Letting agents - blog claims they're tricksters, liar...

A no-holds-barred blog on a controversial website claims that it lifts the lid on being a letting agent in central London - but it was written anonymously and no names have been identified to add authority to the claims.

The Debrief - which 18 months ago was influential in launching an online petition against letting agents’ fees, securing over 250,000 e-signatures - has now published a blog by an unknown individual who says they took a temporary job in summer 2016 at a letting agency.

The agency is not named but apparently has an office in Fitzrovia, and the piece includes some predictable colour that comes with working in the industry in central London these days: for example, the tenant who picked up the agent in a Ferrari (a different Ferrari, that is, on each of three occasions), and the female student tenant whose lecturer acted as guarantor, for reasons the agency speculated upon.

But of more concern was a series of allegations made in the piece including:

- a generic image of a property, advertised at an artificially low price, was used to entice leads;

- a cynical approach to the levying of fees on tenants;

- the claim that some deposits “went straight into the agent’s coffers”.

Letting Agent Today has challenged The Debrief to produce more information on this - to add weight to the claims, the identities of the writer and the agency would be useful, as would some evidence of some of the allegations made in the piece.

We have not yet had a response, but you can read the piece for yourself here.