Landlords up and down the land will be jumping with glee at the Office of Fair Trading (OFT)’s victory over Foxtons regarding their unfair contract terms. To read the background to this, see my previous posts here and here. The OFT was challenging the clauses under the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts [...]
Tag Archive: letting agents
Possible scam with tenants’ deposit money
There has been quite a bit of publicity over the last few months about agents and the unjust charges they impose on both tenants and also the landlords they represent. The CAB did a report on this which I wrote about here. I have now been contacted by a tenant telling me about [...]
Take your complaint to the Property Ombudsman
I stumbled upon this excellent article on the BBC website today, which is by the Property Ombudsman about his service in respect of letting agents. Due to the problems in the property market, many agents are now turning to lettings and, if they are unfamiliar with this area of work, their customers may have [...]
Landlord licensing and agent regulation – impact assessments now published
Those interested in the governments consultation paper issued in response to the Rugg Report, will also be interested in the impact assessments which have now been published by the Department for Communities ands Local Government .
Impact assessment for regulation of Landlords
This is available to download from here. This shows that there are two options [...]
Landlords out of pocket for deposits – DPS may be best after all!
A report published in The Times today highlights the growing problem of landlords having to pay up for deposits, when agents go bust.
Under the two ‘insurance based’ tenancy deposit schemes (MyDeposits and the Tenancy Deposit Scheme run by the Dispute Service) if the agent deals with the deposit on behalf of the landlord, the agent [...]
CAB report highlights unfair charges to tenants by letting agents
An item on the BBC news site has alerted me to a new report from the Citizens Advice Bureau on fees to tenants by letting agents. The report comments that many letting agents are regularly making unjustified charges to tenants for “tasks that are no more than the routine business of letting and managing [...]
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Letting agents – instead of renewal fees
I was a bit shocked, although I suppose not entirely surprised, to read in the excellent 4wallsandaceiling property tribes forum about what some greedy letting agents are doing to replace the renewal commission they are going to lose as a result of the decision in the OFT v. Foxtons case.
They are contacting tenants and persuading [...]
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