Dear Nick

Oakwood Estates secure a Reservation Deposit as financial commitment to the property, Oakwood Estates and the Landlord. Before sending these forms off for referencing, a processor will check these forms, because we wouldn't process and pursue an applicant with a county court judgement (CCJ), IVA or any bad credit as they will not pass referencing. We would at that point return the deposit to the applicant as they are not viable for the landlord due to level of financial risk.

On inspection of the information provided by yourself, there was no mention of a county court judgement, which is a section on our referencing forms and is also stipulated on the deposit receipt as something which you are required to declare to avoid losing ones deposit. The referencing form came back with a CCJ that had not been satisfied and is worth thousands of pounds. Following this I made several attempts to contact you via phone and email however you and your family were out of the country.

Any applicant that fails referencing due to a CCJ, IVA, bankruptcy etc, will lose their deposit as stated on the deposit receipt form which is signed prior to the reservation deposit being taken. The deposit receipt clearly states that if you withhold this information then you will lose your deposit. This is due to the time wasted through the property being withdrawn from the market. If a landlord pulls out of the Tenancy, we always refund the deposit to the Tenants. In this case the information provided was not truthful and led to the Landlord missing out on viewings and other prospective offers.

We of course sympathise with your situation however the evidence provided by Let Alliance referencing company and the information documented on our system show that your application was a high financial risk and these issues were not stated prior to applying nor during the application. These issues were raised by Let Alliance whilst processing the applications and the deposit was therefore withheld to cover the referencing and administration cost and for the time lost due to the property being removed from the market along with all outstanding viewings being cancelled.

I hope the above explanation above provides an understanding and resolve for your complaint and also gives any future applicants applying to rent, to be up front about their financial and credit based situation to avoid these unpleasant circumstances. I do recommend for anyone looking to rent, to do a free online credit check to ensure that you are confident on a future tenancy application.

Yours sincerely

Timothy Halls