Lawns ruined and tenant is refusing to pay?

Unless they've run a bulldozer over the lawns, I'd say this is all very subjective and you have not a single hope of getting any redress.

Sorry this is quite a dismissive response but I have a wealth of experience with the Courts and you will get nowhere. Tidy them up a bit and re-rent.

Quite honestly, and I really do not mean to sound derogatory, but based on this alone, you are not cut out to be a landlord.

I have heard that if you have not provided equipment to maintain the garden (e.g. lawn Mower) then any attempt to claim from the deposit on these grounds will fail.

Have you considered selling with tenant in place through this page?

Is re turfing before sale really neccessary? Cut the grass/weed ultra short and the phots will probably look okay and who knows, the purchaser might want to pave the lot.

Reply to the comment left by "Luke P" at "20/08/2015 - 12:57":

Thanks Luke, you are right, it's not my thing. It only worked out that way because I needed to sell it a few years back and it wasn't worth what I paid. I take things too personally and trust people too much and have too much else on my plate to keep a close enough eye. I don't want to re rent I want out now!

Reply to the comment left by "Sam Addison" at "20/08/2015 - 13:12":

I didn't know you could do that! Thanks! I was thinking of maybe seeking to another landlord.

Reply to the comment left by "money manager" at "20/08/2015 - 13:14":

I don't think you'd get away with that...it's literally all dandelions... There's barely a blade of grass in the lawn. I've read that you can include gardening in the rent and put in the contract that it will be done so if I can't sell it as I plan then I might do that.

There's a huge misconception by hobby landlords (and understandably so, as common sense would surely dictate) that you can reasonably expect a property to be returned in the same condition as when you let it out.

This is not true. Aside from wear and tear (which can be stretched further than you may think), there's also proving it and having a Judge take your side on the matter. I've even had a Judge completely agree with a very large iron burn in the centre of a carpet, only to state that the burn was no more than 5% of the total carpet area, in which case would only be awarding 5% of the cost of a replacement.

Honestly, a weed-filled lawn is such a first world problem and once a tenant puts pen to paper on that tenancy, has a lot more rights (undeserved, unjust and unfair rights) that these sorts of things have literally become naturalised as 'just a part of being a landlord'.

I learned all of this the hard way too, over the past 25+ years, but it hasn't changed in that time and will likely not change going forward. It's nothing like staying in a hotel room where if damage were left it would be charged to your credit card and all's done and dusted.

Any common sense you apply to the situation just forget. They system is weighted in tenants' favour.

Rotavate it and sprinkle on some seed. It'll be through in no time, will look relatively neat and potential buyers will see that and probably appreciate a 'fresh' new lawn (even if it is only sprouting at the time of their viewing). You can hire a power digger (rotavator) for £40 and less than a tenner for a box of seed. Job done.

NEXT!

View it this way...a car hire company does not expect to pass a vehicle that has just been returned direct to the next customer.

The company don't expect it to be smashed to pieces, but do expect to empty the rubbish, expect the engine to be that little bit more worn, the tyres to have a little less tread, maybe even some minor scratches and to fully wash the car before the new customer takes it. This is all part of the hire cost of course and we landlords should reflect this in the price of the rent of our houses, but that is rarely the case.

Tenants can very rarely be trusted to look after lawns, let alone do anything else such as pruning or deadheading: they do as little work as humanly possible because in the end, it's not their property and everyone has different standards as regards gardening.

I'm afraid I agree with the other responses here: without providing a lawnmower and without cast-iron evidence from a third party like an inventory clerk about exactly how many weeds were in the lawn and exactly what training you provided, you won't have a leg to stand on with a deposit tribunal. They will take the view that you can't expect a tenant to have the same standards as you, nor should you expect them to purchase and lug a mower around from rented house to rented house, along with all their other stuff.

Thanks everyone so much for your advice...I will just have to try and get as much of a contribution as I can from her towards both the lawn and the carpet and cut my losses. She is now saying she will only pay for only the section of carpet ruined by the cat to be replaced...dont know how that will look....I may have to pay the majority of the cost to replace it myself. I don't know how much if anything I can get her to agree to over the lawn so again I am going to be left with the majority of the cost of a new lawn. My worry now is that when these jobs are done, she will let the turf die and the cat will wreck the carpet again and I'll be back to square one. I could serve notice now and limit the amount of time she has to potentially wreck the new lawn and carpet but I will risk having nobody in there at all while its on the market and I don't know how long it will take to sell. I can't afford to pay the mortgage with no rent coming in for long. The cat is kept permanently indoors and the house smells of cat wee which is going to put potential buyers off and I'm also worried that she won't cooperate with viewings...any advice re. selling with a tenant in situ? Should I serve notice now? She is accusing me of trying to take advantage of her and get her to pay for the house to be spruced up for sale. I have a feeling she might have been down this road with a landlord before...she mentioned something at her check in as I recall but I felt sorry for her the way she described it. She was really pernickety with the inventory sharing it was because her last landlord had tried to cheat her. It was annotated so much that it made the place sound in a right state which it wasn't.