26^th Oct 2018

Recently the House of Lords undertook a second reading of the Tenant Fees Bill which features the government's plans to make it fairer for UK renters.

The Bill's prime focus on letting agents' fees that prospective tenants face along with paying a deposit, is to make it less of a financial burden for people trying to become tenants. The Bill also calls for all agents to enrol in a client money protection scheme.

Adam Male, a director of an online lettings agent, said: “Today’s progression of the tenant fee bill was a step in the right direction for transparency and professionalism in the lettings sector, but a step in the wrong shoes

“It will no doubt see those it aims to penalise recoup lost revenue under another guise at the expense of both landlords and tenants.

“The bill is sure to bring protest from much of the traditional lettings market, but the fact of the matter is, they’ve made a rod for their own back through the exploitation of tenants via below the belt fee charging.”

The online company said that some high street agents were getting away with 'blue murder' with ridiculously inflated fees such as charging as much as £200 for changing a surname on a tenancy agreement, if someone wasn't married to their partner then there would an extra fee of £40 to pay and even making some tenants pay a £90 surcharge for moving in on a Saturday.

Male continued: “The unfortunate reality is that this isn’t the solution and these bad apple agents will always find a way around the introduction of restrictive legislation.

“The silver lining is that tenants will at least have more stability and security around their financial commitments and won’t be at the mercy of immoral, out of the blue fee charges.”

Richard Merrick of PIMS said: "We have asked some of our letting agents' members if they had heard of such tenants' fees being charged as mentioned above and they said they hadn't, but some of their tenants had complained about exorbitant fees being charged elsewhere."


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