The National Federation of Property Professionals NFOPP has produced some video guides on renting in the UK.
Click on the title to watch the videos:
- All about tenancies
- Deposit Protection
- Understanding your Energy Performance Certificate
- Inventories
- Why choose an ARLA agent?
London estate agency DP Estates in Crouch Hill N8 has been expelled from The Property Ombudsman redress scheme after failing to pay £817 following a single complaint.
The Ombudsman found the agency failed to provide a copy of the tenancy agreement prior to occupation by the tenant; did not notify the landlord of key terms in the new tenancy agreement; showed a “destructive / unprofessional” attitude because another agent was instructed to sell the property; and omitted to meet complaints with appropriate response and failed to respond to phone calls and emails throughout the period 2005-2007.
The firm will not be able to sell properties without belonging to a redress scheme can legally still deal in lettings.
Property Ombudsman offers free dispute solving for all the registered firms’ clients, and has the powers to award compensation should you be treated badly. Find out if your letting agent is registered with the scheme HERE.
The competitive environment for landlords means that rents fell again in the first 3 months of 2009, by 7.4%, and are now 18.2% below their March 2008 peak, and 3.6% below the previous market peak in September 2001, states the latest London residential property market review by estate agent Knight Frank.
The current review takes a closer look at the corporate market lettings:
- In terms of the types of properties in demand from corporate tenants, the general rules remain unchanged – neutral properties, wooden floors rather than carpets, open plan living, close to good travel hubs, and, for the higher price brackets, porterage and concierge services.
- While there is a bias towards new-build properties from most clients – US and European tenants often prefer a traditional house or flat for the “London experience”.
- What has changed through the recession has been the demand from corporate tenants for the structure of tenancies. There is a desire to achieve flexibility and certainty – with six month break clauses required alongside clauses providing the tenant with an option to renew for a second and even third year.
Download Knight Frank’s London Residential Review Summer 2009.
Estate agent Knight Frank’s website has been redesigned.
See if you like browsing the rentals in the grid view just as much as we do - jump to view all rentals in Greater London .
The photos are in much better size in the new version (image on the right; old version on the left).
Park Lane
The government plans to license all private landlords and letting agents. Read all about it from Times Online.
We are prepared for tenant licensing next. But then don’t think you’ll get away without a rental property certificate!
The annual Estate Agent & Letting Agent Awards ceremony was held at the Marriott Hotel on Grosvenor Square in London on Wednesday.
Voted by the customers, these awards recognise the highest standards of customer service in the estate and letting agent industry based on research conducted amongst sellers, buyers and landlords throughout the UK, states the awards official website.
London winners of the Letting Agent Awards 2009:
Crompton Estates
Deptford London
Winner of the Letting Agents Awards 2009 Gold
Martin & Co
Kensington & Chelsea London
Winner of the Letting Agents Awards 2009 Silver
Living Residential
West Hampstead London
Winner of the Letting Agents Awards 2009 Bronze
We noticed that the gold prize winner currently has only 6 properties to let in London, and that their homepage does not even have a proper listings section. So what is it that makes Crompton Estates so good that it is better than ANY other letting agent in London? We found the answer from the opening page of their website:
Whether you’re looking for that special place to call home, or planning to let out your own property, talk to Crompton Estates and you will be pleasantly surprised to see how refreshingly different we are. You will find honesty even if it is to our own short-term disadvantage, yes an honest estate agent!
Congratulations to all the winners!
PS! We have marked the winners on our London Letting Agents page as well.
New York Habitat has just published their very first London Vacation Rental Market Report.
- Strong growth in the number of rentals in the London Market over the past 3 years
- A weakening pound making the London market more attractive as a vacation rental destination
- Falling prices in the vacation rental market as more small apartments are rented and the world economy falters
New York Habitat has been offering rental apartments in London since 2002.
*St James Park, London
One of the reasons why people don’t want to rent through the letting agent is because they have heard horror stories about how much they charge for their services. It might be a bit less safe to give that holding deposit to a private person but hey - at least you know you don’t have to pay any mysterious sums to get the flat.
Patrick Collinson shares his view in The Guardian about how letting agents have screwed everybody during the boom years charging ridiculous amounts for their service:
It strikes me that the main project of the lettings business over the past 10 years of buy-to-let madness has been to:
a) charge extraordinary fees to first-time landlords; b) try charging the same fees to the tenant; c) charge it all again at the end of the six-month shorthold tenancy; and d) disappear as soon as the landlord or the tenant needs something done.
