Renting - High Inventory fee!

Bungarm2001

Paturesnew..sounds good.

I'm guessing that very very few people look for ARLA or any other professional body acreditation when looking to rent from an LA. Why would they? All they see is a nice property in the paper or an agents window and away they go. Most amateur LL's don't seem to take the precaution of looking for some kind of accreditation either.

I guess LA's are a necessary evil in some cases..in my perfect world, :rotfl: all LA's would have to toe the line and stick to a rigid fees structure which was open and accessable to all. There wouldn't be any excuse or opportunity to overcharge anyone then.

I was particularly over the moon when tenant deposits schemes came into force by law since tenant deposits up until then were a never ending pot for unscrupulous LA's and LL's to dip into. One of the local LA's was gutted when it came into force...it stopped him from using his tenant deposits from buying up cheap property in Spain...and I kid you not. I hate to think how many £1000's went thru their hands annually because no-one stood up to them. :mad:

Appalling.

I bet they were'nt to only ones either..far from it... :mad:

Shambler

Seems high to me, the most we ever had to fork out was about £80 each.

We handed over a cheque for the first months rent at the same time as the arrangement fee...strange how the deposit got cashed almost immediately, makes me wonder if they bothered doing a credit check at all :rolleyes:

JennyP

I manage my own property now (following hideous problems with letting agents mentioned elsewhere in this forum!)
I would NEVER expect the tenants to pay these charges. I pay for them myself.
The credit checks cost £30 per tenant. The inventory preparation is £100. So even if I were to pass this charge onto tenants, the maximum would be £160 per couple.

zebulon

JennyP wrote: »

The inventory preparation is £100.

Quick question... What 's the inventory "preparation"?
thanks.

LittleMissAspie

It's shocking what some agents are charging. I can't remember what we paid for the place we just moved out of. But the place we just moved into, there was a £90+VAT charge per person for credit check but the agent said we could save money by only credit checking one person. No admin fee of any kind.

We also paid 20% of the deposit upfront, if we'd failed the credit check or pulled out we would have lost that, but with everything going ahead we will get it back with the other 80% as normal when we move out.

pinkkaz

That is so ridiculous. In the last place we rented they wanted to charge us £50 each for credit checks and a £50 "admin" fee. We refused to pay the admin fee, and actually I'm sure we could have talked down the credit check fee to an appropriate price but I was just too pleased at not paying the admin fee! Just refuse to pay it - they will want your business anyway.

I have never been charged fees on any previous properties - I think it must be a recent thing. Bl**dy estate agents...

Bungarm2001

This exorbitant fee 'structure' employed by certain LA's is fairly recent. Most LA's are estate agents too, so it can easily be explained why...the sales of property has dried up somewhat so now they are fleecing LL's and tenants as much as they can get away with to make up the shortfall from selling.