The Landlord Law Blog

Interesting posts on residential landlord & tenant law and practice In England & Wales UK

Tenancy deposit scheme price wars

This post is more than 13 years old

by

Tenancy deposit choiceIts all getting a bit hot and bothered in the tenancy deposit fees arena.

A few weeks ago, the Dispute Service, TDS announced a new service, Deposit Guard, in association with the Residential Landlord Association,which undercut by a few pounds, the service offered to landlords by My Deposits.

Now My Deposits are fighting back. They have announced a price reduction (with effect from 5 April), not for their landlord fees, but for agents fees, where agents use Safe Agent or belong to ARLA, NAEA, RICS, NALS or UKALA.

These agents will now pay a reduced joining fee of £50 and some of them will pay a reduced fee per deposit. SafeAgent agents will now pay just £10 and ARLA, NAEA, RICS, and NALS agents £12.

A lot of agents left TDS for My Deposits when TDS put its price up a few years ago, and My Deposits is obviously keen to hang on to them.

So now TDS, which was originally set up mainly to cater for agents, is the cheaper of the two for landlords, and My Deposits which was set up by a landlords association mainly for the benefit of landlords, is the more expensive of the two schemes for landlords, but is cheaper (maybe) for agents!

The third scheme, the DPS, is apart from all this of course as, being a free scheme, they cannot reduce their fees any further.

Notes:

Please check the date of the post - remember, if it is an old post, the law may have changed since it was written.

You should always get independent legal advice before taking any action.

Reader Interactions

Please read our terms of use and comments policy. Comments close after three months

Comments

  1. Hi Tessa

    Is price all that counts though. I’m personally a big fan of MyDeposits. I’ve never had a tenant take me to arbitration which I’m very proud of due to having a large portfolio. However, in speaking to landlords who have had deposit retentions challenged I am left with the impression that MyDeposits arbitration finds in favour of the landlords more than the others. Perhaps that’s because a lot of MyDeposits clients are NLA members and are better informed in the first place? For the record, I have no commercial relationship with NLA or MyDeposits. Very interesting story though and I’m pleased to see some healthy competition going on.

Sign up to the Landlord Law mailing list

And get a free eBook

Sign up