Early Termination Fees in a Rental - how legal?

[Catlady2202]

Husband and I asked if we could terminate our 12 month contract (second year) early due to his relocation for his job.

The landlord is based in California so the estate agent solely act on his behalf.

According to the agent, he was happy to let us go early providing we paid £800 in ‘early release fees’ which supposedly included :

£360 admin fee
£70 referencing fee for the new tenant
£204 check out cost
£198 check in cost

My lettings agent friend says the check in and out costs the landlord would’ve had to pay for when our tenancy ran out anyway. When I raised this to the agent, she said but ‘he might’ve squirreled money away each month to be able to pay it at the end of the July and because we left early he might not have the spare cash’… which to an extent I get but also highly unbelievable.

we paid it because the estate agent said ‘if you’re not happy to pay, the landlord might make you pay until July and you’ll be liable until then’ so of course we panicked, paid and a new tenant was found immediately. They moved in the day after we left so there was no overlap in rent.

Are all of the fees listed above legal?? I asked the agent to provide evidence that these were the actual costs but they didn’t provide evidence - they just said the £360 (which seems to be arbitrary) was the price of advertising on Rightmove and for the lettings agent to come to the property (even though our house was a 2 min drive from the agent).

It also means that we’ve quite literally just paid the landlords costs for finding a new tenant. And yes, even though we were a few months early it now means he won’t have to pay this for another year.

I’m not even convinced the request came from the landlord. If it did then we are happy to pay but to us, it just sees the estate agent wouldn’t ever want to get on his bad side and so quite literally passed on the cost to us without even asking him.

any landlords out there who have passed this onto tenants?

Do you need US landlords?

Aww the poor guy not being able to ‘squirrel away’ a few pounds….
What crap. Fees are not chargeable to the tenant. I unexpectedly had a change of tenants last month and had to pay these fees promptly if I wanted the agent to do it! And I actually didnt have any money at all because the reason I had a change in tenancy was the last tenant wasn’t paying her rent! Made no difference to the agent.
And no you haven’t paid the landlords costs in finding a new tenant - that’s a separate and usually 10% plus VAT. Nothing to do with check outs/ins though would cover the reference fee. I think the most you should be charged is the (rather extortionate) admin fee. It’s the Tenant Fees Act 2019 that put the above in to law.

Aren't the early termination fees in your contract ? You will have to pay what you agreed.

Following as we are about to ask our LL if we can exit early as the house we are buying is completing earlier then we expected.

It will all be in your contract. It seems fair enough as LL had the effort of re letting the house when you wanted to break your contract.

I’m sorry she wasn’t paying her rent. But that’s very useful to know - I know other friends who’ve had to pay early release fees but not to the same extent as us which made me raise my eyebrows a little. Anyway, it’s paid and we’re out of there but I was curious to see how other landlords dealt with tenants leaving early. It’s not as if we wouldn’t have been happy to pay rent until they found a new tenant but the property was advertised for maybe 4 hours and two people viewed it and one of them is now the new tenant. So there was no stress, money lost or hassle caused!

As with all these cases, look at the contract you signed.