangement", she said. We had already been messed around for too long by this woman, so for an easy life we signed the contract.

When our landlord made one of his surprise visits a few weeks later, we showed him the contract, which he also had signed, and he was as surprised as us to discover that he was meant to be paying our bills. I guess both parties here were in the wrong in a way as we hadn't read the contract carefully enough, but from our point of view, we had nothing to lose! Although he seemed a little concerned, he has never done anything about it. We have continued to pay our bills, and he's continued to take our rent.

Now, sick to the back teeth of landlords, estate agents and dishonest people in the property industry, we've decided to try and claim our bill money back. H found this website: https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk/csmco/index.jsp, which, for a small fee, seems to suggest it will be pretty easy and painless for us to get our money back. Any thoughts, guys? What would you do?

Estate agency aggro, from the staff canteen

Once one person starts complaining about their landlords or estate agents, everyone's got a "well my landlord..." story to tell. So it was while I was sat in my staff canteen today when I was recounting to my colleagues of our lack of success (so far!) in finding a suitable property to rent...

Actually, so far, we haven't got any dramatic horror stories to tell about this particular round of househunting since we've only actually looked at one place so far, but even talking to estate agents is demoralising, depressing and frustrating. Why is it, when you phone an agency to ask if they have anything suitable and you painstakingly recite your requirements, they then appear not to have heard a word you said and offer you something completely different? For example, we're looking for a 3 double bedroom house or flat in Stoke Newington (North London). It needs to be furnished, preferably have a living room or some communal space, and our budget is around £300 per week. So I phone an agency, explain this to them and they immediately come back with, "Well I have a 2 bed unfurnished flat in Lewisham (for non-Londoners, that's waaaaay south) for £400 a week, is that ok?". Maybe that's an exaggeration, but one thing estate agents really need to learn to do is actually offer some decent customer service. For God's sake listen to your clients and if you haven't got what they're looking for, say so, offer to keep your eye out for properties that match their specifications and actually do it in a helpful way!

One of my workmates, who also happens to be looking for a 3 double bedroom flat or house in Stoke Newington, told me today of one incident whereby his flatmate was taken to a property to view it, only to be told by the tenant, who was home at the time, that he had only lived in the property for a week - the flat had already been let! Or the case of another tenant who raised a complaint because agents kept letting themselves in at all hours of the day to show people around - without an appointment, might I add. Since she worked from home and had a small child to look after, she was not best pleased!

There seems to be no end to the suffering caused by people in the property letting business. We want to hear your stories! Join the rant!

Electrifying!

Today's post comes courtesy of Ruth who had this little anecodote to share about her student landlord...

"We had water pouring through the the light fitting from an upstairs flat and the landlord said, "Can you pull the light fitting to see if it's live and/or damaged?" - he then refused to pay for the damage as rain was an 'act of god' ...NUTTER!"

Crikey! It's one thing to ask someone to try electrocuting themselves to see if there's a problem with the electrics, quite another to then leave your tenants with a potentially lethal fault and refusing to do anything about it! Nutter indeed!

One month to go...

We told our landlord this week that we're moving out when our current lease expires on the 15th August. As our contract didn't state that we had to give a minimum notice period, we were tempted not to give one, but being the nice girls that we are, we've given him a month's notice.

When I say we "told" him, I mean that we phoned him and left a message on his answering machine. He almost never answers his phone. Fair enough, he's probably working if we call him during the day, but I think it's rather more a case of he either can't be bothered to talk to us, or he's actively avoiding talking to us in case we want something fixing. Which he won't fix anyway. Either way, he hasn't bothered phoning us back so he obviously doesn't care that much! In a way, neither do we, but we do want our deposits back pretty soon!

I ask myself, what kind of a business person is he, or indeed all other landlords from hell? Mr. N is a slick, flashy financial advisor who drives a silver Audi TT with a personalised number plate and owns several properties. He's clearly doing very well for himself in monetary terms so you'd think he might know a thing or two about customer service! If I were him, I'd want to keep nice tenants like us. Apart from constantly nagging him to get things fixed (which we wouldn't have to do if he actually did it) we're model tenants. Our rent is always paid on time, we keep the house tidy, we've never had loud parties and in fact, we've actually improved the house ten-fold from the state it was in when we moved in. If I were him, I'd want to secure our tenancy for as long as possible so that the house wasn't left empty, I continued to make money, and my tenants continued to have a happy home. I don't understand the logic!

