I think I’ll start with Jimmy the plumber and take it from there. I should say that Jimmy the plumber is also Larry the electrician – he even has two separate business cards. “For all electrical problems call Larry,” he says solemnly. “Anything to do with plumbing, that would be Jimmy’s domain.”
I’ve gone along with this charade since the day I met him, because while neither Jimmy nor Larry seem capable of actually fixing anything, at least he/they have a sense of humour, and you would want a sense of humour to spend time in a rented house these days.
At the end of 2013, Anne Marie Caulfield of the Private Residential Tenancies Board told Morning Ireland listeners about the new trend of "accidental landlords" – but she didn't mention the hordes of accidental tenants, people such as myself and my husband. We only ever planned to rent until we bought something and, as previous homeowners, we signed our first one-year lease with some reluctance.
There are times when we have benefited from the freedom of renting but now, four years later, we are weary and still without any real compass or firm base. There are days when it feels like we're in a scene from Withnail and I, shrieking at real grown-up homeowners: "We've gone on holiday by mistake!"
Grim line drawings
History was a favourite subject of mine in school, and I studied the plight of the Irish tenant over the years. I would stare at those sad textbook illustrations – grim, black line drawings depicting the unfortunate tenants being dragged from their cottages by a bailiff. I felt some relief when I learned about the hard-won "three Fs": fair rent, fixity of tenure and free sale. Easily bored, I would doodle on the pages, drawing nice flowers around the tumbledown cottages, while the demeanour of the tenant seemed to improve with a nicely sketched handbag and sunglasses.
The trouble began with the first house we rented. It was a spacious 1950s build on Dublin’s northside, and, better still, unfurnished except for a chest of drawers. We had struggled to find somewhere suitable and were paying a lot for it, but when my mother came to visit, she took one look around and said, “no insulation”.
She was right, of course. She was so right that we got a gas bill that was more than €1,000. The house was an ice-box in winter, and, with a small baby on the scene, we had to try to heat it. We all wore lots of jumpers and then, when we asked for a rent reduction at the end of a year, we were told the landlord was selling and we had a month to move out.
Ah, but that’s when the fun really began.
According to the PRTB, “Landlords are required to refund the deposit promptly, less any deductions in respect of outstanding rent and damage in excess of normal wear and tear.”
The landlord’s chest of drawers was marked with white rings and this was something I noticed on the day we moved in. Now if I was a clever old fox I would have taken a picture of that but I’m not, am I? I’m more of a bunny rabbit offering cups of tea with coasters to the removal men and thinking everyone in the world is lovely. So when it came to getting our deposit back the landlord wanted to deduct a substantial amount of money for resurfacing the chest of drawers. What a smart way to get a chest of drawers resurfaced.
That would be the first F then: for F sake.
We finally agreed to pay half. Why? Because they were holding our deposit and we had no choice – and no evidence to support our case.“Oh and the hedge at the front of the house needs to be clipped.”
“Say that again?”
‘‘Yes, clip the hedge or we’ll pay a gardener to do it – using your deposit.”
“Cut it to the stump!” I screamed at my husband as he went off brandishing a big hedge clippers.
We moved into our next house to find that the floors had not been cleaned. The rent was high here too because the Tiger cubs who rented it to us were very proud of their recent renovations. They had a wet room and a rain shower – two things that should qualify for a rent reduction, in my opinion. A wet room is from the Roman times and precedes the much more sophisticated bathroom. A wet room is wet. I didn’t want a wet room. I wanted a dry room with a wet bath inside it.
When we decided to go to Oregon for a year, we moved everything into storage and brought in a professional cleaner. And then we asked for our deposit back.
“No, sorry the house is not clean enough – we want to bring in professional cleaners, which we’ll pay for out of your deposit.”
This battle lasted a while too. In the end we had to pay for the house to be cleaned twice – the house that was not clean when we moved into it and the house that had already been professionally cleaned.
The second F: Fox. Clever – get it? Take pictures when you move into the house.
The far-from-free world
So let's say the Irish rental system is a bit screwy. But no, it's not that unique. We moved into a beautiful house in Portland which, to our delight, came fully furnished with linens and crockery. We took extremely good care of it. The heating was magnificent in winter and the couple who rented it to us were two of the kindest people we had ever met.
We got on so well with them that we took them out for dinner to say thanks. One of their cats had broken a butter dish but we had replaced it. The wind had knocked an urn off the deck and we had paid $30 for another one. The carpets needed to be cleaned after we moved out and we had broken the handle on the shower door and told them about it. We are not reckless, uncaring tenants.
We were in Paris when the letter came from Oregon and my poor husband walked into a lamp post when reading it.
It listed out all the things our deposit would now be paying for: Some of the mugs had their patterns worn off: $24. Four dinner plates had a brown mottled effect: $40. There were some grey marks inside the “Indian-motif” bowls: $25. There was a dent in the wall between the kitchen and breakfast area: $40.
And at the end of this lengthy shopping list – that is the only thing I could call it – the owner told us that she had put her foot through a sheet and had considered charging us for that but decided to put that one down to wear and tear.
We went quiet for a few days over this one.Too weak to fight any more, we took our deposit cheque without a squeak.
The third F: four-hundred and sixty three dollars. The amount deducted from our deposit.
We have had three different experiences now of landlords “going shopping” with our deposits. Despite the fact we have always “owned up” to any damages and have expected to pay for those, landlords seem to have a warped idea that the deposit is theirs to spend.
Perhaps it is revenge for all those times I insisted that Larry/Jimmy call out to fix broken stuff. Perhaps it is payback for being a thorn in their sides – you know, asking for an oven door that closes properly and paying the rent religiously every month.
Now excuse me, but as I write Harry the handyman is nailing our new house number to the garden gate.
The final F: find a half decent house and buy it. Then maybe rent it out. Maybe.
Alison Jameson’s new novel, Little Beauty, is published by Doubleday Ireland
