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£17.25 For Current Agents To Provide Reference To Homelet!


apn8keh

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HOLA441

Is this standard practice? We were served notice to leave our current property & have found a new one with a different letting agent. Our current ones absolutely bled us dry with £60 renewal fees every 6 months (kept spinning the yarn the landlord didn't want to agree to a 12 month renewal). They even charged a renewal fee for writing a page that said the tenancy had become periodic! Now we are finally leaving them they won't provide references until we cough up £17.25. Me thinks we are gonna have a battle on our hands getting our deposit back!

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HOLA442
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HOLA443

No I don't think it is standard practise. It is common for some ripoff lettings agents to ask for ridiculous fees but not for the tenants to keep paying them. It's a disgrace what they have asked you to pay.

We had a similar agent but we just refused to pay the fees. Then we ignored the lies, threats and the phonecalls. They eventually stopped. With regards to the reference you can give the new LL the telephone of the old Letting Agent and ask them to ring.

Is your deposit with one of the schemes?

Good luck with this.

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HOLA444

OH called the letting agents & the £17.25 is to cover the vast amount of searches they have to perform to provide Homelet with the Equifax search they performed on us 4 years ago, and to tell them that we pay our bills (they have no way of knowing) and pay our rent on time. We just had an awful thought that they are expecting both of us to pay the £17.25 as Homelet have left emails & phone calls to both of us. I don't see any way of getting a reference without paying, but since only one of us has paid the rent I definately won't be paying twice!

Your right I should write a letter to trading standards, the £60 fee for allowing an AST to lapse to a periodic was a particular gem! I guess the problem with this particularly large letting agent in Leeds is that they only do lettings. All the normal estate agents we've viewed properties with were dumbfounded about the renewal fees.

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HOLA446
OH called the letting agents & the £17.25 is to cover the vast amount of searches they have to perform to provide Homelet with the Equifax search they performed on us 4 years ago, and to tell them that we pay our bills (they have no way of knowing) and pay our rent on time. We just had an awful thought that they are expecting both of us to pay the £17.25 as Homelet have left emails & phone calls to both of us. I don't see any way of getting a reference without paying, but since only one of us has paid the rent I definately won't be paying twice!

Your right I should write a letter to trading standards, the £60 fee for allowing an AST to lapse to a periodic was a particular gem! I guess the problem with this particularly large letting agent in Leeds is that they only do lettings. All the normal estate agents we've viewed properties with were dumbfounded about the renewal fees.

Most agents charge for a written reference but not for a verbal reference. One reference for both of you is sufficient. Have you kept your bank statements to show that you have paid your rent for the last 6 months? This might be an acceptable alternative to Homelet.

Most agents also charge renewal fees for doing a new fixed term contract but shouldn't be charging fees where no work is invloved i.e reversion to periodic. We don't charge tenants for this as there is no work involved.

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HOLA447
Most agents charge for a written reference but not for a verbal reference. One reference for both of you is sufficient. Have you kept your bank statements to show that you have paid your rent for the last 6 months? This might be an acceptable alternative to Homelet.

Most agents also charge renewal fees for doing a new fixed term contract but shouldn't be charging fees where no work is invloved i.e reversion to periodic. We don't charge tenants for this as there is no work involved.

Hi Letting lady,

What does the curent letting agents reference entail? Is it just whether we pay our rent and have we trashed the place? They led my OH to believe that they had to divulge Experian data, details about whether we are up to date with our utility bills and that this entailed a considerable amount of paperwork. I object to this as Homelet must already be performing a credit search & any Experian data our current agents hold is 5 years old! I would be better placed to prove whether I have paid my utility bills and your right I could have provided bank statements. I think thats what we did when we moved to the property we were in before, they didn't use Homelet.

I've emailed the letting agents requesting a proper invoice for the fee as I find it very unprofessional that Homlet expect you to make payment without a bill.

My other point is that the referencing fees at the new agents were very reasonable, do you think this previous letting agent fee is usually met from the fees you pay to the new agent?

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HOLA448
Hi Letting lady,

What does the curent letting agents reference entail? Is it just whether we pay our rent and have we trashed the place? They led my OH to believe that they had to divulge Experian data, details about whether we are up to date with our utility bills and that this entailed a considerable amount of paperwork. I object to this as Homelet must already be performing a credit search & any Experian data our current agents hold is 5 years old! I would be better placed to prove whether I have paid my utility bills and your right I could have provided bank statements. I think thats what we did when we moved to the property we were in before, they didn't use Homelet.

I've emailed the letting agents requesting a proper invoice for the fee as I find it very unprofessional that Homlet expect you to make payment without a bill.

My other point is that the referencing fees at the new agents were very reasonable, do you think this previous letting agent fee is usually met from the fees you pay to the new agent?

Yes they want to know if rent has always been paid on time/any arrears/good tenant etc.

Letting agents dont hold current Experian information as this would be a breach of Data Protection and they also don't know whether utility bills are up to date so this is definitely bull. I'm surprised that they would say that really.

As for your last point I suppose it would depend on how much they charge!!

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HOLA449
You must have a bundle of correspondence that might be of interest to your local Trading Standards.

Saturday, September 26, 2009 Previous editions

Ireland:Dry with lengthy sunny spells in most areas Dry with lengthy sunny spells in most ar »

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Wilson to sell 700 properties

Saturday, September 26, 2009

London: Fergus Wilson, the former mathematics teacher dubbed Britain’s buy-to-let "king," says he’s selling 700 rental properties before interest rate rises bring "slaughter" to landlords in Britain’s housing market.

Wilson, who together with his wife Judith rank among the 1,000 wealthiest Britons according to this year’s Sunday Times Rich List, said it was inevitable that interest rates would rise from a historic low, pummelling rental landlords.

"You’ve got a lot of people who have taken out a mortgage and are right up to their throats" in debt, said Wilson as he settled into a black armchair at a hotel in Maidstone, south- eastern England. "As soon as rates go up, they’re going to be slaughtered."

Rates are forecast to rise, hurting buy-to-let landlords in particular because they pay more than other mortgage borrowers.

Read more: http://www.examiner.ie/business/wilson-to-...l#ixzz0SBRskOLf

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  • 2 weeks later...
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HOLA4410

Homelet referencing is a joke anyway. When I moved into my current place I had to provide Homelet with my LL's contact details so they could check on me. For all the checking they did I could have just given them a mates name and address! In fact as I shared with my mate from uni who owned the flat thats kind of what I did.

According to him he just had to phone up in response to an email and confirm the length of time I was renting from him, the amount paid, whether or not I always paid on time and whether or not I was a good tenant. I could have given a fake email and done that myself!

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