Unveiled: Secret to earning back your deposit as a tenant – and inspiring others to do the same!

A tenant who took her landlord to court to get her deposit back has urged other tenants to follow suit.

Edinburgh Holiday and Party Lets (EHPL) was ordered to reimburse Adéla Koubová after a housing court ruled that she was owed the money back.

The flat is owned by Mark Fortune, a businessman who has been refused entry on the Scottish landlord’s register.

Adéla, who is from the Czech Republic, said she had stood up “for the other people in this situation.”

TO Housing Court Judgment Series They have now rejected EHPL’s argument that it is operating vacation rentals from Mr Fortune’s properties, and as such, people leaving there should get the same protections as ordinary rental agreements.

Housing advocates ask why more action is not being taken against the company.

Adéla moved to Edinburgh from the Czech Republic in January 2020 as part of an exchange program at the University of Edinburgh and found the flat in the city’s Bruntsfield Place through a Gumtree advertisement.

But after just one day at the property, which he said was freezing because of a hole in his bedroom window, he gave the EHPL representative four weeks’ notice but was later unable to get his deposit back.

“When I realized I lost my deposit I was sad, it was a lot of money to me,” he told BBC Scotland.

“But it’s been three years now, a lot of effort and stress in this process, but I’m doing it for the other people in this situation.

“There are people in these properties who are moving to Edinburgh for the first time and may not be aware of the situation.”

Adéla, who had support in her case from Scotland’s tenants’ union, Living Rent, said she was still waiting to be paid the £275 she is owed more than two months after the ruling.

She added: “I’m not sure if we’ll see the money, although the best prize was winning and hopefully through my experience we can inform other people that there is a way to prevent this from happening to them.”

He Judgment of the Chamber of Housing and Assets states that it “has no difficulty in concluding that both parties knew that this agreement was not for a vacation rental and did not intend for it to constitute one,” which means that the legal relationship between the parties was that of owner and tenant.

He has previously denied that he operates as a landlord and rents out flats.

The businessman said the properties were operated by limited partnerships, not him personally.

The latest court ruling said Fortune made filings on behalf of EHPL, of which he is a former director, and on several occasions “seemed to accidentally refer to himself as the owner.”

He also added that his “position was often contradictory and therefore could not be treated as reliable.”

In 2021, a BBC Scotland investigation it discovered that the rooms in the flats owned by Mr Fortune were rented out under contracts that did not give tenants the same protection as residential agreements.

A Living Rent spokesman said most tenants did not have “the time or resources” to take landlords to housing court as they did Adéla.

He said: “Mark Fortune has been denied landlord registration and yet his properties have continued to be rented out across the city.

“Tenants face conditions unfit for human habitation and their deposits are improperly withheld while authorities fail to take action.”

The spokesman called on both Edinburgh City Council and Police Scotland to “start enforcing their own rules” on the issue.