extortionate agency fees- renting

aliceelizabeths

is there anything we can do?

they have charged us just shy of £400 for obstensibly, performing a credit check, showing us round the property and sending letters to our employers to check we are indeed who we say we are, and are paid the stated amount.............both of which were wrong on reciept and had to be redrafted on our instruction.

I know they are also making money off of the landlord in this respect and I'm pretty horrified.

I rang up and asked what exactly we were to pay this amount for, as I am aware of how much it costs to credit check an individual, and think that £300 on top of this in admin fees is unreasonable

I then got this rather vauge response:

Hi Alice,
Please see below what our agency fee is for;

• Viewings.
• Move-in file creation.
• Liaising with Landlord re move-dates.
• Liasing with landlord regarding any issues prior to move-in.
• Processing funds.
• Organising references.
• Changing/informing utilities.
• Setting up contracts.
• Registering deposits.
• Property check in / check out.
• Inventories (with managed properties.)
• Generally helping Tenants throughout the Tenancy (managed only.)
• Administration costs, petrol, office, light and heat, contributes towards all office costs .

£400?!! and with regard to property check in check out- they insist we meet them at their offices to sign papers and collect keys, despite the fact we are relocating from London THAT DAY and there is no parking, yet we are paying for petrol and their office lighting and heating?!?!

I am bamboozled

I have only rented through a letting agency once before, and the fee was a fare more palletable £50!

aliceelizabeths

just to add- I accept that their is some work involved in leasing to new tenants...but there have been numerous errors in the handling of our case and they are doing nothing to make our lives easy, said errors have been pointed out by us not noted by them - they wrote an entirely different name on my work reference form and asked my partner's boss for references for both him and myself?! Anything up to £100 each I would have thought reasonable, but double that seems wrong to me.

Jowo_2

Your employer pays your salary from its profits which are generally earned by charging its customers more than the actual cost of providing the service.

Estate agents, like most businesses, can pretty much charge what they like, whatever the market lets them get away with. A bit like your employer.

And no, I'm not a letting agent, nor do I think it represents value for money, its exhorbitant. however, this kind of thread is very common but I wonder why estate agents in particular are singled out for extortion when, for example, most businesses will do their best to wangle the max out of their customers. A £100 meal in a restaurant may only take 2 hours to eat and the raw ingrediants cost a tenner ....

Doshwaster

I have been in the same rented place for 5 years so cannot remember the initial fees I paid - but they were nothing like £400. Probably no more than £50. I can't remember making a fuss at the time so it can't have been that expensive.

Just checked a few local agencies websites and they all charge in the £120-150+VAT range.

princessamy86

Did you not ask the fees before you put the application in? If it's really too much then walk away and find somewhere with cheaper fees. I do think it's extortionate by the way, but nobody is forcing you to pay it surely?

aliceelizabeths

we did, but unfortunately it was my partner who did not mention it to me until this week-at which point I have started kicking up a fuss!

gazfocus

We had to pay the admin fee (on all occassions) at the same time we submitted our applications. And it was £164.50 the most recent time.

PasturesNew

Jowo wrote: »

...I wonder why estate agents in particular are singled out for extortion when, for example, most businesses will do their best to wangle the max out of their customers. A £100 meal in a restaurant may only take 2 hours to eat and the raw ingrediants cost a tenner ....

Because housing is an essential, eating out isn't. £400 is a LOT of money to most people - in fact for many it's 2-3 months' money saved after their basic living costs are met. £400 is more than many low paid people can save in a year. £400 is a fortune.

It's an outrageous cost, especially bearing in mind that agents are hard to deal with, you're not sure if you're going to get the place or when and overall it's not a professional service that's delivered, but an ad hoc response delivered with contempt to the renter.

Add to that the fact that some people may find they are being asked to move every 6 months or every year, as the landlords decide to boot them out to sell the property ... it's a bl00dy fortune for people just trying to get one of life's little essentials sorted out.

£100 for a meal .... the most I have EVER paid for a meal was a special meal out with a date and it was £22 for two of us, including drinks. With a meal, it's a choice ... we chose to blow a whole £22 on a nice Mexican meal ... we could have got some oven chips in for £1.

PasturesNew

princessamy86 wrote: »

Did you not ask the fees before you put the application in? If it's really too much then walk away and find somewhere with cheaper fees. I do think it's extortionate by the way, but nobody is forcing you to pay it surely?

If it's your first renting experience you don't even KNOW there are fees. I didn't. I always thought agents made their money from the 10% or so they take from the landlords each month.

F_T_Buyer

Just turn around and say anything over x amount (say £150ish) can be deducted from my first months rent, so the landlord pays. If they don't like it... walk...

You don't have to pay it.

secla

they all charge over the top fees, im sorting out a rented place at the moment and have to pay

£100 each person in the house for a credit check + admin (£200 me and wife)
£50 inventory fee
£125 extra because we have 2 dogs
£950 deposit
£850 1 month rent in advance

im sure your paying a little extra for being in london though