Dirty houses and damage to furniture and fittings top landlord complaints to tenants who leave their buy to let homes in a mess.
According to figures from the three government-approved schemes, landlords and tenants rowed about who should keep some or all of rent deposits in 28,100 cases in 2015.
The average case was worth £863, and an average of 55% of resolved claims before an adjudicator are split between landlords and tenants.
Although the number of claims was the highest ever, cases as a percentage of deposits were 0.82%.
Claims have stuck around this percentage for the past six years.
Most of the claims related to who pays to clean a home when the tenant leaves (57%) and disagreements about the cost of repairing or replacing damaged fixtures and fittings (51%).
Other complaints related to decorating (32%), unpaid rent (19%) and clearing up gardens (16%).
The figures are for the year ending March 31, 2016, and cover England and Wales. Scotland has a separate deposit protection scheme.
Tenancy deposit protection was introduced in April 2007. Since then, landlords and tenants have taken 173,000 financial disputes to adjudicators at just over 50 cases daily.
Steve Harriott, CEO of the Tenancy Deposit Scheme, said:
“Cleaning, damage and redecoration claims feature in many of our disputes and this highlights the need for a comprehensive inventory and check out report which enables landlords to show the condition and cleanliness of the property at the start the tenancy compared with it at the end. Without these it will be very difficult for a landlord to prove their claim for a deduction from the deposit.”
