[Closed] Excessive admin fees - renting

Depends where you are, IIRC in Scotland its illegal to charge admin fees or at least credit check fees.

Sadly, we're not in Scotland.

We're being charged for:
Referencing (each, despite sharing one of the references)
Tenancy agreement
Inventory (house is unfurnished)

Citizens advice, that sounds unreasonable and excessive.

With you there; going through the same.
Need to move due to job and asking basic questions such as what internet provider and getting the silence from the letting agents.
Pay huge amounts of cash for nothing.

I think they can vary depending on where in the country you are.

E.g. I found they generally take the wee in Bristol, some were up to £250 each for the missus and I.

Wait until 6 months in when they try and charge you for property inspections and contract renewal.

Crooks.

Out of interest how much are the fees?

With the new regulation requiring landlords to make sure that they are renting to legal residents I figure that agents will whack a fee on for that.

Printing a standard tenancy out and having you sign it shouldn't cost much and neither should doing an inventory especially when they have it from the previous tenants move out package...

Eh? We rent a house out and don't do any of that. Seems they are just squeezing extra money out of you.
Is it the letting agent (who do very little except take a % of the rent) imposing the fees or the landlord?

As a landlord we pay a fee whenever a new tenant signs up too. Our old agency also charged the tenant which I thought took the piss, why should we both be paying for the same thing? Tenant is already paying deposit & rent. New agent charges us but not tenant, luckily this tenant has been in for nearly 2 years with no sign of leaving.
It's a crap industry full of shysters and lizards in my opinion, and I've only dealt with the landlord side in the last 15 years.

are the agent (who do very little except take a % of the rent) imposing the fees or the landlord?

In my experience, anyone they can. I've had friends being asked to pay 'registration' fees just to view flats.

I'm in the process of looking to rent a place in Gloucester at the moment and I'm trying hard to avoid getting my pants pulled down by the fees. Having rented in quite a few different parts of the country now this certainly is the norm.

Here's a typical quote of fees form a letting agent:

Explanation of our Tenant Fees

Fees

Single adult admin & reference charge £220.00
Each additional adult tenant including references £80.00
Guarantor Reference & admin fee £75.00
Company Reference Check £300.00

Once in the property

Returned Cheques or other payments £30.00
If the agent or contractor arranges to meet the tenant and the tenant does not keep the appointment £60.00
Request to fix the tenancy for a period of time (free if allowed to run periodic) £114.00

After vacating the property

If the tenant vacates the premises without returning the keys to the agent or a lock needs to be changed during the tenancy £30.00 plus contractors cost
If repairs are needed to the premises after tenants vacate the property an administration charge £90.00
If tenant wishes to break the tenancy and the landlord agrees to release tenants early, tenants will be responsible for the landlords remarketing fee £216.00
Removing and/or storing items left in the premises for a maximum of three months, after which the items will be destroyed £180.00 plus storage fees
If the tenant fails to respond to a deposit request via DPS & the agent needs to sign extra-legal paperwork to recover the money £42.00
Final check out fee £60.00

Rent Arrears

For every letter or email the agent makes chasing rent (1st letter free) £12.00
For any arrears visit to the tenant or property £60.00
If the agent has to go to court for eviction / arrears £120.00

Other Charges

Request for re-referencing or changes to the tenancy agreement, per adult £80.00
Check out fee at the end of the tenancy (agents discretion) £114.00

Michael Tuck

A lot of that is only relevant if you're a bad tenant. But you're still looking at a few hundred pound at the start of the tenancy, and possible a hundred or so at the end.

It's how agents make mucho profit - they charge fees for anything and everything (even where illegal sometimes). If they think they can get away with it, they will charge both LL and T.

Yes it is obscene, no there isn't much you can do about it other than look elsewhere.

Property managers are the spawn of the devil. They all seem to require maximum income for minimum effort. My previous experiences have all been the same as the OP, with the last one imposing additional annual charges for renewing the rental agreement despite it being on a rolling Shorthold Tenancy.

Shysters, the lot of them.

Now don't get me started! 👿
During a recent experience, the letting agent openly boasted about how he could and would charge as much in fees that a perspective Tennant would pay. And as he felt demand out stripped supply, that came to £700 to just sign a Short hold tenancy...
Also seemed put out when I didn't see his company using a deposit protection company as a wonderful perk to using them. When "well it's a legal requirement" was said, the retort was "oh well loads of others don't do it"
Needless to say we walked away. Although, it was also still off the market and let agreed the following day.
Cowboy market in (England and Wales) at least.

To an extent, unless you want to pick a different house from a different agent, they have you over a barrel. We paid £350 in fees for the old house as we needed a guarantor. And they were useless, to the point that they forgot we had given notice to leave which put us in the had books with the landlord we needed a reference from (until I happened to ring about collecting post and got a ticking off and explained what had happened).

