A friend of mine is moving to Cambridge, found a rental house and signed up.

It states in the contract that he will be charged £200 to have the house cleaned upon ending the let, irrespective of the condition of the house when he leaves!

The response from a lot of people I know has been "well he should damn well make sure he makes £200 of damage when he leaves!

Cleaning and reparation are different things, so suggesting he cause damage is probably not the best thing to do.

When I've left rented accommodation it has always been cleaner that when I moved in, so I would be pretty angry if someone tried to levvy a charge for it out of the deposit. I would like to say that I would never agree to a contract that specified this charge, but that would entirely depend on the housing situation at the time. If agents think they can get away with it now then it will probably become commonplace and then eventually the standard. If only the populace would show a bit of solidarity and refuse this charge before it does.

In Denmark it is standard to have the walls painted and floors sanded and varnished when you move out, at the tenants cost and even if you've only lived there for 6 months. As a landlord in the UK I'm personally all for reasonable wear and tear.

Best course of action these days is probably to take as many photos as you can.

Ah, but then, presumably, he wouldn't get his deposit back either - I assume the deposit is completely separate to this £200 "Cleaning Fee". There's no doubt letting agents and landlords are trying their luck with the rental market. There's such a demand, they can pretty much charge what they like it seems, along with a raft of legal terms and conditions stacked up in their favour.

I'm on the look out for a better place, but it's getting nearly impossible to find anything below £650 to £700 a month in Manchester. Well, anything that's half decent and not in a run-down area.

Just one more way for them to milk you for more money.

We spent two days cleaning carpets and washing down the paintwork etc.. before we handed over the house we were renting - not that it was in a mess or anything. The landlady actually phoned and thanked us. Clearly, it's not what she was used to doing.

I know some rented houses are left in a shocking state by the tenants, more often when the council has to cover the bond; but the bond is supposed to be there as a guarantee against the place being left in a poor state, so how in hell can they justify the extra charge?

Rental prices are criminal now - it's actually cheaper to buy, if you can gather a deposit.

I know. My nan has already suggested to my mum that when she dies, my mum should rent the house out rather than sell it.
I can see her point. It would give her a good steady source of income during her retirement.

That's because with the size of the deposit required now, you've just about paid for the house, so the mortgage is tiny!

I can't wait for the day our mortgage is paid off.
Shame it's still twenty one years away.

Can't wait to get a mortgage, when I've got a deposit together. Shame it'll be about 21 years away.

Wait for the crash Alex. Gotta happen soon, I've been waiting nearly ten years!

Crash? Maybe a small slow drop.
But unless the value of that drop is greater than the rent you're paying while you're waiting, you're better off buying now anyway.
Let's say you spend £500 a month on rent, that's £6000 a year. If you waited three years you'd need house prices to drop by £18,000 to cover the rent you've paid out waiting. Since they've already dropped quite a bit from their peak, coupled with that fact that the population is still growing while less houses are being built, then I'd say buy now while you still can.

speaking of cheeky, where's bratty?

Indeed. There are more houses now than ever before, but new builds do tend to be less roomy with less land. This is a direct result of people now preferring to buy when historically the vast majority of people could never even dream of it. The only way this can happen is to cram them in cheaply.

There were fewer houses built in the last few years than there were in the 1970s for example, but a far higher number than in any year before the wars. Home ownership as a percentage is now at an all time high since records began.

It is similar in Germany. All the walls have to be left in a neutral colour (usually white) and floors cleaned. The tenant can do it themselves, or they can let the landlord do it and pay the bill - if you have family and friends, it is usually cheaper to do it yourself; as long as you don't make a botch of it, in which case, you'll probably end up paying twice.

When I moved out of my flat in Bavaria, I had to paint the kitchen and one bedroom, the rest were still "as new".

Personally, I would have the clause in the contract, that if the flat isn't left in a clean / good condition, then the landlord / agency has the right to charge for cleaning and repairig the flat at the end of the lease.

The problem with that is that many UK landlords are greedy liars.
They've already had to bring in strict laws about deposits as landlords were unfairly keeping them. They'd probably do the same with cleaning fees and pocket some of it.

It'll have to drop a lot before I'm better off. I'm loving in a bigger, nicer house than my sister for a hundred quid less a month. And I only had to put down a 1500 quid deposit rather than 40k. Oh and she then spent another 10k sorting out things like central heating!