Moving in tips

Do you just call the water company up and request a meter? I found out the house I'm renting does not have one.
Also how does the council "find you" to pay this tax
And if I order sky and don't have a tv license what happens, will the tv just not work?

I was just going to suggest trying to get a water meter if allowed to stateless.  When I lived by myself without a meter it was nearly £50/month.  When I moved in with my husband and his roommate (three adults) on a meter it was £6/month!

Geez . I'm learning the crafty British ways myself unfortunately

The letting agent may sign you up for absolutely crap electric company like Spark. Change it ASAP. They are really expensive! For about 2 weeks of electricity we got charged £75! That's nearly what we pay a month. So frustrating.

Do you just call the water company up and request a meter? I found out the house I'm renting does not have one.
Also how does the council "find you" to pay this tax
And if I order sky and don't have a tv license what happens, will the tv just not work?

You will need to ask the letting agency/landlord if you can have permission to have a water meter installed.  If they say it's okay, yes, you just call up and request one.

The letting agency/landlord will notify the council that you've moved in.  They'll send you a bill.

You'll also receive the details for paying for the TV license when you move in.  Pay this before you do anything else, as if you are found to be using TV and not having paid the license fee there are hefty fines to pay.

  ;Dglad to know it's not just me losing my mind with this #%@$! of an agent

I'm laughing at this thread, because it's all true.
Letting Agents are the devil's work, I swear.  I'm a really easy going person and I get along with so many people and I forgive easily. There are two people on this planet that I absolutely cannot stand and I think are the most evil, power hungry, talk to you like you're 2 years old in small words, dickhead, jackass, manipulative people on the planet (Well, besides Donald Trump, who if I met in person, I'm sure I would have three people on my list).   
The first one is a letting agent and the second is the current chairman of our allotment society.   
This horrible cow of a letting agent ranks numero uno on my list of people who I never, ever, ever, ever want anything to do with ever again.  I could fill pages and pages and pages up of grievances for her. 

I've had a wide variety of experiences renting though.
I had one private landlord, flat obtained through a solicitor, but the landlord handled everything, who was not great.  He didn't service the gas boiler ever, (and is supposed to yearly for safety's sake),  for example. I was in hospital for a week in February. I came home and it was a Friday night and I had no heat or hot water.I phoned him and he made me find an emergency boiler person.  So I did, which made me so angry, but at least he paid for it all.   He had a nasty emergency repair bill where if he actually did anything upfront, would have been easily avoided. 

I rented a flat off Gumtree, on the other hand, private landlord and he was fabulous.  He actually cared about me as a person living in his property and was extremely fair and equitable.   He was so nice too.   
I also rented a room off spareroom,  in a house (1 female, me, and 5 men, that was fun  ), and that landlord was great too.   It was cheap rent, but the house was in good condition and she kept all common areas clean and tidy.  When one of the blokes moved out, she moved me to the best room in the house.

Excellent advice, thank you!

From my painful experience. Please double-check the accuracy of this. moneysavingexpert forums are the best place for lots of details about renting.

As jimbocz said, your deposit should be put into a protection scheme. All high street letting agents should do this. If there is a dispute getting your deposit back you can take it to arbitration in the scheme. They should give you a certificate proving this and you can double-check it by going to the scheme website.

When you move in document everything. Photograph every wall, inside the oven (letting agents obsess of the state of the inside of ovens), state of the lawn, every scratch, ding, location of any furniture, any marks on carpets, etc. Even make a video and upload to YouTube as a private video for safekeeping.

They should give you a document to inventory everything. Here you must list every little scratch, problem, etc. Even list if the wall paint has only been touched up (e.g. where repairs were made, picture hook holes filled and painted, etc.). Be super-picky about the state of the place here. Then sign it, make a copy and give it to them. Keep this copy safe (protip: if you use gmail or similar scan and email a copy to yourself then archive the email). They should send you a copy back that they have signed. This is called a "dual-signed inventory". This document is the key to getting all of your deposit back. Keep this copy safe also.

As I understand it (double-check this), without producing this dual-signed document the landlord is not able to withhold any of the deposit for any reason. This document is the first thing the protection scheme will want to see at arbitration.

When it comes to moving out make sure all repairs are made. E.g. my dogs scratched a glass window at the back door. I had that professionally fixed. If there was any furniture, rugs, etc. make sure to return them to the exact same location as they were when you moved in (yes, I had a landlord try to pin this one on me!). Then take photos of everything and a video, same as before.

When you turn your keys in the letting agent won't even bother to look at the dual-signed inventory, they will just "try it on" and ask you to pay for a bunch of stuff. They will hope that you have long forgotten about that document! Hold your ground. Remind them of what you wrote on the dual-signed inventory. If it's on there and they are complaining then they can't get you to pay for it.

IIRC it is the landlord's responsibility to paint the walls and paint has a lifespan. I believe in a rental it is 3-5 years. So if they try to get to you pay for repainting tell them that the dual-signed inventory shows the poor condition of the wall paint when you moved in, and it's probably at the end of it's lifespan, therefore not your problem.

I never went as far as arbitration because my method I outlined above got me 100% of my deposit back. It took a bit of back and forth but I got there (do everything by email so there is a written record of what was said). I was determined from picking up the keys that I would get the entire deposit back and made it my mission. This is because with the first place we rented moving to the UK we had a bad experience and saw what cretins these people can be.