However if they do what jambo talks about up there, sending you a new contract at a couple of hundred quid after sid months, you don't have to sign it or pay it, just send them a letter saying you would like to switch to a rolling monthly contract and they have to do it. For free.

Ok, so the fees are, for both of us, including tax:
Tenancy agreement (copy paste job) - 210
Reference check (we actually share one of the references) - 180
Inventory (house is unfurnished) - 120

That's nearly a month's rent!

I'm going to go in and politely ask them some probing questions tomorrow. The agency is William H. Brown, just for a bit of shaming.

It's a wonderful example of capitalism - a system designed to take as much as possible in return for as little as possible.

What's depressing is that the Welsh Assembly recently carried out a review of the rental sector - months of committees, reports, experts quizzed etc.

And the end result is that letting agents now need to sign a register and attend a training day. It does absolutely nothing to protect people from the rampant greed and abuse of the industry.

I've seen agents demanding 250 pounds non-refundable check fees, pay the money and not even get the place - what a rip off.

Ah letting agents. Sister in-law was told the landlord was putting the rent up by £100 a month.

The landlord knew nothing of this.

Is it the letting agent (who do very little except take a % of the rent) imposing the fees or the landlord?

IME as a landlord the agencies ripped me off just as much as they ripped off the tenants. Well, maybe not quite as much, but pretty outrageous.

Now my daughter, as a penniless renter in The Great Wen, has experienced an altogether new level of disgusting behaviour on the part of both rental agencies (including major chains) and the scummiest landlords on the planet. Still, mustn't complain, I'm sure she will soon be able to move into one of Blobbis's "affordable houses".

Check direct letting sites like openrent instead of estate agents. I think my current tenants paid about 20 quid for referencing, the agreement was a standard assured let job from openrent for nothing, I dusted off the last inventory, they checked it when they moved in and that was it. I'd never use an agent again.

Cardiff has it's fair share of letting agents taking the pee, KeyLet being the worst I've dealt with. Was quoted (admittedly a few years ago now) £200 for the application (non-refundable), £200 to actually sign the contract, £30 inventory, £50 for each inspection (done every 3 months regardless), £80 for a new contract with a mandatory contract length of 6 months only and that's as far as I got before I turned down the flat. Thankfully here it's common for a flat to be advertised by two or more agents so I phoned up the other one with a sign up and went with them as they had fees of just £260 all-in plus £15 for each inspection which they never did in 3 1/2 years! Mind you they never put my deposit in a protection scheme which might explain the easy handover when I moved out 😮

The current flat is rented with Peter Alan as they charge £120 for the contract and inventory and nothing else for routine stuff. Inspections are every 3 months but go up to 6 months if you're good (I am despite all the bike stuff everywhere). Going on to a rolling contract at the end of my 6 months was just two phone calls. The only extra they charge me if I lock myself out and need them to come out with the spare keys (£60?) but seeing as I have the only key for the security lock on the door (old key design that they can't get a duplicate made of?!) I'm super-careful to always have the key on me!

I'm staying in this flat as long as possible to avoid dealing with all the other letting parasites again 👿

KeyLet hasn't changed. This is the nice man who runs the company:

[url= http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/boss-advised-worker-abortion-2428492 ]KeyLet boss[/url]

When we changed rentals, our previous letting agency wanted to charge us for providing a reference to the new letting agency, who we had already paid 'reference fees'

I once moved from one property managed by a company to another property managed by the same company.
Yup, still got stung for reference fees.

I hate renting with a passion but am stuck really. Extortionate thing to be involved with.

I'm slowly beginning to detest agents of all kinds, be that estate, letting, employment or otherwise, horrible parasitic scumbags.

Argh! letting fees.

It's a complete rip off and there's no free market operating at all. Often you don't even see what fees you will be paying until you say you'll take the property, and even then they seem to refuse to give you one simple figure to let you know what the non-refundable fees are.

I sent all the quotes I got to a local MP who'd put a flyer through the door about affordable housing.

It needs regulating, or the non-refundable fee needs to be stated up front next to the property advert (so there's a disincentive for landlords in choosing high tenant fee estate agents).

Here's a quote I got (unfurnished 1 bed flat in Beckenham, South West London), though many of the other agents wouldn't actually email a quote through!

Referencing: £120.00 (£100.00+vat)
Tenancy Agreement: £60.00 (£50.00+vat)
Tenancy Deposit Protection Fee: £42.00 (£35.00+vat)
Inventory: £90.00 (£75.00+vat)

Months’ rent in advance: £800.00
Six weeks deposit: £1107.69

Total: £2219.69