Renting/Rip off estate agents/llords

[Littlepleasures]

So angry. Only a month to find a new home to rent. Found somewhere suitable, put in application and willing to pay £100 for reference, credit checking although can’t understand why it costs this much for what is probably a few clicks of a mouse. There are three of us so will be £300. Find out this morning there have been several applications so ll/estate agents want all applicants to pay for credit checks (non refundable) before making a decision!! As if finding two months rent in advance, all previous land lords finding weird and wonderful reasons for not giving full deposit back and private rentals being extortionate anyway, they’ve now found another way to screw private tenants over. Is this legal? I know our credit references will be fine but suspect this is a deliberate ploy to make as much out of vulnerable people as possible. We can’t affordto pay £300 each time just to apply and maybe still not end up with a home!!!

Bluelady I suspect you may not be being totally frank, there!

Credit checks benefit both LL and T, it would be fair if both sides paid only reasonable fees to ensure that they are mutually beneficial. But, one one hand, unscrupulous agents, and LLs, have been seen to be greedy, grasping, making it hard for Ts to begin new tenancies.

On the other hand unscrupulous Ts have made it extremely difficult for LLs to end tenancies with defaulted payments, damage etc.

There has to be some protection, for both sides, so effective checks are essential. Maybe spreading the cost of them over the initial tenancy period will work out... it seems to have been accepted in Scotland.

But that doesn't help OP, who seems to be stuck with a large and unnecessary set of fees!

Some sensible comments from special and then they go and ruin it all with a knobby remark. so close special! so close!

not at all. The 'knobbiness' comes from those on here who don't like landlords running a business for profit but are happy to pay supermarkets for food, tax for NHS (although not much), mortgages and so on.

I've never had an answer as to why paying an individual for an essential part of life is evil but paying a big business is ok. This leads me to suspect that it is playground jealousy and lack of critical thinking ability, both very common on MN.

so I conclude from the overwhelming evidence that the knobbers are the MN anti-landlord brigade.

also quite amused at the use of the pronoun 'they'. How could I possibly be female with an attitude like this? Of course you don't know and neither does mn - I could indeed be a bloke.

Should just be able to take in a copy of your own credit report. It will have more detail on it anyway. Well that’s what banks always say when you apply for a loan they just get given a number and told if any ccj’s. If an agent must carry one out it should be transferable to any property within that months timeframe.

Agents seem to have a licence to print money, same as static/lodge site owners. 20% change of sale price to change name fee for changing mr Y of 123 abc street to Mrs Z 768 blahblah road.

So, I'm lying? I rented out a house for well over a year but clearly I have no way of proving it so you'll just have to think what you like.

I've also seen two of our kids get ripped off to the tune of hundreds of ££s by letting agents for fees that have benefited them not one iota. If you want your income protected you pay for it in my book. And don't get me started on fraudulent attempts at deposit retention. Letting agents are thieves as far as I'm concerned.

It's appalling. We recently moved and turned down one property because of the fees. Ridiculous! It worked out at about 950 before deposit. We then avoided that letting agent again

Thing is banks/car dealerships/phone companies etc don’t charge you to do a credit check as by selling their product to you they get your money same as a landlord or letting agent but they are the only people who charge for it.

I snapped and Farted. In future do not pay an estate agent for a continuation of your tenancy, They will charge. If you continue after the 6 months your tenancy continues as a periodic without charge, same conditions. We tell our letting agency to stop asking tenants to do this. They charge enough at the beginning without a repeat game, similarly gas certs etc

We use an agent for tenant finding as we have been caught out before with rogue tenants. I do think tenants should not be charged so much but when it is banned they will simply charge us more, we currently pay one month's rent for a tenant find only no management. Many landlords will charge more rent as a result. Tenants should know that they do not have to pay all the extras that seem to follow on esp renew of tenancy which is a rip off

The National Landlords Association do a full tenant check for £30: www.nlatenantcheck.org.uk/services.aspx

So, I'm lying? No, I didn't say that...

... the second half of that post gives me an understanding of why you are so adament, though.

No no, it was indeed a knobby comment

Thing is banks/car dealerships/phone companies etc don’t charge you to do a credit check as by selling their product to you they get your money same as a landlord or letting agent but they are the only people who charge for it. Thing is LLs and LAs don't only do credit checks.