Reminder - fair wear and tear is expected and not your responsibility.

IIRC if you damaged something and they have to replace it, they can't ask you to pay the full amount. They can only get from you the value remaining. E.g. if it was 10 years old, and expected lifespan is 12 then they can only ask you to pay for 2/12th of the cost (double-check this as I am a bit hazy here).

You need a license, even to watch sky.  It's not connected in any way to your TV though.  TV licensing is managed by some dodgy contractor who simply keeps a database of addresses that could have a TV.  If you don't have a license, they will send increasingly nasty letters and may even send a guy around.  The license inspector has no more authority than the Tesco trolley collector so there's no reason to let him inside if he shows up. 

Just pay it anyway, it supports the BBC. 

Might be worth considering if you actually need Sky unless you are terribly interested in sports.  The free to air programming is free and has everything but sports.  With free to air and Netflix we are all set  and there is no reason to pay Murdoch the tyrant and subsidise a bunch of primma Donna rapists. 

Whew, that turned into a rant.

You are absolutely right about the nonchalance.  Wait until you move out, then all the nonchalance will be gone and they will be inspecting the oven gasket and running their fingers over the door frames. 

Here is a story from the flip side. We rent our house out in Arizona. We have no say in what gets taken out of deposits at the end - all managed for us.

When the last tenants moved out the manager went and took pictures and sent them to us - normal procedure. I usually just quickly scroll through them. This time something caught my eye. Hmmmm... an empty ceiling. What is missing? Ah yes, the ceiling fan. WTF?

I emailed the manager "One of the bedroom ceiling fans is missing!". The reply I get back "oh yes, we saw that, we have deducted the cost and labor to replace it from their deposit already".

For some reason they must have been really attached to that bog-standard Home Depot ceiling fan. Oh well, I guess they bought it for some silly amount once the labor was added in.

Now if they had broken it all they needed to do was report it and we would have ended up paying for a new fan and labor to take care of it! (anything under $250 is automatically fixed without our involvement).

Bizarre.

We took photos of our first place when we moved in and it really saved us. Also, we communicated all our issues to our landlord via email so we had a record. When we moved out and he tried to dock us for all these various things, we had evidence.

Our current landlord is fantastic. He lives next door and is totally on top of everything. A couple weeks after we moved in he came by with a new umbrella for our patio table because he thought the one we had "was looking old." That said, we did have Spark when we moved in and it was almost double what we paid with Eon. I switched back immediately.

I once lived in a rental for just a few months while looking for a place to buy.  We lived there for about 6 months before leaving the place in fine shape.  The dodgy landlord kept avoiding giving us back the deposit with flimsy excuses like he was mailing the check next week, or I could pick it up later and he wouldn't show up. 

Finally, I sent him a "Letter before Action " which is a the last thing you have to send before small claims court.  He magically paid up and I thought he was out of my life. 

A few months later, I get a frantic email from him saying I never paid any rent and therefore owed him £7000 !   Sure enough, the useless agents had never executed the standing order each month. 

I made a point of paying the landlord immediately to show him how a non-scumbag acts.  As much fun as it would have been to delay and annoy him, I just wanted him to go away.

A few months later, I get a frantic email from him saying I never paid any rent and therefore owed him £7000 !   Sure enough, the useless agents had never executed the standing order each month. 

I have no idea what a standing order is but please let it happen to me🙏😃

I have no idea what a standing order is but please let it happen to me🙏😃

It's similar to a monthly direct debit... you set up a monthly standing order with your bank so that your rent is taken out of your account by the landlord on a specified date each month.

You can either set up a standing order yourself with your bank, or the letting agent will hand you a form to fill out with your bank account details so they can set it up for you.

I'm sure you will be blessed with some standing orders while you live here.  In fact, the streets are crowded with "charity workers" who will only be too happy to award you with one.


It might be worth understanding what a direct debit is because just about every institution will pressure you into paying your bills that way.  Often they will even give you a discount for paying that way.  Essentially, it is permission for the water company (or whatever) to go into your bank account and withdraw any amount they like, whenever.  You can imagine that it's very convenient for the companies, and convenient for the people who would rather not pay attention to their bills.  All that hassle is magically taken care of! 

Personally, I avoid direct debits wherever possible.

On the flipside, if you're renting towards the lower end of the scale, the deposit is usually only used for the last few weeks of rent.

I just moved out of studio I lived in for over ten years and the rental agent actually applied the now-forgotten-by-me deposit to cover the last two weeks. He actually went into his files unbidden to find out the amount.

You need a license, even to watch sky.  It's not connected in any way to your TV though.  TV licensing is managed by some dodgy contractor who simply keeps a database of addresses that could have a TV.  If you don't have a license, they will send increasingly nasty letters and may even send a guy around.  The license inspector has no more authority than the Tesco trolley collector so there's no reason to let him inside if he shows up. 

Just pay it anyway, it supports the BBC. 

Might be worth considering if you actually need Sky unless you are terribly interested in sports.  The free to air programming is free and has everything but sports.  With free to air and Netflix we are all set  and there is no reason to pay Murdoch the tyrant and subsidise a bunch of primma Donna rapists. 

Whew, that turned into a rant.

If the British police were half as a fanatical as TV licensing, it would be like we were living in Singapore.

According to their site, if you watch live TV from anywhere in the world - not just the BBC - you need a license. I don't know how'd they tell but....