We recently received a comment on our website, which perfectly illustrates one of the main problems tenants face when renting through the letting agent.

Hi there, I’m a 21 year old university student who is very worried about the risks involved when signing up to a contract with an estate agent. A year ago, naive me and three other students went to view a flat along with a representative from the estate agent. The four bed property was well presented, but it also was well above our price-range. The representative knew this but assured us that she could probably “have a word” and “sort something out”. It screamed sophistication, independence and freedom! We really did like the place and she knew it. I started to feel uncomfortable as she sensed the excitement within the group, but a few well rehearsed lines were slipped in here and there and soon we were all convinced that there were was another potential buyer on the way who was very interested, and if we wanted to secure the flat we must place a deposit before 5 p.m. that day.

Off we ran to the nearest cash point, withdrew a total of £280 from our precious student loans and straight to the agency. They had our contracts ready and waiting still warm from the printer. I can’t recall the exact amount they had wanted from us, but I do know we were being charged for credit checks, even though all of us had opened our very first student accounts that same year. We were also being ripped off for the cost of inventories. There must have been a lot of other ‘expenses’ as the grand total per student including our deposits came up to over £1200 each. They had somehow claimed £400 for their “services.” It didn’t matter that in order for us to pay the rent, we would have had to up the hours from our part-time student jobs and almost completely neglect our degrees. Luckily someones relative intervened and we pulled out. We only ever got £140 back, which we shared between us.

This year I’ll be going through another property hunt. If you have any advice on how we can avoid this sort of thing, please let us know.

Eagerly awaiting a reply.

J.

Our Answer:

An agent should provide clear information on what costs would be incurred, including any potential future financial liabilities to the agent that are reasonably foreseeable and quantifiable, says the statement on the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) website. It is totally understandable that as a first time renter you had no idea that letting agent services can cost hundreds of pounds – there was no word about it on the advertisement, nor the agent’s website. No wonder one feels being deceived and trapped when the bill is presented only after there is no going back.

Should you decide to go through the letting agent again, please make sure you get all the expense details before the viewing takes place. Ask how much exactly do they charge for their services for the property you are interested in. Write these numbers down and have them with you for the letting agent to confirm on the site, should you decide to pay the holding deposit there and then.

Don’t hesitate to complain to the associations and schemes the estate agent belongs to if you feel you have not been treated right. ARLA‘s E-mail is info [at] arla.co.uk. The Property Ombudsman complaint forms are available HERE.

If you want to avoid letting agent costs altogether, you can find some links to sites that have offers from private landlords HERE. Please note that here are many fraudsters advertising on these sites, especially during the coming busy months. Read Gumtree advice on how to stay safe HERE.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 18th, 2009 at 12:47 pm and is filed under Letting Agents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.