To think that the ban on letting agents fees are a bloody good thing

[Ohbehave1]

Letting agents get a bite of the cherry from both sides. They get a percentage of the rent AND charge the tenant stupid fees for arranging it all.

It's about time the cost of having a home was made reasonable. I hope this is brought in.

And for those saying it will affect middle class people who have a second home a a nest egg - you are lucky to be able to afford a second home to rent out. So don't complain.

It is not a business venture for us, or a second home - our property is merely a way to stay on the property ladder while we are out of the housing market in military housing
try telling that to HMRC, of course its a business venture...or rather an investment activity in the eyes of the taxman.

We see this all the time
'I'm an accidental landlord'
'It's not my fault I'm a landlord' etc etc
you looked at your options and you made a decision to do what seemed to be in your best interests.

In your case you presumably decided that it is better to keep your money invested in propery rather than sell
If house prices drop you will have called it wrong, but thats a chance we all take

YANBU

I'm going to stop paying rent seeing as I live in a 'free' house

I agree that letting houses is a business. I'm a bit sick of my landlord acting as though he's doing me a favour. He most probably posts on here :o

I am a landlord but I welcome the ban on fees to tenants - I even signed a petition to that effect. Perhaps naively, I had no idea my agents were charging fees to my tenants until my DDs went to university and found themselves on the wrong end of extortionate fees (about £1,000 non-returnable to "guarantee" a grotty damp property seen that day by the 4 gullible 18 year olds who were told they would have nowhere if they didn't sign there and then). These agents also charged £25 a phone call about any maintenance issue. Ridiculous, and no professional body seemed interested in regulating them properly. I cannot see why tenants should pay any fees at all. If LL fees from the agent go up as a result, at least I have the ability to walk away and rent out through gumtree and/or to increase the rent which still gets rid of hidden costs for tenants. You only have to see the number of estate agents on the High Street to know that they are milking off most of the profits whilst LLs like me take most of the risk and the cost of introducing the assets.

As another LL, I think it's the only sensible thing to do. We rent out a few properties in Scotland and from my experience there, I know there are multiple agents all offering different fees and packages which LLs are free to choose from. There is plenty of competition and any LL would laugh at an agent who tried to charge them £100s for a tenancy agreement which we all know fine well is a standard document. Tenants in England & Wales are being taken advantage of.

The agency we use charges a fixed percentage of rent, inclusive of all marketing fees and tenancy set-up, so they as well as us have an incentive to find reliable long-term tenants. All tenancy agreements are rolling unless terminated by either party so no renewal fees (this might be another feature of Scottish legal system?). It is our sole choice whether to raise the rent and we would only do so if our costs increased substantially and only at change of tenancy/ renewal with notice. In fact, our longest tenant has been in the property for 7 years with no rent increases. I agree that letting fees for tenants (a) distort the market by increasing churn, (b) increase the barriers for tenants to leave an unsuitable property, and (c) are in most cases blatantly not related to the work involved. Good riddance.

We rented for a year in the UK on a work assignment. Told the letting agency upfront that they would have to conduct a credit check in Holland to get any meaningful information. They blatantly told us they had no way of doing that, didn't care to see any of the documentation we offered, charged us £360 for a 2-person credit check in the UK (we'd been in the country 3 weeks) and approved us to the landlord. What if we'd been running away from Holland to escape a pile of debts? How would the LL know we're reliable? There were a lot of other problems too, and we left knowing we would never rent in the UK again. Another country can have my tax money, it's too brutal in the UK.

YANBU, i'm delighted the gouging is going to stop

shining when I say it's not a business venture I mean we aren't a company renting out several properties (like my FIL) or doing it purely to make money. Of course I know we'll have to do a tax return and pay tax on any profit etc.

We are letting agency; it is stated in our landlords contract with us that we charge a tenant a fee. Once we have a suitable applicant then that property is reserved for them so the fee that that a tenant pays to us is the only application fee that we get for that property. We charge £50 per person for the taking up of references and this covers all the work we do in relation to this - an online credit check for which we are charged and formal letter to employers and landlords etc etc. If they are accepted they pay £100 in total for the preparation of the inventory and agreement. It is quite correct that tenants pay for these as they are legal documents that protect both the landlords and the tenants interests. Most tenants and landlords have no idea of the work that we do behind the scenes and what responsible work it is. I can assure you that if solicitors were drawing up the legal paperwork the fees would sky rocket. As any other business we are not a charity, we provide a service, we have overheads. It is a fact of life that if we cannot charge the tenant then we will have to charge the landlord and it is likely that they will try to recoup the loss. Many agents charge reasonable fees but yet again we are all being tarred with the same brush. By the way our agreements are all contractually periodic at the start so we do not need to renew them so no charge is incurred therefore in 99% of cases the fees at the start of the tenancy is all that our tenants pay.

another example of England = London.

outside the holy city, where you can charge what you like for a damp overcrowded shithole and have people beating down your door, rents do NOT rise by huge amounts each year. They are capped by demand, and dumps don't rent. As it should be.

all the agents in my area charge the same for everything. As a landlord I pick by service and attitude. Makes no difference to my tenant.

in future I will probably refuse a new tenancy agreement after the first six months and put the tenant on to a rolling. Makes no difference to me - I have capped rents so the price won't be going up much or at all, and as no-one actually evicts on a whim there is no issue there either.

I will also shop around for referencing. ideally this will make fees for this fall but I doubt it. And any tenant outside the full time no smoke no guarantor range; sorry, no vacancy. I can't afford to reference you and have you fail.

BTW I hope everyone has noticed another 2% on the tax on that luxury item, insurance? Cleverly hidden under this so you won't notice....

These so-called professionals both in the sales and rental business (people who were too thick to get a proper job, in my experience) are LONG overdue for regulation. Seems they can get away with whatever they like.

