Cheshirechappie":p4mvhys3 said:
You can't blame the landlord for the unsociable behaviour of the OP's neighbours.
You can't blame the landlord for the anti-social behaviour of local school-kids.
You can't blame the landlord for the anti-social behaviour of drunks at 4 in the morning.
The roof is another matter, but since the landlord is absent and has left the property's management in the hands of a letting agency, they are responsible for seeing that the property remains properly habitable, and ensuring that the landlord is made aware and will authorise proper repairs.
I have great sympathy for the OP, and very much hope he finds a better place to call home. However - and see absolutely no evidence whatever that the thought had crossed the OP's mind - trashing the place would just put the tenant in a very difficult legal and moral position. It would be an extremely irresponsible path to take, and to suggest it is shameful.
The management isn't in the hands of the letting agent. The landlord manages the property himself. My problem is that he is in no position to do so, living a few hundred miles away with a job that doesn't allow him to put the time and effort in to his side project down here. I think things have got lost in the arguments.
If he's a junior doctor, which he could well be, we might have a few more problems in store in the near future.
I've actually been advised to not organise the work myself, because it could make me liable. The contract expressly states that the landlord is responsible for organising any repairs. I don't know how literally I should be taking that. I'm also reticent to be put in the position where I have to organise payment to a local roofer, by a landlord who lives in Scotland and doesn't reply to emails for a few days because he's so busy.,
I honestly think we've just cheesed off the letting agents we've been attempting to deal with by viewing the other property without their consent. To reiterate, we knew the tenant so it's not unreasonable for us to be familiar with the house. She has multiple pets, and either the letting agent or the landlord had installed a cat flap for her, yet the letting agent told us down the phone that pets weren't allowed. Then when they were showing one of the potential tenants round apparently they were sounding off about how the garden would be perfect for their dog.
At this point, that particular letting agent doesn't know that I'm unemployed (by reason of voluntary redundancy, not because I'm a dossing benefit scrounger. I'm not on benefits.), but nevertheless my girlfriend has a job that more than covers the rent of the places we've been looking at. My best guess is that they think we were trying to avoid paying their finders fee so they've written us off.