I love the makey-up world of letting agents and their preposterous fees. The huge finder’s fee to landlords and as much as £400 to tenants for “administration” - which amounts to a few pieces of photocopied contracts. A credit check fee (£150?). An inventory fee (£80?). An insurance fee. A checking out fee. A cleaning fee. They simply make up these charges as they go along, hoping that the mainly young clientele think they have no choice but to pay up. These vulnerable young people, often laden down with student debt, are hit with a load of tripe. They are spurious items which, if they have any basis in fact, should fall on the landlord, not the tenant.
The Association of Residential Letting Agents ARLA is currently eagerly waiting for the government to regulate the business as more and more agents turn to lettings but who knows how long that will take. In the meanwhile, we think there are things that could be done right now to help make the market become more transparent, and service providers more trustworthy.
ARLA should ask their member agents to publish the fees on their websites.
You don’t go to the shop and call the cashier for the price for each item you get, do you? Most of the letting agent listings do not display a tag with the real price, and this does make renters cautious. Who knows how much they charge - I’d rather find a home advertised by the owner at Gumtree, even if there are more risks involved in dealing with the private person.
We think the tenants should be able to conveniently see all the costs that renting through letting agent involves in order to be able to plan ahead, and compare different service providers. Either show them in the listing or on a separate page that could be easily found.
Adding a little transparency would be really good for the market. It would be a steady step towards gaining back that trust the letting agents seem to have lost in public’s eyes.
© propertylive.co.uk
The estate agents’ portal PropertyLive has finally revealed the identities of the people on their site.
They are in fact all working in the property industry, and one of the most interesting characters is indeed Mr. Dickinson from Douglas & Gordon. Just as we suspected.
Too bad City of Westminster is still the only area we can search. 2241 rentals available there at the moment.
*Kensington
We have recently received a few comments advising us to not promote letting agents who are known as dodgy.
If only we were experienced enough to be able to tell who truly deserves to be condemned!
Agent rating websites such as AllAgents.co.uk are full of reviews about agents. Buyers, sellers, renters and landlords are urged to rate and comment them to help other people make better choices. Now almost all reputable agents there have received some very poor reviews. Looks like any agent could become our worst nightmare! Even the agent we’ve had the most pleasant experience with has been referred to as dodgy.
If we don’t know the whole story, then we cannot be sure we’re not about to spread a rumour here that is untrue. The “well wisher” could easily be a competitor, could be leaving out some important details, or is just evil by nature. Just kidding with the last one.
We actually have condemned a few agents proved to be scammers. Remember Hot Lets?
There’s a comment on hold in our blog that says the agent we talk about has deceived them out of £2500… :S That is basically all they say, too.
By publishing this comment that contains such little information, we risk turning our blog into a toilette wall in the long run. Also, would we be in violation of the privacy law if we made accusations and named names without a court judgment or the accused one’s consent?
We have now E-mailed the person who left us that comment, asking if they could tell us the whole story. We’ll see where it leads us.
(c) Marsh & Parsons Brook Green office
Top 10 Tips for Tenants by estate agent Marsh & Parsons.
Remember when we said it wouldn’t be advisable for agents to translate their website with Google Translate as it could lead to misunderstandings?
Estate agent Ludlow Thompson has found a rather acceptable way around it IOHO. Clicking on the flag of the desired language leads you to an opening page that says:
Important Note:
Online translation facilities are not always totally accurate.
It may happen that the translation of some words do not fully correspond to their original meaning.
As long as we tenants are aware that this is Google Translate, and not an original 100% correct translation, there will be no problems, right?
Would be interesting to see what Ludlow Thompson’s website statistics say and how much are visitors using these translated pages.
Click here to see the list of twitterers who have something to say to London renters.
We will be updating the list, so please do not hesitate to tweet us if you want to be seen on it!
Estate agent DomusNova’s website is simply addictive.
We’ve just spent an hour on it looking at the pictures of the rentals - seeing the photos full screen is just so enjoyable.
DomusNova operates in West London - covering postcodes W2, W8, W9, W10, W11, W12, NW6, NW10.
You will love their full screen interactive local map (click LOCAL on the menu), and the navigation system which is built up so that you won’t have to do much clicking.
The website was launched in September last year.
So, when was the last time you looked at the estate agent’s window?
Hunters estate agents has 24 branches from Andover to Harrogate and is now recruiting 750 people. But these new staff members will not be working in the branches. Instead, they will be “mobile operators” working across the UK from their cars and homes rather than traditional high street offices. The firm has already tried out the no-office sales strategy and claims it to be a success.
They have not been operating in London but I guess there are no limits now?!
I know that agents are rarely in the office anyways. If organised well, why not, if it helps cut the costs, and make the service cheaper…
Is this the end of tenancy agreements on paper?
