First time renting

Marie19x · 30 October 2012 at 8:03PM

Hi everyone,

I need a bit of advice really.
I'm 20 and my partner is 23, we are planning to rent a property we have already viewed and paid the extortionate admin fee of £220 to the estate agent for.
It's in the same village I live in now.

At first we were told (and the property wwas advertised) as being £550pcm with one months rent deposit. We went to view, the guy from the estate agent turned up nearly half an hour late, meanwhile another couple arrived to view it too. We were shown in then he said "you two have a look round i will speak to the others" so we did, loved it and had all our questions ready but when he returned he said "now I wont be able to tell you anything about the property as i have left all the information at the office" then went on to ask us how much the rent is per month and when it was available! surely he should know this as a minimum?! We fell in love with the house anyway and decided we wanted to rent and find more info about it.

We found out a couple days later after I sent off the applications, that the landlady had told them that deposit would now be £550 plus 6 weeks rent and not the normal 4 weeks rent. I phoned up and played h***, to which we agreed if we had a guarantor and an initial 6 month terms we could have the deposit as it originally stated.

Now after paying the £220 admin fee for all of the checks etc, they've said that the rent doesn't include the loft or the 'garage' which as we never saw a garage, i'm guessing is the little brick building in the side of the back garden near the house. They also said that if any appliances in the kitchen break she would not get them fixed (which is fair enough, we can sort that). None of this was stated in the advertisement or told to us when we agreed to pay the admin fee. In our minds, we were renting a semi-detached house with 3 bedrooms and everything along with it. It also stated off street parking come to think of it, which there isn't any we can see!

On top of this, we were told the earliest we could be in the property would be this saturday (which was thought was great as the advert also stated that it was available from 30 oct). But now they say that the landlady requires at least 2 weeks to move out, so we'd be more looking at 17th November.

I will be phoning the estate agents tomorrow as i'm fuming, i'm not one to get messed around. But I wanted someone else's unbiased view of the situation. Are they trying to make us out as fools bcause we are first timers and so young?

Thanks

Fire_Fox · 30 October 2012 at 8:26PM

Not having the appliances repaired is not uncommon. What happened at the viewing is annoying but largely irrelevant. What do you want to happen, do you want to pull out? If so write a letter or e-mail stating that you want exactly what was advertised quoting the advert/ bullet points and or you were specifically shown on the day OR a full refund because you paid that for something that is actually not available. Copy to both landlord and agent. Telephone calls are easily ignored, the tend to come over as just whinging.