Landlord trying to make deductions from our deposit that we don't agree with...
England rental - I suspect we'll be disputing this but wanted some help explaining why we disagree with the deductions from our in the hopes of compromising with our landlord.
There are a few things we disagree with but the two main ones are:
Landlord is claiming our cat damaged the curtains: firstly, the check in inventory states that most of the curtains already had snags including down to floor level. Secondly, our cat was both blind and arthritic. She'd never shredded curtains in her life and she couldn't do it in her older age even if she wanted to. Luckily, I'm a vet and can provide medical hx and statement for that. However, all that aside, at the beginning of our tenancy, our landlord increased our rent by £25 ppm for our cat. Wouldn't the nearly £900 extra we paid during the course of our tenancy cover pet damage?
Landlord claiming the back garden needs to be "leveled": As per most leases, we were responsible for maintaining the yard and returning it as we moved in. At move in, there was a bit of overgrown grass and bare dirt around the edges. We have pictures showing nasty weeds infiltrating those bare spaces a few days after move in. Either way, I dug up a lot of these weeds every spring and planted my own flowers and things. Before move out, I had saved all the plants that I wanted to take with and confirmed the landlord was happy to keep a few others. I don't believe I have the specifics in writing but I do have emails asking them to come round to discuss the garden. I will contend that the yard was a bit more overgrown and weedy than move in and that I tried to lay down grass seed but it didn't take. Absolutely understand if we were being charged a maintenance fee for grass cutting and weeding. However, they're trying to say the yard needs leveling. Is this something a tenant could really be responsible for? The check out report just stated that the grass was overgrown and weedy compared to check in.
Any advice would be much appreciated.
We really had no major issues with our landlord until this point. They sent an initial email with issues and a sum for deductions. We asked them to send an itemized deductions list to which they sent a long (angry) email trying to basically say we should be so lucky they're not charging us more. They also still haven't sent an itemized deductions list.