When it comes to renting a property, a rental deposit is required before you move in. This is insurance for the landlord in case of damages or unpaid rent. So how can you ensure you get it back?
Depending on the landlord it can be a relatively simple process to get your rental deposit back. They do a check and if all is good they will give it back. However, there can be some landlords that are a bit more thorough. They criticise every little thing no matter how small. These are the landlords you need to give no excuse to. If you do things right they shouldn’t have a reason to keep your rental deposit.
If you are worried about getting your rental deposit back, these tips will ensure you have the best chance to get your deposit back.
Move everything out
The best place to start when preparing to leave your rental is to move everything out, what this does is gives you a clean empty home to look at and see what needs to be done. If you are trying to clean and decorate around a house full of stuff you are more likely to miss things, which could lead to a deposit deduction.
If you haven’t set up to move into your new home yet then you should wait to move things until you have an overlap. So start doing some of the things you want to do to clean and tidy but make sure you leave yourself some overlap from leaving your current home to the new one, otherwise you won’t have time to do anything once you have emptied it.
Make sure to decorate
It is likely that during your tenancy you put up pictures, painted and made changes to the home. With this being the case you need to reverse all of that unless the landlord has specified it can be kept like that, so you need to go around and patch up any nail or screw holes and patch any bigger holes and scrapes that may have been made during your tenancy. You should also do a sweep of the house to check for scrapes and scratches and have those painted over. It is likely when moving things around in the house you may have caught the wall, so updating this and covering it over is one less reason to give the landlord a bit of a deposit.
If you have painted any walls without permission then you should strip these and return them to their original colour, however, if the landlord gave you the go-ahead then this would be fine to leave. Always check with your landlord though and make sure you have it in writing. Take some pictures of where you have repaired and painted to make sure they cannot say it wasn’t done.
Get the place spotless
One of the main reasons tenants will lose some or all of the deposit is because of cleanliness. Usually, when you sign a tenancy agreement it will specify that you need a professional clean throughout the house when moving out. If you want to save some money then you can try and clean to a professional standard yourself, especially if it isn’t that dirty to begin with. However you need to make sure you get it spotless.
If for example the home came with any mats or rugs then hire rug and mat cleaning services to get it done properly. This is true for carpets too as these can be the hardest things to get right when cleaning. You can hire rug and carpet cleaning machines to help with a deep clean. However, even if the carpet is slightly dirty the landlord may still choose to take some rental deposit to cover the cost of a cleaner.
If you are moving out of your rental, take this advice to ensure you get all your rental deposit back. The extra work will be worth it.
