Students stunned by landlord’s generous act: ‘There are good landlords too’

A group of University of Leeds students were left at a loss for words after their landlord returned their deposits and added an extra “bonus” as a thank you for keeping his house clean.

On June 25, Maisie Gardner, a 22-year-old psychology student from Manchester, took to Twitter to share a heartwarming text conversation with her landlord John from Falham Properties.

“Hi Nicole and Josh and Seyi and Maisie,” John wrote. “I’ll refund your deposits in the next few minutes. You have all [been] excellent tenants and a pleasure to deal with and I am sorry to see you leave.”

The landlord then surprised Gardner and her housemates with a gift.

“As a thank you I have added a small bonus of £50 to each of your deposits making it £300 and now that shops are opening again I hope you’ll be able to buy yourselves something nice,” he wrote.

The message has since gone viral, receiving nearly 265,000 likes and over 11,000 retweets and comments.

“This tweet shows respect from both sides … you look after other people’s things and they respect you for it!” one person wrote in response. “When I rented I always did my best to treat it as my own. Nice to see some positivity for once. Great stuff.”

“This pandemic has brought out the best and worst in people … this is humanity at its best … what a wonderfully kind man,” another tweeted.

In a follow-up tweet, Gardner said that John had, in fact, given bonuses to all seven people who lived in the house and not just the four he had addressed in his message to her.

“Seeing some tweets about landlords and how they treat their tenants is a joke!” Gardner added. “This is real, me and my housemates lived in his property in Leeds for 3 years and without any issues really so I feel lucky.”

In an interview with Leeds Live, John, who declined to give his full name, said he has been overwhelmed by the response his gesture has received.

“I’m the sort of landlord that looks after his houses, and I keep them very well maintained,” he said. “They have respected that. They deserve a little bit of a bonus. I can say thank you in a text or in an email but thought I should give them something now that the shops are opening again.”

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