The other checks they have to do by law cost them, not a lot, but there is a cost. They may have to run check on 20 people for one property, at £20 per person that would soon put them out of business... which is why the costs of said checks will simply be added to the rent, next year!

Thing is you could charge the actual cost £30 upthread plus a £25 admin charge per person still better than the £100+ people are being charged each.

I always think self managed after getting the tenant is better, the amount of fobbing off over repairs and double charging agency’s do is ridiculous. At least self managed the landlord really knows what’s going on with their property.

I got my current property via Gumtree - reference from previous landlord that we had never missed a rent payment in 5 years and could also prove the previous 5 years...a good credit report does not mean you will pay your rent in time and in full. I don't know why LL use agencies as they are crap for both LL and tenant.

We recently moved and our agency fees and referencing fees were £480 to 1 company and £360 to another. For 2 adults plus kids, on top of rent and deposit.
Another company asked every interested party to put down £100 holding fee. The the LL chose which tenant he wanted. Anyone not chosen got £100 back (although it took 4 weeks to get my £100 back...)
This new method of letting the landlord pick rather than first come first serve I find very unfair and stressful. We paid £100 and it took LL 12 days to choose which tenant they wanted.
Renters are generally treated so badly.

I don't know why LL use agencies as they are crap for both LL and tenant. Given the legal mess many uninformed LLs get themselves into I would have said using an agent was a good move... if it wasn't for the fact that I also see some agencies, large and small, make the same legal errors... and the LL takes the hit whoever makes the mistake!

It isn't as simple as getting a credit reference and many LLs are clueless as to the laws regarding even the most simple aspects of letting, or laws that are now more than 10 years old!

Mix that with savvy tenants and the rise of no win no fee sharks trawling for mismanagement of initial paperwork and it is no wonder tenants hate landlords hate tenants hate agents hate them all!

I work for a small, private landlord/ property developer.

We ask for £100 admin fee for a property/ room. This covers the cost of credit checks, but also our time in personally taking up multiple references, conducting any right to rent checks and personally meeting you to speak/vet you. We don't charge any sign up fees for moving in, so that cost also covers the amount of time taken to arrange a move in, fire safety with you (shared houses), create tenancies/other paperwork, go over them with you, conduct an inventory, introduce you to the household and move you in.

How much time do you think all that takes?

We insist on doing that personally because, as another poster mentioned, if we get a bad tenant, we are expected to house them for free until we get to pay for the privelege of being able to evict them and putting right any damages made.

i would expect my letting agent to do a bit more 'than a few clicks of the mouse'. we have had a bad tenant (cost over 2k to sort the house out and still not as good) and over 7k in lost rent/legal fees. Thats why the checks have to be done so thoroughly and cost - to find and weed out those bad tenants.

so dont moan at LL's or letting agents, moan at those tenants who move in and dont pay rent, refuse to move out till they have made you go through the whole court process and dont pay rent for 6 months plus

i think they should also adopt the scottish system here ....assuming its true - that the tenant can have a contract for as long as they want, but if its a bad tenant they can be evicted very quickly....not in 7 months plus.

Every year my letting agents send me a contract to sign to renew my tenancy, asking for £120. Every year for the past 5 years I send an email back stating I am not paying £120 for a contract that has so many spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in, also asking them why they bother to send it when I've not been in contract for so long.
I suspect the landlord doesn't know that I'm not signing them! And that the letting agent is probably charging the landlord a "renewal" fee too!

we get charged renewal fees for the properties we let....so i think your thoughts are probably correct fatty. Until recently we didnt use agents at all and just did it directly with the tenant - checking references ourselves. But its got too complex for us now with all the regulations and you only have to miss one document to have massive knock on effects - ie we had to give the deposit back despite over 2k's worth of damage.

i think the whole thing should be relooked at, so its better for good tenants and bad ones can be removed more quickly

and removed more cheaply too.

The whole letting industry is populated by greedy, opportunistic, parasites, charging certain fees not because it is right, or justified. But because they CAN. How some of these people sleep at night I do not know.

Probably the same way tenants who don't pay rent or wreck properties do...

... it is not a one sided problem. There are "greedy, opportunistic, parasites" on all sides.

It's not the checks I object to. Doing those is commonsense. What I do object to is the tenant having to bear the cost when they're for the landlords' benefit. They're a cost of renting out a property, no way should the tenant be paying them.