Are we being ripped off by letting agents?

kimbadger

My fiance and I live in a 1 bedroom flat in Gillingham. We've been there for 4 months and are model tenants - always pay rent on time, very house proud, etc.

We have a assured shorthold tenancy agreement for a fixed term, ending this October. We would like to stay at the flat beyond this period. The letting agent has asked us to pay a renewal fee of about £120 prior to the new AST contract being drawn up. I have been told that the contract will be exactly the same as the previous one, just covering a different period. I don't understand how they can justify charging us this amount of money. Is this normal or are we being ripped off?

MoneySavingSpender

£100 credit check fee
£40 tenancy agreement fee
£25 administration fee
£50 consultancy fee
£40 inspection fee
£70 tenancy termination fee
£40 for each late payment of rent

all quiet legal if you signed a letting agent agreement setting out these prices, be it directly on the contract or indirectly such by accepting any such charges from xxxx limited.

etc
etc
etc

Agents do not make A PENNY from the tiny 4-8% they charge landlords.

No that is not where they make their money....


Simple rules:
Look for private landlords, check you are paying your deposit and rent to the correct landlord by using the landregistry website, talk to his previous tenants if possible, current ones if they are there, and ensure you get his home address too. Also take LOTS of photographs before moving in and after you've cleaned it before moving out.

lettings-landlords

Always beware of letting agency contracts - they are out to make money and are often target driven so rarely care where the money comes from. If there is no mention of the charges in the agreement you signed with them or in the tenancy agreement then you are being ripped off. It takes a few seconds to reprint a contract and change the dates and it is basically money for old rope.

reb223

Technically you do not have to sign a new AST at all, unless you really want to. If you do nothing, and your landlord/agency does nothing, it will just change to a periodic tenancy. All that a new AST does is prevent you from moving out and from you being evicted for the length of that term. If you are good tenants and pay rent on time they would be crazy to refuse a periodic tenancy and risk losing you.

franklee

reb223 wrote: »

Technically you do not have to sign a new AST at all, unless you really want to. If you do nothing, and your landlord/agency does nothing, it will just change to a periodic tenancy. All that a new AST does is prevent you from moving out and from you being evicted for the length of that term. If you are good tenants and pay rent on time they would be crazy to refuse a periodic tenancy and risk losing you.

True but they've devised a little trick to put a stop to that. Often they serve a Section 21 notice requiring possession near the start of the tenancy giving notice to coincide with the end of the fixed term. If this has been done then it isn't a good idea to stay on without the S21 being withdrawn in writing. If nothing is done the S21 remains valid indefinitely and the tenant has used up their notice! It's called the Sword of Damocles. I write this so often I've put it in my sig

So check you haven't been served an S21!

dunnomate

There's a lot to be said for renting out properties direct to tenants without a letting agent.

RHemmings

reb223 wrote: »

Technically you do not have to sign a new AST at all, unless you really want to. If you do nothing, and your landlord/agency does nothing, it will just change to a periodic tenancy. All that a new AST does is prevent you from moving out and from you being evicted for the length of that term. If you are good tenants and pay rent on time they would be crazy to refuse a periodic tenancy and risk losing you.

But if the agents think that another tenant might be prepared to pay the £120 fee every renewal, they might start working on the landlord to get you out. Or they might try and BS up the landlord to pay the fee. Those fees are a gravy train for EAs, and they won't want anyone rocking the boat.

RHemmings

dunnomate wrote: »

There's a lot to be said for renting out properties direct to tenants without a letting agent.

I'd say that's only true for landlords with at least half a brain and with their act together. That isn't all landlords.

kimbadger

Hi there

Thanks very much for the advice so far.

Unfortunately, I think we may be stuck as we signed a Terms of Business which included the fact that a "renewal fee" would be charged. However, this was presented to us on the day that we moved into the flat and we were told that if we didn't sign it, they would not hand over the keys and we would lose that £600 deposit that we'd already paid. Obviously, we could not afford to lose this AND not have anywhere to live, so we signed it. We were also made to sign a s.21 in the same way.

I am going to phone the letting agents today and ask if we can just let the tenancy default to a statutory periodic tenancy as I do not see any benefit from renewing the AST. They are raising the rent anyway and I found a sneaky clause in our tenancy agreement which states that the landlord can give us two months notice to move out. There is no similar "get out clause" for us - it states that if we want to leave before the end of the fixed term tenancy we will be liable to pay the total amount of rent for the remainder of the duration of the fixed term.

Also, they will not give us the contact details of our landlord, saying that anything must go through them. We have since found out that the landlord is actually the business partner of the letting agent... Dodgy?

Just feeling rather angry and taken advantage of by these cowboy letting agents and I will probably report them to the Office of Fair Trading in the near future to hopefully prevent the same thing happening to others. Thing is, we don't want to move, we love our little flat and are taking such good care of it. We've spent almost every weekend this summer working in the garden and turning it from an uninhabitable jungle of stinging nettles to a really pretty space for us to enjoy.

Anymore advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!

pcwilkins

kimbadger wrote: »

Is this normal or are we being ripped off?

Both :-)

Peter

Gingernutmeg

RHemmings wrote: »

But if the agents think that another tenant might be prepared to pay the £120 fee every renewal, they might start working on the landlord to get you out. Or they might try and BS up the landlord to pay the fee. Those fees are a gravy train for EAs, and they won't want anyone rocking the boat.

We are in exactly this situation now - our AST ended and we asked for a periodic contract, initially the LA said yes but then the LL said no, she wanted to put the rent up over £150 pcm and if we disagreed then she wanted us out in three weeks (which, frighteningly, the LAs were in complete agreement with). We've managed to negotiate our full notice period (lucky us :rolleyes:) but I'd be wary of trying to get a periodic contract, seems to me asking for one is as good as handing in your notice.

Edit: I've just re-read your second post kimbadger and I thought that legally you had to have a servable address for a landlord or you didn't actually have to pay them rent? Is this true anyone or am I just dreaming?