"Thank God I had a letting agent"

RHemmings

I keep reading complaints about letting agents. I start wondering why people bother using them. Surely there must be at least some anecdotes where letting agents were invaluable, and saved the day. It can't all be take take take and not giving any useful service back.

Anyone?

Guy_Montag

The only time I ever rented through a letting agency it was the worst flat I've ever been in. One of my friends found it & I only had a quick look one sunny morning. What a mistake.

I had a bath one day, it was tepid, yet it cost £4 (I watched the power card meter eat the money), because the immersion heater was ficked. That was the last day I had one.

The shower leaked onto the carpet (yuck - carpets in bathrooms make me shudder at the best of times), we asked for this to be repaired, we asked & we asked. Eventually once downstairs noticed a spreading damp patch in the ceiling the LA sent round someone who bodged a repair.

The freezer packed up, the LA denied it was a white good (as covered by the tenancy agreement) since a previous tenant had painted in brown.

My window didn't close, it was always 1/2 an inch open at one side - I should have been suspicious when viewing the place that the window was open to allow airing.

The cooker was condemned as being dangerous & only a rent strike would get us a replacement.

So I never rent through agencies.

Lavendyr

Our letting agency has been really good with us so far (we are tenants). We have rented two properties through them. Compared to others in the area their initial admin/reservation fees are low, they are pretty easy to get hold of and have acted quickly whenever we have had problems with the property.

For example, when we moved into the current property we found the oven was not working. Called the agency that day, they had it fixed by the next working day. (wiring problem) Then the heating element within the oven broke, meaning we could only use the hobs and grill. Yet despite still being able to cook food in at least one way (therefore not exactly an emergency), they still got the oven fixed within the same week. They have supplied us with gas certificates whenever we have requested them, and when our first landlord decided he wanted to move back into the house we were renting, they called us straight away to let us know the situation and to warn us that they would be serving an S21 in a week's time, to make sure we had as much notice as possible.

In answer to the "Thank God I had an agency" point, we have certainly thought "thank god we had an agency" several times during our first tenancy. We had the landlord from hell who knew nothing about how to manage a let, and we only took the tenancy on in the first place because there was an agency managing the property. If it were not for the agency we would have had an impossible time of it and would never have got any of the numerous problems we faced (from bailiffs calling for previous occupants to missing furniture when we moved in which had been promised to us when we viewed) sorted. So yes, I have definitely had cause to say "Thank God we had a letting agent!"

Given some of the horror stories I have read on here I think we are incredibly lucky to have such a proactive agency, though.

PasturesNew

RHemmings wrote: »

Surely there must be at least some anecdotes where letting agents were invaluable, and saved the day.

Sorry. No.

Only rented once, been in 4 months. Agents were slow, incompetent, uninformed, dim and clueless.

Luckily, it was a "tenant finding service" only.

PasturesNew

Guy_Montag wrote: »

The freezer packed up, the LA denied it was a white good (as covered by the tenancy agreement) since a previous tenant had painted in brown.

LOL. You should have painted it white again

lynzpower

I locked myself out of my flat a few times, slamming my keys behind the door. My letting agent was open till 7 so that was always handy!

Doozergirl

Guy_Montag wrote: »

The freezer packed up, the LA denied it was a white good (as covered by the tenancy agreement) since a previous tenant had painted in brown.

HOOOOOOOWWWWWLLLLLLLLL!!!

(Bangs the floor laughing!)

barnaby-bear

RHemmings wrote: »

I keep reading complaints about letting agents. I start wondering why people bother using them. Surely there must be at least some anecdotes where letting agents were invaluable, and saved the day. It can't all be take take take and not giving any useful service back.

Anyone?

Our landlord was ex-pat so LA only UK court-servicable address and contact. Tryign to get the b&stards to do anything was hard enough when they lived in UK - phoning Dubai would have been a nightmare and cost a bomb and somehow I doubt they'd have been more efficient trying to find a plumber from 5000miles away!

JonnieHACK

lynzpower wrote: »

I locked myself out of my flat a few times, slamming my keys behind the door. My letting agent was open till 7 so that was always handy!

I did this today at 11:00am. Took me 35 mins to wlk to the letting agents to get the spare keys. Guess what time they shut on a saturday? YUP thats right, 11:30am. Not open till Monday morn, nine o clock. You tend to find they dont have "24 hour" service for stuff like this.

35 mins walk back, then i climbed up the drain pipe and got in through the bathroom window. Looked dodgy, but i'm all warm now.

Other than the Council Tax man, letting agent are one of the highest form of scummy scum scum

:beer:

Fergie73

I've only ever once thought thank God I have a letting agent and the thought turned out to be totally mis-placed! It was one place I was staying in where the landlord was clearly clueless, new to it and had run out of money. So as soon as it was let, he didn't do anything else to it - despite assurances from the agent that the flat would "be finished" by the time I moved in. So no overflow - just a hole onto the floor, no blinds, half the lights missing etc, etc. I thought, thank God because the LL was obviously so clueless, but as it turned out they were completely on his side the whole way - didn't give a stuff so long as rent was paid.

They make the tenant jump through hoops providing any number of references (and charge us a fortune for doing it) but the landlord can be any old charlaton, bankrupt or idiot.

The best places to rent are ones where you find a really decent landlord, one who appreciates a good tenent, and rent from them direct. In all the time I've been renting though, I've only ever found one of them in the UK - a good guy who cared about the property and the tenent and would be round ASAP if anything went wrong to fix it.

It's much better abroad. In Canada, one company used to own the whole building and there was always a caretaker (usually live in) who you reported any problems to and they were fixed. The British system just stinks.

Chutzpah

First agent - seemed good, we didn't have much money (I was a uni student just about to start my industrial placement, my partner had a low paying retail job) and they had low fees. All seemed good until:

1) We started to get a leak through the ceiling in the kitchen. It was dripping through the light fitting, so I switched all that off and went upstairs to inform the tenants up there. Called the agency to speak to a guy who worked there who I always called "thickie" Dale (a name that sounds harsh but trust me was warranted). The conversation went:

"We have water dripping through our kitchen ceiling and through the light"
"Right"
"It's going right through the electrics"
"OK"
"So.. uh... are you going to call someone?"
"Yes... I'll get someone round after the weekend"
"I think it's a bit more important than that!"
"Oh... really?"

2) When we gave notice to move they then turned up one day for a viewing without telling us. The first we knew was my wife receiving a very snotty message from the agency owner about how disgraceful the flat was and how they could never rent it with packing boxes in the bedroom. I rang them back and gave them a piece of my mind.

At the end of my placement I moved back to Bristol for uni and rented from my old tried and tested private landlord. But then I had to move for work at the end of uni, unfortunately we couldn't find anywhere half decent on the private market so again had to go through an agency. Everyone there seemed to have exactly the same high fees so we couldn't escape it.

At the end of the fixed term we had to pay another £80 for new contracts to be drawn up... even though they were exactly the same as the old ones!

A new job meant dealing with new agents and as well as having to pay £800 to get out of the contract we had just signed (paying the landlord's fees) we had to pay all their fees, one and a half month for deposit and first month up front... about £1650 to them and £800 to the old agent. Happy days they were.

We would love to buy our own place at the end of this tenancy but with house prices the way they are round here and my wife expecting I don't think we'll be able to afford it. Which means we'll probably be paying £80 for new contracts at the end of this tenancy all over again!