Oh well, I guess it's his loss! Let the flat-hunt begin! Here's hoping the next landlord is not a landlord from hell... :S

Twitter-tastic!

I'm so excited that Landlords From Hell UK now has 50 followers on Twitter! That might not sound like very exciting news to you, but seeing as I'm new to all this blogging and twittering malarky, I think that's pretty good progress for a blog that is only 1 week old! That clever little thing Google Analytics tells me that we have had 30 unique visitors too, so it looks like word is slowly but very surely spreading about the site. I'm hoping to get a Facebook fan page up and running soon so stay tuned for news of when that goes live.

In the meantime, please do email in your stories about your horrific house-owners to landlordsfromhelluk[at]hotmail[dot]co[dot]uk, sign up for the email alerts and comment on the blog posts. Your comments don't have to be related to the blog post itself, just come and join the rant!

A true landlord from hell!

This morning our landlord's mum was mowing our patio at 7.30am. Yes you did read that correctly. Mowing our patio.

Today however, we're celebrating our first rant from someone other than me! Well, I'm not sure if "celebrate" is really the right term to use as my landlord tales seem almost pathetic in comparison to poor old Giddy Pyjamas! GP writes:

"Here is the following rant about another very bad human being also known as 'the landlord'...;

1 - Firstly, when myself and housemates were shown around the property it was in the middle of being renovated. We were shown an identical property that was finished and supposedly to the standard to which ours would also be finished. To make sure that this would be the case, we asked him to enclose photographs in the contract of the finished property as proof of what we would expected when we came to move in. Six months later we collected the keys to find the property only partially finished and not up to the standard as promised. Since then, the landlord has promised to finished the renovations and improve the standard it is currently in. We are due to move out next week and none of the promised jobs have been fulfilled.

2 - It was stated in the contract that we would recieve new beds to replace the - literally - blood-stained mattresses" (Eeeewwww...) "that were already in the house. Funnily enough these have never been replaced...

3 - When we were shown around the house we had a basic, but quite large garden that seemed just pefect for those hot summer days. Unfortunately, it seems we live next door to the landlord's parents and our garden is now the driveway for their six cars!" (What IS it with landlord's parents thinking that they own the place too?!) "Despite this, the carparking spaces they have in place of their own back garden, plus the two spaces at the front of the house, numerous members of the family are constantly using our own designated parking spaces, leaving us to park several streets away.

4 - Strangely enough, we met some people who lived in our house several years before us who told us stories of how they left the house after their exams. They all decided to return for one last night out before their contract ran out, only to find members of the landlord's family living in the house and using their personal belongings!" (Of all the cheek...!) "This, along with other matters regarding them gaining back their deposits, ended up in the landlord being taken to court. Suffice to say we don't hold out much hope when asking for our own deposits back...!

5 - The day we moved in, there was torrential rain which resulted in a leak above the window in my bedroom. The landlord's solution? He stuffed it with toilet paper and has been that way ever since..." (Ha! Good one!)

"6 - It took the landlord over a week to sort out the broken radiators during the bad snow storms we had earlier on in the year. Needless to say it got so cold in the house that all the doors expanded and they no longer close properly.

7 - The landlord once barged into the house demanding to know why we hadn't paid enough rent. Not only is the man extremly rude, but it would seem that he can't do Math either.

8 - Apparently it's our fault that the ceiling in the bathroom is COMPLETELY covered in mould due to the fact that the extractor fan does not work, along with the smallest window you can imagine not being sufficient enough ventilation. Another one of his brilliant suggestions? Keep the bathroom door open when taking a shower. Hmmm."

Good God. My sincerest sympathies go out to you Giddy Pyjamas! Thanks for sharing your story. I'm no legal expert but I would say you need to document as much of this as possible and back it up with evidence - photos, documents etc - to make sure you've got as strong a case as possible if (or maybe when!) you have to take this loser to court. If anyone out there has some advice for our poor ranter, then please do leave a comment on the blog!

