Please sign this Shelter petition to end letting agent fees to tenants!

[coco87]

At the moment letting agents are charging upwards of £500 for spurious fees and charges. Tenants already have to pay enough in terms of rent, deposit and inventory charges. Please sign this petition to help Shelter end letting fees for tenants. This is needed more than ever and especially at this time of year when so many people are threatened with homelessness. Thank you!

england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns/fixing_private_renting/letting_agencies

signed.

Signed

Signed! Experienced this myself as a tenant.

I'll sign this. My son is a student and has been living in a flat for a year; he and his friend have been told they have to pay £150 each "because it's a year since you moved in." So bloody what"

So bloody what! I meant to say.

Signed. There needs to be some regulation of private renting in this country- right now it's extortionate and exploitative.

Done x

not signing because it is a waste of time and naive.

letting agents need to be regulated full stop. Fees need to be regulated and controlled as they are indeed too high. Landlords pay a lot too.

but where do these fees cost £500? In my town they all charge half of that. Admittedly still high but NOT £500.

but credit checks and agency services are NOT free. The law is biased in favour of the tenant, get a wrong 'un in the house and it is months to get them out, during which they can pay no rent and destroy the place.

Shelter would do better to try to help landlords and tenants understand each other.

so how are agents funded in Scotland? Do they all work for free?

Of course they need to be regulated. And it's very nice that you happen to live somewhere where the costs are not too bad.

But it is absolutely stupid and ignorant to claim the law is biased in favour of tenants.

Specialsubject - In London they cost this much. Not naive or a waste of time. Shelter have got the government policy on housing to change quite a bit via campaigning. If you bothered to read the Shelter website you would see a few of their campaign successes. How does not signing help anything except keep the current system going? Mind boggling.

Signed.
Agree withElizabeththefirst Tenants are being exploited

Signed!

When me and DP moved into our new place we had to scrounge up the £525 first month rent, plus 1 month as a deposit. This was fine.
Then the letting agency threw an extra 100 pounds on the deposit because of our cat (who they'd known about from the start and our LL were perfectly happy with us having), charged us £300+ for credit checks and "admin fees", plus about another £100-150 in miscellaneous bits and bobs.

We had to find all of this money when we were on benefits. It's been six months and I'm still in debt to my lovely dad and DP's mum, who lent us the money to move.
They've just charged us £50 to send us our renewed tenancy agreement. I'm pretty sure sending two envelopes with about 5 sheets of A4 paper in doesn't cost anywhere near that much!

Signed.

I'm a landlord and charge £20 per tenant - that's £10 for a credit check, £6 to check Land Registry for previous tenancy (to see that who is down as the landlord actually owns the property) and £4 for phone calls/letters/etc to employers, previous landlords, etc for references.

Some agents really do take the p*, there is NO justification for such rip-off fees.

Disgraceful practice - thank you for highlighting.

Signed! Done!

Happy Christmas one and all.

Hi,

Best of luck with this. Just a little housekeeping, do you mind if we move this into the petitions noticeboard?

Well, I posted it here because it gets more traffic and views but obviously if you need to move it, do so.

Signed and shared, rentals in this country really need sorting out and made fairer for both tenants and landlords!

Signed. This is something that really makes me angry.