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Etat des lieux - how can I challenge one?
Hi
I recently moved out of a house in Ixelles that I lived in for three years. The Etat des lieux was undertaken by a nominally 'independent' expert but was in fact chosen by the landlord - something I didn't realise when I was new to Bxl when I moved in.
Anyway, the final report on moving out calculates the costs at higher than the actual deposit and the landlord is demanding payment.
This would be fair if I had in fact treated the place badly but, beyond the normal wear and tear of everyday living, the place was in a pretty good state.
The expect has basically exaggerated everything, is wanting exorbitant cleaning charges and is claiming for stuff, like wear to the floor, that definitely comes under 'normal use'.
The question is, what do I do? Does anyone know the mechanism for challenging the report?
All advice greatfully received,
Expensive way? (quick) Hire your own expert.
Cheap way? (very long) Take pictures of everything, make a formal complaint about the expert to his professional body, and take the landlord to the Juge de Paix. (The "expert" and the landlord split the profits...)
Remember, damage is covered by the compulsory insurance you had to take out, so get talking to your insurers. Any genuine damage that has been caused to the property must have been accidental, therefore covered by your insurance.
Contact TestAchats. They have a free legal department to deal with problems like this. Make sure that you have all documents available such as a copy of the lease and copy of the original etat de lieux.
Chances are that any complaint about the expert will be a waste of time. Rather than him being wrong or exaggerating, the chances are he's just being extremely picky about every little sign of you having actually lived in the place, which is his job. Landlords in Belgium expect the place back with no sign of you actually having lived there. And of course, any work to rectify signs of you having lived there will need to be put right by expensive professionals. Despite claims by J that tenants are so much better protected in Belgium than in the UK, this is the reality. Pay up and move on.
Wear and tear isn't accepted here. They will for example calculate a repInt value based on a percentage of the years since last painted. We once repainted a room with verbal permission to change it. This was grey not white the paint was so old, we changed it to a pale baby blue and guess what on exit the landlord tried to ask us to pay for it to painted white again!
You can refute it if you want do so in writing and get a receipt for registration of the letter. Landlords here like to think all tenants are rich expats and get as much cash as they can. Our last one for example tried to charge us €2000 for trimming the hedges 50% of which were in the neighbours garden. We kept asking them to explain how they calculated this and in the end they never did so we still never paid them. They sent us a solicitors letter and we simply replied when you can explain how it was calculated we will pay the share that's ours because the hedge your demanding we should have cut wasn't on that property. Haven't heard back after that
Also cleaning they charged us because it wasn't done professionally but it was spotless and all the curtains had been dry cleaned and we're still in bags to prove it.
You know what? Given my experience of renting in Belgium, I will enter any rental contract on the basis that the deposit is gone. Never again will I try to do the right thing because it's simply not cost effective. I spent a week makiing sure my last rental was beyond reproach when I left after 5 years. Nope, several hundred required to pay for some grass growing through klinkers. Unreal. That said, I'm not fooled twice. She only found the damage to the garage door after we signed the papers and I put the door down to lock up.
The Etat des lieux de sortie is measured against the one which was done when you rented the property. You did not say whether there was one. If there was none, then you're stuffed and have no proof of the state of the premises at the beginning. So don't start a fight you cannot finish. Learn and move on.
"Wear and tear isn't accepted here"
Wear is. Tear isn't. Tear is accidental or deliberate damage, and is a charge to the tenant. Wear is always a cost to the landlord.
"Our last one for example tried to charge us €2000... Haven't heard back after that"
That is because the only way of enforcing it as a debt is through the courts. And it will get thrown out, so whilst it's "worth" trying it on to see if you'd pay up, it will never stand up to proper legal scrutiny.
The real problem, for both landlord and tenant, it that the party who is legitimately due money has to take the other party through the courts (juge de paix) to get redress. Given that this takes considerable time and effort (though it's not particularly complicated), people often cough up just to be done with it, and unscrupulous landlords exploit that.
If there was no etat de lieux done on entry, surely the landlord cannot do anything?
