Shelter Campaign- End Letting Fees

jemmiegal

Hi, I don't know if this is allowed here. Sorry if it's not - let me know and I'll delete it.

Shelter have an online petition to end letting fees. As someone who's been stung a number of times and likely to be stung again soon enough I've signed.

Didn't know what Shelter did really until I googled for some help. Seem like a great organisation. So please do sign.

I can't post the link as I'm a newbie - please can someone else.

JencParker

Signed, but sorry - have no idea how to do links

Better_Days

There you go:

http://england.shelter.org.uk/campaigns/fixing_private_renting/letting_agencies

Flashmanchop

if the fees are not fair and reasonable, I agree.

However, some fees are required, as someone, if it be the landlord, or the agent, will have a cost implied to them, which needs paying.

CLAPTON

Flashmanchop wrote: »

if the fees are not fair and reasonable, I agree.

However, some fees are required, as someone, if it be the landlord, or the agent, will have a cost implied to them, which needs paying.

the proposal is the tenant don't pay any fees but the landord does.

penthouse89

I now won't even consider using an agent whose fees are sky high.

My last property stung me with fees of £400+.

I moved last week and the fees were £50. Both with national agents.

If you really want to live there, you have to pay, otherwise it's a choice thing.

I still signed the petition, though.

ognum

I'm a landlord and I will sign this. I think landlords have much more ability to keep fees down than tenants do.

I have changed letting agents because I think the fees to tenants are too high, the actual cost of referencing is small.

I now use an agent who charges the cost of a continued tenancy agreement to me and it's less than £20 and is tax deductable to me.

landlords need to shop around for good agencies if they need to use one, look at fees to the tenant as well as yourself.

We are not all money grabbing b

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dominoman

I'd support more transparency around fees, but would disagree with outlawing them. They are there to cover costs associated with checks and paperwork.

If fees were stopped the agents would just find other ways to make the money (presumably higher percentage cut = higher rent)

ruggedtoast

The last place we rented charged us over £300 for what they referred to as 'referencing'. This involved them doing absolutely nothing for 2 weeks until they eventually sent me an email saying none of my referees had replied and I had to chase them myself.

None of the referees had even received contact from them, let alone through Homelet, which is who they were pretending were doing the checks.

I ended up getting my own references via email and forwarding them to the woman in the office. God knows what the landlord thought had happened.

The whole rest of the process turned a stressful event into a real pain in the neck, right up to moving into a filthy house that they had promised would be clean. This was the biggest letting agent in the district and they charged us hundreds to do basically nothing apart from lie to us and copy and paste our names into a tenancy.

The time before I was basically ripped off for £350 by a bunch of ARLA accredited thieves who took my money, lied through their teeth, eventually admitted we couldnt move in, then just grinned smugly at me and said it was my word against theirs.

Letting agents are the wild west of the commercial world at the moment. Some are fine but some are basically crooks and there is not one shred of legislation to separate the two.

mjan

I've signed too! Most agents do take advantage with so many people needing to rent at the moment.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

CLAPTON wrote: »

the proposal is the tenant don't pay any fees but the landord does.

The tenants ultimately pay all fees.

When this happened in Scotland last year, market rents rose markedly and rapidly as a result, up many hundreds of pounds a year in some cases.

Aberdeen average rent for a two bedroom soared from 900 p/m to 961 p/m in just 2 quarters, for example. Dundee rent from 525 p/m to 570 p/m.

Paying letting fees is probably a fair bit cheaper than paying an extra £500-£600 a year in rent.