Rent Admin Fee

landscaperico

It is indeed capitalism at work however we dont live in a purly capitalistic country there are rules and regulations and when things arent right they get addressed and I will do everything in my power to help that along. Fees havent changed that much they just make them up and try it on. I want them to have a good income it means I'll have a good service (I hope) and its good for the economy but I personally do not want to be fleeced.

Holding deposit would be fine, then you would get that back (I assume) admin fee not so.

I think we will never agree I have my opinion and you yours we both keep chasing our tales and its getting personal and I dont like it.

I will be following this up I think its wrong, and I'm not talking finacially I'm talking morally. Like I've said all along. There are regulations in place in industrys for a reason. There obviously needs to be one here,

And your reasoning is flawed if they raise there prices because they are loosing money those agencys will and are my case in point loosing buisness, the flat next to me and I live in a beautiful Urban Splash development, has been on the market for 6 months. Still no one. Doesnt sound like shooting fish in the barrel. Infact there are so many properties about I'm the one shooting fish in the barrel I have the money.

With the plumber you could still have tried to get a discount, what would have happened if you'd quibbled it? He probably would have said no, but he may have said yes, you dont know unless you ask.

edgex

hmmm, some people have some quite odd views of who should be paying for services


the Landlord (LL) contracts a Letting Agent (LA) to manage a property, ie. get someone in paying a rent.
for this, the LA charges a % fee out of the rental income, & passes the rest to the LL


so, what do the LA's do?
advertise/promote properties to let - thats a service for the LL
show prospective tenants around the properties - thats a service for the LL
prepare & check inventories - thats a service for the LL
check that the tenants meet the LL's requirements - thats a service for the LL

so, all of those are for the LA's customer/client, the LL, therefore it should be the LL paying for them, whether in the % out of the rent, or as seperate charges.

what does the LA do for the tenant?
nothing - so why are they charging the tenant anything?




when you go for a job, for some jobs, they will perform credit & other checks. they dont charge the candidates for these, its just the cost of employing someone.

for tenant background checks, if the LL or LA want to set certain requirements, they should be the ones paying for them.

i dont even see why they should charge a tenant for the setting up of a contract. if you go in a shop & purchase an item, they dont then charge you a 'till usage' fee do they? its all costed into the final price.

landscaperico

No I intended on negotiating the fee down as I have done in the past, but to start with I started with saying i would pay nothing. I think thats fair enough. I dont think I should pay anything but both sides alway have to give, if the estate agent didn't add any room for manover in his £185, which I'm positive there will have been, he should have. I do and every buisness does. Standard practice. He wouldnt budge on his fees.

Jowo_2

edgex wrote: »

what does the LA do for the tenant?
nothing - so why are they charging the tenant anything?

Because they can. Because they do. Because if the tenant pays, as the OP realises, the OP doesn't get the keys. If the tenant doesn't wish to pay, they can rent directly with a landlord that has no business expenses and overheads other than the property itself. Or they can stay in their current property feeling triumphant that they've denied the agent a fee.

Unfortunately, from the tenants perspective, the LA do not share the view that they do 'nothing' for the tenant and believe the fee includes services such as drawing up the contract and undertaking references.

edgex wrote: »

i dont even see why they should charge a tenant for the setting up of a contract. if you go in a shop & purchase an item, they dont then charge you a 'till usage' fee do they? its all costed into the final price.

A customer generally doesn't get the goods or services until they pay. A telecoms company won't dispatch the handset until the customer has agreed to the contract of paying x sum over x period. BT doesn't send out an engineer until the line connection fee has been paid. Oh, let me see, BT hold their customers to ransom with a large fee that only takes an engineer a couple of minutes to do, monopolising a service where the end user has little alternative but to use them...

edgex wrote: »

for tenant background checks, if the LL or LA want to set certain requirements, they should be the ones paying for them.

It's a nice fantasy and perhaps one day this will happen. In the meantime, the tenant is outnumbered and simply has to cough up - both landlords and agents are delirously happy for the tenant to pay for their own screening which sometimes reveals that the tenant is a liar who has been previously evicted for rent arrears and doesn't have a job.

Currently, some employees pay their own employment related expenses for checks and accreditations. They see this as an investment in their career, in the same way that the tenant knows passing the tenant screening leads to a bright new tenancy in a shiny flat.

landscaperico

It wasnt a fantasy just a few years ago admin fees are a new invention, and the employees will make money out of the checks, T's do not.

And LA have standard contracts they do not have to draw up contracts if you have to draw up a contact that gets expensive.

Jowo_2

landscaperico wrote: »

It wasnt a fantasy just a few years ago admin fees are a new invention, and the employees will make money out of the checks, T's do not.

And LA have standard contracts they do not have to draw up contracts if you have to draw up a contact that gets expensive.

I believe fees to tenants to progress a tenancy have been charged since the year dot.

And yes, I agree, they don't produce a contract from scratch, they'll have a standard template to edit.

landscaperico

No they didn't used to charge the tenant

Jowo_2

landscaperico wrote: »

No they didn't used to charge the tenant

Well that ought to strengthen your negotiating position which is currently 2:0 to the agents - an appeal to nostalgia.

edgex

Jowo wrote: »

Unfortunately, from the tenants perspective, the LA do not share the view that they do 'nothing' for the tenant and believe the fee includes services such as drawing up the contract and undertaking references.



A customer generally doesn't get the goods or services until they pay. A telecoms company won't dispatch the handset until the customer has agreed to the contract of paying x sum over x period. BT doesn't send out an engineer until the line connection fee has been paid. Oh, let me see, BT hold their customers to ransom with a large fee that only takes an engineer a couple of minutes to do, monopolising a service where the end user has little alternative but to use them...



It's a nice fantasy and perhaps one day this will happen. In the meantime, the tenant is outnumbered and simply has to cough up - both landlords and agents are delirously happy for the tenant to pay for their own screening which sometimes reveals that the tenant is a liar who has been previously evicted for rent arrears and doesn't have a job.

er, isnt the Landlord the customer of the Letting Agent?

therefore, everything youve said above would apply to the Landlord


the tenant would then be a customer of the landlord
the agent is just that, an agent. they are employed by the landlord, to provide services to the landlord.




if you wanted to book a performer, you would usually deal with their agent.
its the performer that employs the agent, you would employ the performer.

for their management services, the agent would then charge a % fee of the total income from that booking, which their customer, the performer, pays.

as the performer would want to ensure that they are going to get paid, that they are dealing with a reputable venue/event etc etc, the agent would do some checking. as these checks are for their customer, the cost is included in their % fee/commission.




its the landlord that is taking the financial risk & reward.
if they wish to have checks carried out to reduce the risk, & so increase the reward, they should be the ones paying for it.



if credit checks have been carried out, & the tenant charged directly for them, surely those checks then belong to that tenant?
what happens to all these charges if the landlord pulls out at the last minute?
if there are multiple prosepctive tenants for the same property, & checks are done on all of them, what happens to the charges for those that dont get the property?
are these checks valid against another property with the same agent?
what happens if the prospective tenant fails the checks?



if you apply for a loan/credit, the issuer will do a credit check. they dont charge you for that, its just part of the cost of doing business.




yes, at the end of it all the tenant will end up paying for it all, in their rent.
but, it should be the person that is making the financial gain that is paying for the checks involved in reducing the financial risk, ie the landlord.

tbs624

Jowo wrote: »

t the tenant knows passing the tenant screening leads to a bright new tenancy in a shiny flat.

According to the 2006 EHCS, 41 % of properties where the LL had used an LA were ‘non -decent’ so maybe not quite so shiny