The money landed at 9.04am on Tuesday 11 March, and I know the time because I was on the bus into town, refreshing the banking app like someone waiting for a parcel. £770. It was the last loose end of the flat in Crookes, tied off, and I felt a small, ridiculous cheer rise in my chest between the second and third bus stops.
Paying for two places
We paid £725 in rent on 1 February for a flat we had just moved out of. For the whole month it held a mop, a few cleaning cloths and the last of the dust. Alongside it were the first bills for the house, and then on 3 March the first mortgage payment, £889. Put together that's £1,614 of housing in about five weeks, and while we'd budgeted for it at Christmas, I still watched it leave with a faint feeling of being charged twice for the same roof.
It's a quirk of the dates, not a cost. The February rent was just rent, and the mortgage payment was the first payment of a very long series. But it did make February the tightest month of the year, and I'd have been happier with another fortnight's buffer. Over 43 months at £725 a month, my spreadsheet reckons we paid that flat £31,175 in rent. I'd like to say I feel sentimental about that, and I do, slightly.
Notice, cleaning and check-out
I served notice on Monday 27 January, a month's notice, so the tenancy ended on 28 February. The agent confirmed in writing two days later. We spent most of a Sunday, 23 February, cleaning: the bathroom, the windows, the skirting boards. We gave the oven about forty minutes and called it done. If I'd known what that was going to cost, I'd have given it two hours.
The check-out was at 11am on Friday 28 February, a home-working day, so I did my morning's work at the house on the new broadband and walked down the hill for it. The inventory clerk arrived with a tablet and went room by room against the list from 2021. I had my own back-up: 140 photos from the August we moved in, in a folder on my phone, because I'm that person. He noted fair wear and tear on the carpet by the door, which took 43 months of our feet. Then he opened the oven.
The 2021 photo of the inside of that oven showed it spotless. The oven in front of him was not, and I couldn't pretend otherwise. He was kind about it and wrote down "oven cleaning required".
The £60 and the scheme
Our deposit of £830 had been held all along in a government-approved deposit protection scheme, not by the agent, so the process ran through the scheme's website. On 5 March it emailed to say the agent had asked to deduct £60 for professional oven cleaning, and that we had seven days to agree or dispute it.
If we'd disagreed it would have gone to the scheme's free dispute service, which holds the money until it decides. I read the clerk's note, looked at my own photo and agreed that afternoon. It's the fairest £60 I've ever lost. It would have been a £6 tub of oven cleaner and an evening, and next time I'll choose the tub.
The scheme paid the remaining £770 straight to our joint account. When I told Matt, he texted back a single exclamation mark, which is the most emotion he has ever expressed about a bank transfer.
One last look
I handed the keys over at 11.40am on the 28th. On the pavement outside, I stood looking up at the window where our curtains had been, above a shop with its shutters half down for the lunchtime lull. I used that bus stop for three and a half years. A man walked past with a ladder over his shoulder and looked up, then looked at me, then carried on.
The £770 sits against the electrician's quote of £720, with £50 over. I noticed that on the bus and took it as a sign, and I've already put it in the pot for Friday.