Property mismanagement

It's not just landlords who get the LFH-UK once-over here, oh no, estate agents are also definitely worthy of a rant or two! I guess we're "lucky" that the estate agency who dealt with the rental of our property don't manage it - they only advertised the place, drew up the tenancy agreement and, of course, collected their extortionate "administration fee" for their troubles. (Pah). If they managed the place as well it would mean that we would have to talk to them a whole lot more which would definitely start turning our hair grey! Here are some reasons why we all came very close to checking into therapy to cope with the headaches that our estate agent put us through...

1. The estate agent who showed us round the house said that we would be able to move in within 2 weeks. We waited a month (which was not good for my housemate B who started a PhD course in London during that time - 2 hours from where she was living - and so she had to commute for hours every day to get to and from uni while the agency faffed with our paperwork).
2. As previously mentioned in "The Parent Trap", one of the selling points of the house was that it had "a spacious garden". After we'd moved in, the landlord told us we weren't allowed to use it.
   
3. The administrative assistant, M, is unbelievably annoying. Yes, that does deserve a whole numbered point to itself, but read on for clarification.
4. M continually phoned, emailed and generally harrassed our parents at all hours of the day to send her the landlord references. Yes, you read that correctly. She wanted our parents to say that we were good tenants. Maybe her parents can't stand her - and we do sympathise - but ours definitely love us so a reference seems a little silly.
5. M continually phoned, emailed and generally harrassed us to send in our tenancy applications (when we had already filled them out in front of her in the shop), our bank references (which I for one had scanned and emailed her at least 3 times) and employment references (even though we had repeatedly told her that none of us were employed).
6. M continually phoned, emailed and generally harrassed B's stepfather for an employment reference - he's self employed - and once she finally got that through her thick head she said she would have to "bend the rules" to allow him as a guarantor. Weird and pointless.
   
7. When our 4th housemate, K, moved into our spare room a few months after the rest of us had moved in, they made us sign a new tenancy agreement (we only renewed it for the minimum of 6 months this time!), for another £100. Just for printing off a new sheet of paper. Sheesh.
   
8. During said signing of this £100-piece-of-paper, we expressed our disappointment with the agency and said that at the end of our tenancy we would not be looking to repeat business with them. Any normal business-person would be quite concerned that their customers were not happy and might try to alleviate the situation, you might think? Instead we got branded "difficult tenants", were told to "stop making these comments" and that "she didn't need this kind of hassle first thing in the morning" - tell us about it, M!!
9. We politely asked if they could remove the To Let signs from our house. We were told that the landlord had specifically requested that they be left up. Someone was lying as Mr. N told a different story!
10. M cannot spell. This is one of my pet hates anyway so is always sure to rile me, but come on, if you are an estate agent, surely you should be able to spell key vocabulary such as "guarantoor" and "tennancy"?!

Anyone out there got any other snippets of estate agent lunacy? Comment on the blog or email me at landlordsfromhelluk[at]hotmail[dot]co[dot]uk!

Rub a dub dub, mould in the tub

I thought that this blog was looking a bit sparse so today I'm treating you to some photos of our bathroom, you lucky people!

Our bathroom is just one of the many reasons we are mad at our landlord. When the estate agent was showing us around the house before we moved in, there were quite a few things we pointed out that needed fixing before we moved in. One was the fact that the carpets were desperate need of a deep-clean. Another was that the previous tenants had left all kinds of rubbish behind. Still another was that the bathroom window was cracked and needed to be replaced. "Oh yeah, no problem, that'll all be sorted before you move in" our estate agent assured us. (Little did we know then that no-one from that particular North London-based property shop was to be trusted, but you live and learn!).

Needless to say, none of these things had been resolved when we moved in and, what's more, we resorted to cleaning all the previous tenants' crap up ourselves as Mr. N "didn't have time to do it". Thanks a lot! We kept pestering him about the bathroom window though, as not only was it cracked and therefore dangerous, but it was also locked and we had no keys to open it. With our pathetic extractor fan we just knew that before long the bathroom would be an unmanageable mould-fest....Well, the photo top-left gives you an idea of what the bathroom looks like now. That lovely green stain on the window-sill isn't spilled shampoo...

Mr. N's excuse was that he was busy renovating another of his properties and so wouldn't be able to get anyone to help us for a few weeks. With some pestering, and after firmly pointing out that his current tenants should be his priority, not an empty house, he finally draughted in his dodgy mate Nick the Greek to repaint the bathroom, but even the Nick said "course, this is justa cuvverrup job really. What ya needta do is get that winda fixed really, uvvawise all that mould'll just come back". A true modern-day prophet, that Nick.

