| Comment | Assuming they are intended to bind you into the lease (rather than to ensure you are not evicted) then neither the one year initial period or the 60 days notice are legal. Shelter Scotland has a great resource on tenancy law on their website.
The landlord might be ignorant, or might be a chancer. Worth finding out if they're on the landlords register (straightforward with an address and a search engine), and also that the deposit is going in a recognised deposit scheme. These are red flags but basically landlords are just walking red flag salesmen so if it were ignorance, and the landlord was otherwise a good person, it might not be a deal-breaker (especially since they couldn't hold you to either of those points, even if you sign... It would be worth just pointing out gently that their contract might need looked over again with regard to those points, before you sign, though.)
As a rule, always pay a deposit by bank transfer with the reference "Deposit". If it doesn't end up in a proper deposit holding scheme, it's straightforward (if a little time consuming) to have a civil court order the landlord pay you 3x the deposit back at end of tenancy. |
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