PRTB Tribunal - What to expect?

fieldofsheep

Hi all,

We're currently in dispute with our former landlord regarding what we would regard as the unfair retention of a large amount of our deposit (€900 out of €1200) for the cleaning of the property and various repairs. We've gone through the phone mediation process with the PRTB which wasn't successful, so we've been given a date for a full tribunal hearing.

Without going too much into the details of the claims that we are contesting, what should we expect from the format of the tribunal itself? As appellants we've been told that we will speak first, and may be cross-examined by the landlord, and then the landlord will give their version of events who we can then cross-examine ourselves.

From those who have gone through this process from the side of the tenant, would you have any recommendations in how we should conduct ourselves, e.g. try to be reasonable in coming to an outcome, or adopt a more adversarial approach to questioning the landlord?

We hadn't really had many dealings with the landlord, as all of our interactions had gone through an estate agent, who will also be attending the tribunal.

Baby01032012

Ive been through it from a landlord perspective. That said i will try and give you a very fair and unbiased advise.

The adjudicator in my experience is very fair. Will ensure both sides are heard. Will prevent any side from over stepping the mark. Will ask relevant questions to get to the bottom of the issue.

I would reread the responses provided by the landlord through the PRTB in response to your case. Can you comfortably argue his points with fact and proof. €900 on face of it sounds a lot to withhold - did he provide receipts for repair costs incurred, cleaning. Have you or has he provided photos of damage, cleaning required. Did you get your own quotes. Did he do an inspection prior to you leaving, did you attend and were you advised at the time of cleaning/repairs required. Are you disputting the whole amount or a portion, do you have back up or quotes to support your amount.

Be factual, have dates and documentation and be calm and respectual and it will fall in your favour.

fieldofsheep

Thanks for that baby - in terms of what the landlord is claiming, there are a number of items, some samples of which would be:

€120 for professional cleaning - there was 'an expectation of this' as we had requested to have to cleaned before we moved in, though this wasn't specified in the contract. No receipt provided.

€150 to tidy the garden which we allegedly didn't maintain - we dispute this, and again no receipt provided.

€70 to have the oven cleaned - we cleaned the oven before leaving, no receipt was provided, but a price from a couple of websites was quoted (i.e. no evidence that the professional cleaning was actually invoked)

€50 for a lamp that was broken - we've admitted liability for this and have no problem paying up.

There are other examples of alleged "he said/we said" damage, with photographic evidence of the alleged damage but nothing of the original state - e.g. it's claimed that a shelf is missing from a bathroom cabinet, necessitating the replacement of the entire cabinet - we dispute the fact that we removed the shelf from the cabinet, but there's no proof either way.

When leaving the property, the estate agent said that we was very happy with the state of the house, and wrote us a glowing reference for the next property we rented. On returning to the property, the landlord made us aware of a number of issues that I personally rectified, but when it came to returning the deposit, a whole raft of other issues were brought to light that we hadn't been made aware of or given a chance to rectify. This is what necessitated us taking the case to recover the withheld portion of the deposit.

As a landlord of a property myself, I'd be more than aware that when renting a property, especially to a young family as we were, that there is a certain amount of give and take when it comes to the return of that property - you're never going to get it back in the exact same condition that it was rented out in (thanks, laws of entropy!) - there's always an element of it having been 'lived in'. I just got the impression that the landlord was as much looking for a caretaker as a tenant when renting out the property.

Again, thanks for the valuable input - we'll just put our case across as reasonably as possible, and try not to personalise it.