Estate agency additional costs

[MoonlightPicnic]

My DW and I have been renting the same property for nearly six years. Recently a number of properties have been purchased by a larger agency which seemed fine as the rent hadn't increased (yet). Suddenly out of the blue the new agency is attempting to changing me for a renewal fee of £125 plus VAT for the lease. With our old agency we never had such a charge and to be honest times are very tough financially at the moment. Can they actually do this??? I'm sure any contract I signed didn't include such detail.

If the lease is up for renewal then yes they can charge and most do :(

Heck. Even though I didn't sign up to them? That seem very unfair.

You could probably argue the fee as, like you say, you haven't signed any agreement with the new agency and presumably the fee isn't written in your tenancy agreement. But expect it to be written in the renewed one.

Does the agency manage the tenancy? If not, you could try to appeal to the landlord to renew it himself as they'll be charging him too.

I'm a LL and I just print off a new copy of the tenancy agreement with updated dates and get the tenants to sign that. I just pay the agency to find the tenants in the first place and do the credit checks.

Your agreement will be on a rolling periodic basis, just tell them that this is what you're happy with and that you're not prepared to pay any fees to renew a contract that is legal, binding and doesn't need amending.

The other option is that you contact the ll and make a separate direct contract with them, in which case they won't need to pay commission fees to the agent either..

Pretty sure you don't need to renew your contract. I signed our 12month AST 6 years ago and after the first year it just became a rolling contract up until the rent was increased then a new contract was signed and now we're back to rolling. Don't quote me on that though, it could be wrong!

I imagine OP wants a 12-month tenancy rather than a periodic tenancy for security, hence the renewal.

Hope you got it sorted OP. If not, I think there's somewhere you can lodge it as there's a campaign against high letting agency fees atm. At a time where more people are renting than buying it really needs to get sorted out.

This kind of thing drives me mad. We are LLs as currently living in staff accommodation.

We charged referencing at cost (£21pp), same for inventory (£120). That was all. As with others, I just change the dates on the AST and we're done.
I appreciate a lettings agency has overheads but the fees they charge to tenants are, imo, totally immoral. Especially bearing in mind most are also taking a cut of the rent too.

i am just checking you are in England and not Scotland? Fees of any kind against a tenant are against the law in Scotland.

Who is your landlord?

Estate agent fees are totally imorral!
We have issues with our old heating system and although technically it works it isn't usable (whole different thread) the landlord refuses to do anything about it. We can't afford to move because 90% of the rental properties surrounding use a particular agency who's up front fees are £600!!