Hi guys,
Long time lurker here, posted a few times in WP but never here. I know from reading posts though that a few of you have experience with renting out properties and am hoping someone can help me. It's a bit of a long explanation so my shortened question is at the bottom if you can't be bothered to read it all!
I had some tenants leave my property at the start of Jan. A deposit repayment request was made by me shortly after. We had new people move in this week so I have gone on to add the new deposit to the scheme, and have noticed that the old one has a status of 'Awaiting Tenant Response'. I have called up DPS to check there is nothing on my side that I've not done right, and they said no, it just means the tenant has not yet claimed their deposit back and told the DPS bank details of where to send it to. I asked if there was any time when this would 'expire' so to speak and all he said was 'if it gets ridiculous' they could look into it further. I've had a search online but am not getting very far - a lot of the results are just talking about what to do if tenants won't accept your request to keep a deposit. I suppose it is a strange situation really - why would they not want their money?! For reference I had told the tenants at the time that they would be getting a DPS request through and I know that the DPS notifies them - so it isn't a case of them not knowing they needed to do anything. In any case I would have thought that by now, if they didn't know there was anything they needed to do, they would have been in touch asking where their deposit is.
Since doing this request we have found out that the tenants didn't pay council tax at all while they were living there (6 months) - I am wondering if there is any clause that says that if tenants don't pay everything they are supposed to, we can claim the deposit back? In normal circumstances I wouldn't be bothered but the tenants left the house in a bit of a state and due to a long story that I won't go into, we can't prove it. So, if there was a way to get the deposit back that would be useful, but I do understand that it's our fault that we can't prove the damage caused and so am not too fussed either way about this - would just be a bonus on top of all the hassle they caused.
Long story short - how long after tenants leave are they entitled to their deposit, if they don't claim it? Will it effectively just sit in the DPS forever, or will it default back to me after a certain amount of time?
Thanks!
