She may, or may not, be a typical tenant, but her views on letting agents’ fees are surely worth hearing – particularly as they were aired on morning television.
In case you missed it, here is Alice Beer’s piece featuring a tenant who makes her opinions very clear.
http://youtu.be/kdSQFGvqQgY
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Comments
Glad she's not my tenant - moaning before she even in the property. - hope she goes to Foxtons...
Charging tenants letting agents fees is a relatively new concept. They certainly didn't exist 20 years ago. The agent acts for the landlord not the tenant. In any business relationship it is wrong to take money from both sides because there is a conflict of interest.
What happened was agents were competing against each other to win business from landlords. Some saw an opportunity to lower their fees to landlords by passing costs over to the tenant. Once some agents did this others followed in order to compete. As the tenants fees were hidden they were not subject to competition and so rocketed out of control. Typically the landlord isn't told what the tenant fees are so these are not negotiated.
The only fair way to go is to follow Scotland.
Let's not reserach the market, let's not get any context on the matter- let's just publish 1 persons view that puts every agent in to the same bracket! Brilliant, fantastic journalism- well done!
Off the back of this I am going to start marketing all 2 bed properties, regardless of size/location/spec at the same price- why? Because they're all the same.
Genius!
Our water bill is approx £800 a year, we have not other options but to use them, will the TV producers interview me about this please?
whatever happened to the concept of caveat emptor? why on earth wouldn't you ask the cost of something before proceeding?
and if you ask, and they don't/won't tell you, why would you then proceed anyway?
Can I have some sub-titles as I dont have sound here?
What a load of nonsense.
"They, they, they" ... who is they ?? the one agent she dealt with.
Tarnish a whole industry based on one person's experience of a bad agent why don't you. An ill-informed tenant at that as well.
But what was worse, the journalist/reporter (is it Alice Beer ??) doesn't have a clue either. "Agent's are charging the landlord for the same things as well" ... or are we now ?? we're charging the landlord for a credit check are we ??
Whilst £300 to £500 does sound a little excessive, as @JuMo says 'you have to ask the questions'. In many cases these tenants are excited about moving to their new home, and despite how many times they are told by their agent that fees are payable (both verbally and confirmed in writing), they seem to forget until moving in day and then complain that they never understood there were fees to pay.
As a Landlord or agent, it is really important to make sure you have a quality tenant moving in to your property. Hence why most agents do full reference checks on their tenants to make sure they are able to pay the rent. A charge for this is perfectly reasonable.
There are also increased costs which agents face for insurance, deposit protection and admin. Many people also forget that properties rented out by agents are generally good quality and have been safety checked for gas, electric, etc.
The moral of the story here is to do your research, ask about the fees which are payable before you view and if they are too expensive for you then look for another agent.
The prospective makes the point herself: you have to ask the questions.
What is so wrong with that? If you're contemplating entering into a legal contract, you should know what questions to ask and what potential charges there might be.... you may not like the answers (and I am not condoning the fees charged), but for goodness sake stop trying to palm off responsibility and grow up!
Talk about a patheticly weak transparent bit of orchestrated agent bashing. Hot on the heals of Hether Kennedy's protest at the weekend how much facebook research would it take to link this 'tenant' with the let down campaign, shelter or which?
Like it or not, sadly and from all sorts of cases I hear about, whilst this is undoubtedly the best example they could find to make good moaning TV, it is very typical.
Note the comment at the very end about the Landlord being charged as well