Letting Agent "Board Campaign"

Mattw924

@G_M - sorry for the confusion, our rent is paid to the Agent, and any repairs we report are middle managed by them.

LL has no agreement with regards to letting them advertise on the property.

phill99

diggingdude wrote: »

If the landlords fine with it then nothing really you can do. Could out a sign next to it pointing out your issues with them?

Absolute rubbish.

The tenant has an implied or express clause allowing them 'quiet enjoyment' of the property.


A landlord allowing a letting agent to put up a board in a tenanted house would be against the clause.

princeofpounds

I agree that diggingdude's advice is just plain wrong.

They have no right to put a board up on your property without your permission. Unless you agreed to something that permits this as a contractual term (and the legal validity of such a term could be doubtful anyway depending on what it is, for reasons of consumer contract law).

They have no right to put a board up on your property with your landlord's permission only. Which they clearly don't have anyway. The property is for your exclusive use during your tenancy, barring the landlord's statutory rights and obligations.

And, as pointed out by Owain and anselld, their actions are potentially unlawful (it does depend a little bit on what exactly they are doing - often agents skirt around it by, for example, advertising local events with their branding on top).

Enforcement in this area is really weak, but I know from personal experience it does happen occasionally, usually in response to complaints. For example, when agents keep plastering their boards on blocks of flats where they don't actually have any ongoing business, they occasionally get told off when residents complain to the council/trading standards (I can't tell you who exactly to complain to nowadays, as the role of trading standards has changed in recent years, but other posters have made suggestions).

If they do put a board up, you can take it down but in theory should not dispose of it without giving them a reasonable opportunity to collect it. Of course what are they going to do if it just 'goes missing'?

Finally, sometimes people are wary of upsetting their letting agents for fear of having their tenancy terminated or not renewed. This is not an idle fear in some situations, but in your case I wouldn't worry one bit about it. You have a direct and active line of communication to your landlord. Your landlord is not going to be happy if the agent gets in the way of his rental income stream or upset his tenant by ignoring repairs. So if they ever play games, you just speak to the LL direct. It's highly unlikely they will do anything over a refused board, they probably won't even remember.

So just tell them to back off.