It appears to be open season on letting agents at the moment – but couldn’t critics at least get their facts right and lay off the cheap insults?
One nameless landlord, writing in the London Evening Standard, claims to feel embarrassment on discovering “just how much letting agents have charged my tenants – sometimes for services they haven’t even provided such as drawing up a tenancy agreement that I have supplied myself.”
The landlord then goes on to claim that the reason letting agents charge “such high fees” to tenants is because they have had to make up the shortfall caused by not being able to “sneak” hidden fees such as renewals into their contracts any more.
Apparently agents used to “make a fortune” out of that and now “they have to find other ways to pay for their champagne-swilling and weekends in Marbella”.
More here:
http://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/property_news/rentals/accidental20130619.html
Comments
I loved the classic comment in the article "You just advertise the property and show people round - its not rocket science".
A bit like saying "All a decorator does is slap some paint on the walls", or "All a firefighter does is stand there and point his hose in the right direction".
Campbell Robbs plan to get letting agent fees banned.
1 Get as many different organisations to criticise letting agents.
2 Produce manipulated and misleading statistics regarding letting agents and their fees.
3 Lobby key government officials using items 1 and 2 as evidence.
I wonder how generous or how greedy our accidental landlord (woops, I'm a landlord) is when setting her rent levels.
Most of the landlord enquiries we get trying to haggle down to ridiculous fee levels (like 5% as our accidental claims her local agent charges) tend to want the absolutely maximum possible rent as well.
It seems we live in a celebrity world were fact and reality are mundane irritations to salacious news.
As an example whoever feeds the BBC with property news does not know Lettings and Property management, whoever it is appears to an ignoramus of the highest order, who gives little importance to the factual detail that turns a non story into something that impressionable industry ignorant journalists can regurgitate as fact. Backed up by a commercially motivated redress scheme supplier and undefended by mute professional bodies it does indeed become open season on the Industry. The concerning thing is that mis-information pumped out by the media ends up in the hands of Industry ignorant civil servants who then prepare briefing papers for our Industry Ignorant MP’s to digest, it is a self reinforcing campaign if ignorance. It doesn’t matter how much complaint or correction is offered, their experts and advisors are industry experts and can not possibly be wrong and after all it was on the BBC!
As 'Dennis Spade' [possible Nom de plume of Ian Potter] we will struggle to win Hearts and Minds because of the stereotype painted of us.
The only thing we can do is point out the facts and repeat the facts, sooner or later those who spew out mis information provided by so call experts will realise the embarrassment being caused to them and possibly stop. I doubt very much that we will curb the experts of their ignorance after all celebrity is what seems to count these days and it is easy to churn out crud to the modern reality TV generation.
Isn’t it strange how certain experts don’t blog here anymore?