Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Letting Fees to be banned!
Apparently the Chancellor's Autumn statement will include the outright banning of letting fees. Given what they are used for, to buy insurance to cover rental payments, I think that estate agents should consider themselves lucky there is not some PPI style claw back as there was with high street banks doing the same.
Tags for Forum Posts: letting, letting fees
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Sounds fair enough
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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I'd like to point out that it is a Conservative Chancellor who is banning these fees. Can you not see that they MUST have been wrong in the first place?
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Permalink Reply by Maddy on
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I heard an estate agent on R4 this morning arguing that it took an average of 17 hours' work to set up a new tenancy...he didn't specify on doing what, but it seems unlikely.
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Then that is a call for more automation! Let's write an app for that!
I think he was possibly including fifteen hours doing the background checks which I've already explained here as illegal. I have here the world's smallest violin in my hands and I'm watching the Foxton's share price tumbling.
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Permalink Reply by PhoebeMac on
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Don't get too excited, I think they will "consult" on the proposals before anything concrete happens.
If only they would introduce some sort of rent cap too - or restrict rises to the rate of inflation.
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They don't do the background checks themselves, surely, they outsource it to background check companies - the same ones that employers use to do background checks on new hires. The background checks themselves aren't illegal, as I understand it what you have suggested is illegal is getting tenants to pay for the landlord's rental payment insurance.
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Goodness me! I used to be an estate manager for a local authority back in the eighties (pre-computers) and I was expected to do the whole thing (viewing, signing the tenancy agreement, rent account set up, bank details and helping to apply for benefits if appropriate) in a couple of hours!
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Include a comprehensive background check (they even look into the health of your employer and the sector you work in) and you could get to 17. Seeing as the tenant is paying for this check it may as well be the best one we can get, right?
I am just so happy about this today.
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A recent example of what we paid £350 admin fees for (negotiated down from £500) :
- letting agent printed off a standard tenancy agreement, with mistakes that my husband pointed out
- the background check which was my husband getting his boss to email the letting agent confirming his employment
- both me and my husband emailing our bank statements and pictures of our passports.
That was literally all they did. It is exploitation and it is robbery.
I should add that they hadn't even checked the house to make sure it was fit for habitation because the kitchen roof fell in within 2 weeks of moving in and the aggressive landlord refused to fix it. This meant we had to pay a further £300 in admin fees 1 month later to move yet again.
They display the London Rental Standard mark on their website but when I asked the lettings manager which organisation they were with she hadn't even heard of the London Rental Standard.
It's Kings Group Lettings on Green Lanes btw.
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This is probably one of the reasons why people go with a 'name', like Greene, Foxtons, KFH etc, because they're reputable and people think they can trust them. I've rented through one-office estate agents and big chains and had similar service from both but I've probably been lucky. You were really unlucky, it sounds awful, but I'm glad you were able to move out as I'm sure there was a 6-month break clause in there somewhere!
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But that's "OK" because your landlord had insurance to cover his income, which YOU paid for with that background check (some of them are more thorough that others, I agree). If it have been £30 more a month on the rent I think you would have been a lot happier and been in a lot better position to get something done about the roof!
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How do you know he had rental payment insurance? It's not compulsory. The landlord sounds like a total tool who probably doesn't and I would also imagine that insurance companies have clauses that mean that if the tenants move out because the property is uninhabitable, then they don't pay. And if Katie managed to move out without having to pay the first 6 months' rent in full (which is normally the compulsory part of the rental agreement) then it suggests that the landlord and agent agreed that they had cause to move out.
By the way, I think the letting fees are a total scam, especially when they're charged because you're extending your contract and the agent is doing literally nothing except changing some dates on a Word document for £200.
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