£100 Credit Check!!!

tbs624

duchy wrote: »

Good luck.
The house next door to mine is owned by LL's who don't want to pay agent's fees . They own several properties and all are tenented by people who for one reason or another can't/won't get a credit-check. They don't want to pay agent fees, or protect deposits, or maintain the property, or care what happens to the property just "as long as we get our rent".

Amateur landlords can cause a lot of grief and expense to tenents when things go wrong. If you end up having to take legal advice (far more likely in this scenario) that £100 creditcheck may seem cheap by comparison.

I would agree that amateur LLs can cause a T grief but so can unregulated, ignoramus LAs who make the rules up as they go along - and when you get a combination of the two it is likely to be a nightmare for the T.

However, you seem to be making the error of assuming that LLs who choose to self manage their properties are all rank amateurs - despite your personal experience of your next door property owner the fact is that the opposite is generally true.

Using an LA is not some kind of badge of LL "professionalism" and/or in any way indicative of the type of LL you will be dealing with.

davidgmmafan

"b. Shut up and look elsewhere?"

We've established in the thread the fees are are fairly common so how is this an option? Just because they're all doing it doesn't make it right, and they do squirm a bit when you ask how they arrive at such a figure.

I do think people should look for alternatives to bring about a change, if this is what you mean then I agree. It just bugs me that people aren't up front about charges like this, like fees simply for making payment, or bank charges, instead of saying well you know its to cover costs, why not just say its costs plus eye watering markup?

"I think that the problem is, your son may well have told the letting agents to stick their fees but 99% of letting agents have very similar fees so your son is going to find it difficult to avoid paying them."

This backs up the point. They're all at it, and the potentially worrying thing is you have no safeguards whatsoever. I would feel a lot better about handing over such a fee if it was

A) A fair representation of the costs, I wouldn't even care too much about a little markup
It guaranteed the property.

B sadly isn't the case, so it becomes a bit like shopping around for a loan. You can apply for more than one but your ability to proceed declines each time you do so. There's no guarantee whatsoever with the fee handed over, so you could have a situation where someone fritters away the hard won bond and up front rent on garbage like this.

debrag

I went through a LA for my current place, For the 2 of us we paid £380 for all fees including holding deposit + checks. In total we paid £1600+ for a £650 let. Now we deal with the LL direct and he hasn't increased our rent or charges us for a renewal we just went onto periodic.