Ban on buy to let agency fee's for tenants

padington

Seems imminent ....

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/11/23/philip-hammond-invest-1billion-welfare-ease-impact-george-osbornes/

Thrugelmir

Another cost for LL's to absorb.

PasturesNew

They will have to go back to how they used to work: fewer agents, with more homes on their books, earning their cut from the 10% paid by the LL.

What's happened is the fees have enabled 100 agents to manage 10 homes each, rather than having 10 agents with 100 homes each ... which should make it easier for renters to find property too as each agent will have a choice and not just the one you saw advertised.

Masomnia

Great news.

gagahouse

Masomnia wrote: »

Great news.

Yes, they've had it coming for a while, took the p.ss for far too long.

They will be forced to compete for landlord's business , no way landlords are going to accept £300 fees for credit checks etc.

mrginge

Upfront fees are a barrier to mobility.

Sometimes as a society we have to decide what's more important
1. Enabling letting agents to front load their cost recovery rather than have to work for it over a longer term.
2. Helping people to be able to move property by not having to pay large upfront costs when they may have little or no relevant information about the agent/landlord/property they are looking to move to.

I know which one I prefer.

steampowered

Absolutely brilliant news.

Letting agent fees will now be factored into rents. I think this is a good thing because landlords are able to shop around for the cheapest agent; tenants can't. I doubt landlords would accept paying hundreds of pounds for a quick reference check.

Masomnia

mrginge wrote: »

Upfront fees are a barrier to mobility.

Sometimes as a society we have to decide what's more important
1. Enabling letting agents to front load their cost recovery rather than have to work for it over a longer term.
2. Helping people to be able to move property by not having to pay large upfront costs when they may have little or no relevant information about the agent/landlord/property they are looking to move to.

I know which one I prefer.

That's one way of putting it!

theEnd

Excellent news.

I once got charged £500 non refundable credit check charge.
Was too desperate for a place to argue.

chucknorris

steampowered wrote: »

Absolutely brilliant news.

Letting agent fees will now be factored into rents. I think this is a good thing because landlords are able to shop around for the cheapest agent; tenants can't. I doubt landlords would accept paying hundreds of pounds for a quick reference check.

We don't use letting agents, but obviously we need to vet our tenants, what we do is offer them 2 options:

1. Submit 3 months of bank statements (no fee).

If they don't want to do that, then:

2. Pay for a tenancy credit check (just the net fee charged to us). I forget how much they are (I think about £15 to £25 plus VAT), because not one tenant of our 7 investment properties has ever elected for option 2 (we have 8 investment properties but our MIL used to live in the 8th property).

duchy

The agents only have themselves to blame , they killed the golden goose with their greed.