Deposits have become a tax on tenants.(Property)

Publication: Spectator

Publication Date: 26-JUN-04

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COPYRIGHT 2004 The Spectator Ltd. (UK)

As the kind of man who spends happy afternoons re-arranging his tea towels and dusting his bibelots, I laugh in the face of landlords' inspections, and now that my tenancy is ending it would stretch even an estate agent's inventiveness to place the least charge or lien on my 500 [pounds sterling] deposit. Wouldn't it?

The experience of two million private tenants suggests that I may rue my sanguinity. Nearly 800 [pounds sterling] million of tenancy deposits are held without statutory protection, and figures from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister show that 127,000 tenants a year have more than 20 [pounds sterling] million unfairly withheld by landlords. Typically, it is claimed that tenants leave their rentals in...

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