Anyone Bypassed Estate Agents.

jimbo2010

Hi saw a house to rent on the internet but it is through an estate agent and don't want to pay the £150.00 admin fees etc.

Has anyone tried to contact the owners directly on here to bypass the estate agents altogether before or do you think i'm wasting my time.

I was gonna write a letter and post it through the door and see what happens

Colincbayley

If the property is empty, then the chances are that the estate agent will end up gettig the letter anyway.

Better bet, if you want the property is haggle on the fees.

hazyjo

They paid to advertise it, they get the fees. Simple as that. They can claim the fees back off you at a later date if it's proved you knew the house was up for rent as a result of their marketing.

Not worth the hassle. Just go through the EA and, as mentioned above, try haggling.

Another thought, are they letting agents too, or just trying to find someone to rent the property? Not sure how it all works with renting. If the vendor wanted to rent it privately and not pay a letting agent to find/deal with a tenant, I'm sure they'd have done it that way.

Jx

mostlycheerful

Yeah, it’s worth a go but of course the owner may prefer to go through the agent rather than deal direct, for all sorts of reasons eg could be out of the area, don’t want the hassle, want to be private, could be old, could have lots of properties to look after or a busy job or business or family and no time to be hands on etc.

Most property is registered at the land registry and you can look them up for a fee of only about £4 so this will probably give you the owner’s name and possibly even a forwarding address which might be the home address. If there’s no forwarding address then once you’ve got their name and if they live in the same area then you might be able to find them in the phone book and or on the voters’ register - except that I haven’t used the voters’ register so I don’t know how easy it is to search it but I’ve previously heard that you’re supposed to be able to. Alternatively maybe a tracing agent or private investigator might find them for you for just £30 or £50 but it might be more like £100 or £200 which, of course, would be too much. Again, I haven’t used them but I’ve heard that supposedly normally they can find anyone anywhere.

Good luck.

penguingirl

Does the £150 include credit check fees, references etc? If it does I would think it would be unlikely that a LL would want you to bypas the LA- after all there will be a reason they've chosen to use a LA in the first place!