Tweet tweet!

Just two days in and things here at LFH-UK are going rather well...Welcome to our first RSS feed subscriber - why not leave a comment, introduce yourself and join the rant!?

We're also pleased to report that Landlords From Hell UK has now jumped on the Twitter bandwagon and thanks to the widgeteers at Blogger, we now have a little Twitter update widge over there on the left...<<< The main blog will always be here but I'll post tweets whenever there's a new post, so come on tenants, join us...

Finally for today, we also have an email address where you can email us if you'd like to share your mental rental stories. Tell us who you are, what bugs you about your landlord and, just out of interest, how you found us!

landlordsfromhelluk [at] hotmail dot co dot uk

Please don't spam us!

The Parent Trap

When my housemates and I first looked around the house we now call home, we couldn't believe our luck. For a large 4 double bedroom end-of-terrace house in London's Zone 2, with a garden, patio and not one but two reception rooms, the rent is cheap (for London, that is). Sure, it has creaky floorboards and the decor was pretty basic, but for just £85 each per week, we were mad not to snap it up. So snap it up we did and after the inevitable wranglings with the incompetent estate agency staff, we eventually moved in, took a trip to Ikea and spruced the place up lovely. Dreaming of happily ever after, we promptly set about planning the housewarming party...

Then we met our landlord, Mr. N, for the first time. On the face of it, he seemed nice enough, if a bit slick. Sharp suit, Craig David-like trimmed facial hair, an Audi with a personalised numberplate. Cool. "Hi girls, nice to meet you, here's my number if you need to call me and here's my bank details so you can transfer your rent into my account". Straight to the money talk, but that was to be expected, I guess. "By the way, my parents live next door and the garden out the back belongs to them. You can use the patio though".

Er, what?!

Number one: Mr. N's parents live next door. This was bad news. Were they going to spy on us? Would they complain about noise? Would they rat out on us if our boyfriends stayed longer than a couple of nights or if we didn't put our bins out on time?

Number two: that's our garden! The estate agent used it as one of the many selling points of the house and, more importantly, we had grand plans for a vegetable patch! Patio schmatio!

The housewarming was off.

What could we do? It's unusual ethics but Mr. N owns both houses so I guess he can allocate the outside space however he likes. I suppose until the summer arrived (just a mere week or so ago) we didn't really miss the large green space to the rear of our property anyway, but now BBQ season is here, all we want is a nice sit down on the lawn and perhaps a spot of croquet. No fair.

So imagine our surprise when, last Monday, we returned home from work to find a big white marquee covering not only the lawn-which-is-but-isn't-ours, but also our beloved, sacred patio! Not just a tent, but two of those enormous catering marquees they use for weddings and the like, not just on our patio, but completely blocking off our back door exit as well as covering the window to my housemate's downstairs room. On the hottest day of the year so far, she'd probably miss the ability to open the window for some air, not to mention the total lack of privacy.

Now, it turns out that the marquee was being used for a funeral wake (so I felt a bit bad. But only a bit), and it was only up for a couple of days, but the fact that we were not asked if it was ok to put it there, nor even warned that it would be there and for how long, and for what use, is just downright rude. My housemate summed it up perfectly when she phoned Mr. N to complain and he replied with a very unconvincing "Oh I'm sorry, I told them not to put it there...". In her words, "Yeah right, he was probably beating his chest and crying tears of blood in lament for our lost living space".

Ugh.

Welcome to Landlords From Hell UK!

I hate landlords. Just because they had some spare cash back in the 80's to buy a crumbling three-bed ex-council terrace or ten doesn't mean that they have to be complete arseholes to their tenants. We can live with the sawdust-stuffed sofas, the hessian sack-based carpets and chintzy curtains, but there is no need for us to tolerate central heating that doesn't get fixed for 3 months during the winter, taps that drive us insane with their incessant dripping or unexpected inspections the night after a party.

I've decided to start this blog about my landlord woes with three aims:
1) To get it all off my chest and have a bloody good bitch about my shoddy landlord;
2) To allow others to do the same;
3) To become a really popular cult blog with hundreds or even thousands of followers that makes me famous and ultimately, for the good of humanity, helps to raise the standard of the UK rental market by forcing landlords to rethink their attitudes and improving living conditions for all.

Join me.