Advise on rental situation with local estate agents

Jharkinton

Hi Everyone,

I have had a quick browse through the threads to see if this issue has already been raised, but couldn't find anything.

Hopefully there is someone on here who can help with a semi-worrying problem and suggest a way to get out of this situation.

Me and My other half found a home that we both thought was accepted for a short time to move into. It wasn't the best house and to be honest didn't suit our needs as a new family. But none the least needed to move into some where. We went through referencing and was accepted.

We were asked when we wanted to move in and we said roughly 6 weeks time. (No contract information has been signed only the 'Rent Shield' form to start referencing check.

My hours at work got cut resorting in this house being out of our budget 2 weeks after the referencing was completed. I rang up the estate agents called Kivells in my local area and informed them that we could no longer afford the house as our circumstances had changed. We wanted to inform them as soon as we could with this decision so they could find alternative renters.

Needless to say the estate agent was rather unprofessional and had a hissy fit down the end of my mobile voice mail saying that due to pulling out they would have no other resort than to charge us £120 for admin fees for the leg work they had done for us.

The only services they provided us was;

-faxing documents to referencing company
-send us a few sheets of paper
-show us around the property.

we paid over £200 in referencing fees so that should cover as standard to faxing of documents and a few sheets of papers. And the showing us around the property should surely be FREE!!!!

Could anybody help by telling me in the eyes of law can they charge me for services outside of reasonable means? We signed no paperwork agreeing to any terms other than the rent shield generic application form which is nothing to do with the estate agents.

My other-halfs Nan signed her paperwork as a guarantor and returned it to them but we still hadn't confirmed in writing nor signature that we agree to the terms.

Can she be held for the fees should we not pay them?

Regards Jamie

pmlindyloo

Sorry, but I am not sure how much money is involved here. Have you paid £200 and now they want £120 more?

Basically the fees charged have to be reasonable. Presumably they have done credit checks on both you and your guarantor and taken up references.

Perhaps if you tell us which area you are from someone else can give you some comparisons.

Unfortunately letting agents are notorious for charging high fees. You should have been told about these fees when you first started the process. If you were then in effect you accepted the amounts. If you weren't then you may have a case to challenge them.

As you were responsible for not going ahead with the tenancy then the fees are non returnable. You could try negotiating.

As regards your guarantor, if everything was done correctly e.g. the guarantor's signature was witnessed and she had sight of the tenancy agreement, then she could be held responsible for the administrative fees. You would need to look at this contract to see if administrative fees are covered.

Without sounding too harsh, you should have been asking about fees up front and not signing a guarantor agreement unless you had checked out what it entailed.

I am sorry not to give you better news but this may be a case of paying up and learning from it in the future.

If you want to challenge them you could contact Shelter or CAB.

Kayalana99

I might be wrong but you havn't agreed to pay them anything for any work they have done so I would just basicly say no.

They are always trying to get more money out of you, if they still insist on it and your tempted to pay it at least ask them to write to you with a broken down list of what the £120 is for and argue every point with how much you think it should cost.

We had a painter come round to give us a quote and we pratically gave him the job before he sorted it out but then wanted to charge us nearly £3k to do it...we was abit gobsmacked and ended up not going with him. Would that give him the right to charge us for 'coming round and inspecting the property'? He'd get no where. Why are EA's any differnert.

DRP

Kayalana99 wrote: »

I might be wrong but you havn't agreed to pay them anything for any work they have done so I would just basicly say no.

They are always trying to get more money out of you, if they still insist on it and your tempted to pay it at least ask them to write to you with a broken down list of what the £120 is for and argue every point with how much you think it should cost.

We had a painter come round to give us a quote and we pratically gave him the job before he sorted it out but then wanted to charge us nearly £3k to do it...we was abit gobsmacked and ended up not going with him. Would that give him the right to charge us for 'coming round and inspecting the property'? He'd get no where. Why are EA's any differnert.

^^yeah this

It sounds like the only thing you need to pay for is the referencing.

Jharkinton

Thanks everyone for replying

Referred the case to CAB and have someone dealing with it on our behalf. The CAB advisor said on the same lines as Kayalana99 and DRP that because we never signed our tenancy agreement it nulls the grantors contract as the terms and conditions wasn't agreed in writing by me and my other half.

She said as long as Kivell Estate Agents in Liskeard, Cornwall haven't got any paperwork wording in differently then the fees will have to be dropped. The CAB advisor is ringing them today to argue to toss!

Fingers crossed. Thanks again for replying. Much appreciated.