Q. I’m renting a house through a local agent and sharing with two others, problem is one of the sharers now wants to leave but both myself and the remaining sharer want to stay. The issue we have now though is that the sharer that’s vacating wants his deposit back, but this is held in the TDS so I’m really not sure what happens. The other issue is that he has also caused considerable damage to the flooring in his room and we are worried that we are going to be charged dilapidations for this on the check out when we do decide to leave; hence should we even let him have the deposit at this stage? Can you advise?
A. House sharing can be great fun but if it goes wrong it can be a nightmare. The fact that you are renting through an agent is great as they will have placed your deposit for safe keeping in the TDS (Tenancy Deposit Scheme). The Tenancy Deposit Scheme is an insurance backed deposit protection and dispute resolution service run by the Dispute Service and builds on a scheme that has been running since 2003. The new scheme allows landlords and agents to hold onto deposits. The deposit could only be released once all 3 of you vacate the property as a checkout would need to be carried out first to record the condition of the property to ascertain whether any dilapidations would need to be deducted. With that in mind I would suggest that you only really have two choices, either the two of you remaining at the property reimburse him his share of the deposit now on his departure and then of course you would recover it at the end of the tenancy. This of course does not sound ideal in this particular scenario since you believe he has caused some damage to the property so this would need to be accounted for. Your only other option would be that you all vacate the property, have the deposit refunded and then move back in with a new contract in just the two of your names. Complicated as this all might sound it is the only fair way moving forward bearing in mind that the TDS was set up in the first place because of the amount of Landlords running off with the tenants deposit as well as there not being a fair system in place to agree dilapidations. Of course situations like yours will flag up grey areas in the scheme but there is always a satisfactory solution available as in this case albeit not always idyllic.