First time rental for us.LA wants us to visit office to sign tennancy agreement.help!

clutton_2

my only concern is this non refundable deposit of £250-£300 =- what is that about ? if you have paid them for the "admin" checks - why are they still wanting more money prior to your signing the agreement ? i would want the agreement signed first before handing over the £250. WHAT are "admin" check" - i know what "credit checks" are .......

i also hear alarm bells ringing here.

i suggest paying the admin fees and nothing else - at least that way you only risk losing £100 if the checks fail and they give the house to someone else - and if they insist pay the £250-£300 in a cheque - at least you could cancel that if they turn you down

mickym

yes ive heard about people paying a load of money up front for the admin fees, and deposit, only for the admin/credit checks to fail and cause the potential tennant to lose their deposit.

personally we do not have any potential credit check problems.

Notlob

This payment is to show good intent that you plan to proceed. From the landlord's point of view, they will miss other opportunities when the property is taken off the market, so would want some assurance that you are not going to waste their time and reduce the risk of increasing the void period by you changing your mind.

I would suggest you establish that this payment is going to be returned to you if the landlord changes their minds. This is usually the case, but you made no reference to it.

Notlob

neverdespairgirl

Bungarm2001 wrote: »

Now we are LL's ourselves for years now, we have never been asked by a prospective tenant to view a contract before the day of signing. If we were ever asked, then I can see no reason why we wouldn't oblige if there was a good reason.

Surely the "good reason" for any prospective tenant would be wanting to read and consider an important, binding contract, involving quite a lot of money?

mickym

right,...latest update!

A friend of a friend is works for an other estate/letting agent.

I got some impartial advise from him, as he doesnt have any properties available to us anyway.

1. Basically said that a tennancy agreement shouldnt need to be signed until the day of moving in. We should have plenty of time before hand to view it, and couldnt understand why they wouldnt let us see the agreement before hand.

2. Said that £100 for the admin fees is enough to 'show willing' to go for the property.

3. Said if we wanted to pay the £300 part deposit to secure the property and get them to take it off the market then when doing so, get the agency to sign a letter which I create that outlines the conditions based on which we give the deposit.

i.e. That we can decorate, we dont have to replace the white goods etc.

That way if the agrent or landlord goes against their verbal agreement about our conditions and doesnt include them in the tennancy agreement, then we will then be able to get the part deposit money back.

This sounds like the best route to go. What do you think?

RichPenny

If I were you, I'd be very concerned about why they won't let you see a blank copy of one of their tenancy agreements. I'd go so far as to say there WILL be unfair terms on it. Mine has clauses meaning I have to pay for professional carpet, curtain and window cleaning when I leave (despite no evidence of this being done when I moved in). I signed the agreement because the place was cheap. Had I been on here at that time, I may well have just crossed those clauses out before I signed. Bear in mind that you CAN do this, providing you and the LA both agree and sign the corrections.

Also, not once in 11 years of renting have I had to pay an additional deposit on a flat. Paid credit check fees and the agency registration fees, but never anything to secure the flat. £250 - £300 sounds excessive too, especially as it's non-refundable. As soon as they get this they have you over a barrel.

Some agencies are better than others; this sounds like a bad one TBH. If they won't be up-front with you now, can you imagine what they will be like when you've moved in? My advice would be to walk away and find a better agent. Better still, find a privately let property. I have always found these to be cheaper and less hassle than going through a LA. If you have to go with an agency, see if you can find out if the agency or the landlord manage the tenancy. Landlord managed is better in my experience.

mickym

Latest Update,

Got to the letting agent office to find the guy i was dealing with over the phone, couldn't meet us. To be honest this was a godsend as the other guy we dealt with was much calmer and allowed us plenty of time to go through the Tenancy Agreement and answer our questions.

Also found out their reason for not releasing the document was because they wouldn't want the template getting in the hands of someone else who may want to set up their own letting company and use their template to save them paying legal fees to write up their own agreements.

To cut a long story short, i brought a document with me stating the conditions we would want the landlord to meet for us to go ahead with the letting. Failure on any of these would mean we get our £250 deposit back. The reason for having to put this money down is because one of our conditions was to get all the furniture out of the house, and if we were to back out of the deal after the landlord has done that , then he would have to put it all back in again... we could see they're reasoning behind their actions now.

Upon proceeding with the deal, the letting agent called the landlord to see if he was confident he could meet the conditions we stipulated. on returning from the call, the letting agent said that the landlord had been told by another letting agent that they were close to getting £675 for the property (we offered an agreed £650 with the letting agent/landlord earlier that week and noticed it advertised in the letting agents widow at £650 too).

This frustrated us, but i had a thought that the other party could indeed be me!
In frustration last week, i called the agents we had our first viewing for the property with. They had it up for £725 and said reducing it to £650 was going to be tough.... im thinking that agent may have negotiated £675 with the land lord after my chat with them.

Just waiting to see how things will pan out.

franklee

mickym wrote: »

This frustrated us, but i had a thought that the other party could indeed be me!
In frustration last week, i called the agents we had our first viewing for the property with. They had it up for £725 and said reducing it to £650 was going to be tough.... im thinking that agent may have negotiated £675 with the land lord after my chat with them.

Well with your other hat on go back and offer 625 to the other agent to get rid of your "competitor"

owitemisermusa

Quite frankly, this LA is rubbish. Unless you REALLY want this house/is cheaper/absolutely what you need, I would suggest ditching these charlatans.

C'mon, after negotiating the rent they suddenly spring a 'competitor' on you? Utter piffle!

Micky, I think you can see why they want you to sign an unseen AST. It probably hasn't got the rent specified on it till you've signed!!

You can get a legally binding AST from any where, you can get them free or the landlord websites sell them for heaven's sake!

tbs624

Micky I agree with owitemisermusa.

We can smell the bovine manure from here.

Any LA who acts like this before you are even in is likely to prove to be absolute nightmare when it comes to sorting out any problems with future repair issues or return of deposits etc.

mickym wrote: »

Also found out their reason for not releasing the document was because they wouldn't want the template getting in the hands of someone else who may want to set up their own letting company and use their template to save them paying legal fees to write up their own agreements.
.

What tosh- they really do need to get over themselves: no-one is after obtaining their tenancy agreements to set up in competition.It's really not that expensive to get a tenancy agreement drawn up and as a member of a LL association (as decent LLs/LAs are ) any LL or LA has access to all manner of documents.

Tenants have got to start voting with their feet and refusing to use *any* LA who can't be straightforward & fair in their dealings.

Are these jokers members of ARLA - (association of residential letting agents)?

I really think I would be looking elsewhere if I were in your situation.