Seems like the war with the estate agents is on!

[maggiethecat]

Further to earlier thread about seeking to waive agents' continued fees....

We uploaded property info on Upad and flat is now on Rightmove etc. I was just checking Rightmove to see comparables on the market and the cheeky agents who let it last time have our flat advertised (nicer pics than ours by the way) at a higher rental!!

Surely this must be illegal - I have had no conversations with them about marketing our property let alone entering into any contract.

Looks like they've worked that out Sooz - they've marketed it at the exact amount that after their fees I'd get what I'm marketing it at!

I'll have a think about how I want to play this one.

If you have no contract with them then surely you don't have to pay any fees if they send a tenant your way?

I had a previous contract and it states that they will endeavour to find a tenant on the same terms whenever a vacancy arises. At the time I probably read that as being with the landlord's consent but it appears that they might be relying on this clause.

However, I'm sure that would be considered to be too onerous a term to tie the landlord in forever.

I would not try to go down the road of taking their tenant and saying piss off to them. I just don't want anything to do with them really.

To update - called them up and they claimed that they were not sure how the 'mistake' of it being advertised happened . They have now removed it.

Agent was very polite about it all and of course offered to help with any marketing of the flat.

We have found tenant and are proceeding after interviewing a few.

Sooz, if you are around, thanks so much for your tips - Upad was definitely a good marketing strategy. We even had offers over asking but are not being greedy and are going for those that we got the best sense about, subject to referencing of course.

Being able to vet people ourselves has probably been one of the best things (in addition to saving on cost) of not using agent. Hopefully we will avoid the nightmare tenants that we currently have.

that should be 'the kind of nightmare tenants'