RoystonV you sound like reasonable agents but sadly most I have come across are not... I have more than once had tenants not renew because of the enormous fees (on top of the ones I have to pay too). Also, last Summer I put a property on with a very well known national agent and within an hour they had 4 first year students for me (not most people's ideal tenants), told me they would only be interested in a 3 year fixed term and wanted me to pay £10,000 for the introduction. Now not only could I have simply put a note up in the Student Bar had I wanted students (I don't mind actually but I have no need of an agent to find them) but when I talked to them (nice lads) they said that they had never said they wanted 3 years but the agent had told them I was insisting. Need I mention that the agent was paid a proportion of the upfront rent and so was the only one of us wanting a 3 year contract...? Sadly, I couldn't rent to those particular lads as I would have been liable to the agent for the £10,000 (representing most of my profit over the 3 years at no risk to them and before they even added VAT and inventory and contract charges). The agents were also wanting £350 for the contract despite the fact I would happily copy and paste from the internet or an old agreement. I am afraid agents have been architects of their own demise by being just too greedy.

I've just paid £400 to an agency in fees as I'm guarantor for DS. This us how much it costs for them to send me an email which i complete and return, and read an email from my employer (who charged a further £25 for the service). Nice work if you can get it. If i don't pay it, my son can't rent a flat, they're all done like that in his area . It's an extra payment that is unnecessary (and greedy).

I agree with you OP. When agents are charging £40pp upfront just for an enquiry about when a certain property is coming on the market, then you know the system is bent out of shape.

I understand that tenants need to be referenced, but wouldnt it also be a good idea if there was some way that landlords could be vetted by prospective tenants? After all it would help people to avoid the few horrendous ones that give the whole sector a bad name.
Or would it be too difficult to implement?

For those of you who pay to have a tenancy renewal. Why? When we were renting we never did. The tenancy agreement just rolls on without a written agreement

For me, it represents a little bit of security. I sign 12 months at a time, with no break clause, meaning I know exactly how long before I could reasonably be served notice. It was worth the money in that respect.
Also, lots of agencies tell tenants they have to sign new fixed term agreements and will not accept periodic tenancies. Some blatantly lie to tenants and say they can only stay if they sign otherwise they will be evicted.
Plus my latest letting agency tried to charge £95 for a periodic tenancy

people who were too thick to get a proper job
or opportunists milking an opportunity for all it's worth...I blame the govt for not regulating them.
It was money for nothing, anything like that is a magnet for the entrepreneurial

I did it as a holiday job whilst at uni - but it's not fair to blame the people working there because their boss has a sharp business practice.

I worked really hard. We had 4,000 tenants on the books, so that's a constant round of: viewings on vacant properties (matching the person to the property is important), drafting legal documentation, setting everything up on the system, dealing with admin and repair queries, responding to landlord queries, pitching for landlord business, pitching for block management business, arranging regular maintenance as well as urgent repairs, dealing with a rent roll for a huge number of payments every month, balancing a cash till, drafting and issuing court proceedings, attending court hearings for possession orders, enforcing court orders and money judgments, applying for attachment of earnings orders, cautions (not available any more) and charges over properties, carrying out detailed inventories and dealing with deposit refunds, writing adverts and articles for local papers, dealing with insurance claims and neighbour disputes for the block managements, running the website and updating it with fresh particulars every time something let or became available...

I'm not going to say it's rocket science, and actually lots of it is good fun, you get to see and speak to a lot of people and there was a great atmosphere in our office. but how is all that not "a proper job"? it pays badly and you get very little thanks from some people. it's unfair to say that it's only for thick lazy people who couldn't be bothered to do something else!

It pays badly because the owners are keeping the profits.

If we don't renew the contract agreement the letting agents issue a something or other order of instructions to do so and start advertising the property for let. So you have to pay and renew otherwise you'll be evicted

Well, you could say that of any industry. That's a different can of worms again!

I think there is a perception that all letting agents do is swan around in a car and then rip off the tenants, and there really is more to it than that. I worked really long hours at that job, and I had to learn a lot about accounting and law.

That certainly doesn't justify the rip-off fees that have become the norm. But it makes it unpleasant to say that anyone doing that job is too thick to bother getting a proper job. If a letting agent said, "if my tenants weren't thick and had bothered to get proper jobs, they could have afforded to buy rather than rent and then they wouldn't have to pay all these fees," that would be disgustingly unfair and totally cuntish. I don't think it's very much better to judge someone who is just trying to do their own job and who certainly has no influence over what fees the agency charges!

owllady - your agents are definitely twats.

They are :o I don't know who they think will rent it. It's like Father Ted's parochial house!

the problem is that, by being a good tenant, you make the boss think that it is a lettable prospect and therefore that you are easily replaced.

if I were you, I would write to your landlord directly and say that you would just prefer to hold over and see if they will agree to it. the landlord's name and address should be on the top of the tenancy agreement, or you could check the land registry for about £2.

The charges are in place to avoid people applying for dozens of properties at a time, thus wasting lettings agents time - which has to be paid for somehow. Fees are part and parcel of a business transaction which tenants choose to do.

Are you kidding me, fees charged to rent in the UK have no bearing what so ever...period. In fact, most of these fees came in after the last crash as estate agents saw a new revenue stream to make up for the loss of sales they fees are simply padding on
top of the fee they charge the landlord.

You state we have a choice, Em, no if you want to rent -you have fuck all choice, what about the dodgy fees charged to
multiple tenants to view properties when the agent knows full well they won't get the property, I could go on your statement
backs up everything bad I think about estate agents most of you make shit up as you talk.

I've sold and bought many properties in multiple countries the UK by far is by far the biggest rip I have seen without
bashing you over the head and taking your cash!