UK Tenants and Landlords Are Being Abused by Letting Agents

Let us remind that several days ago Citizens Advice Bureau has published its “Let Down” report, which suggested that letting agents and managing agents’ attitude towards their clients is far from satisfactory. Yesterday, on May 21st Keshav Thukaram, who takes the post of the managing director at Smartlandlord, online landlord resource, published his reply to the report of Citizens Advice. He claimed that tenants are not the only ones who have been suffering from unregulated activity of letting and managing agents. Mr. Thukaram added that landlords have been paying thousands of pounds in excessive and often unnecessary fees for services, which oftentimes were poor or even negligent. Now the number of inexperienced landlords in the UK has skyrocketed as many homeowners are either unable or unwilling to sell their properties at current prices, which means that letting and managing agents are now easily making money for nothing. Mr. Thukaram is strongly determined that a creation of an independent regulatory body for letting and managing agents is long overdue; he said he was delighted to hear the Government’s response to the Rugg Review, which implied the establishment of a registration system for letting agents. The necessity of its creation finds proof in the following figures: almost 58% of the 3.2 million buy to let properties in the UK are being managed by lettings agents, which generally charge 12% of rent for just marketing a property to potential tenants. This figure suggests that landlords are annually paying £1,550 for the services of letting agents that are available online for a mere £100. Moreover, lettings agents typically charge up to £360 + tax for the compilation of a tenancy agreement contract, which is also available online absolutely free of charge. The above-mentioned data shows that over £3.0 billion is spent on the services of UK letting agents every year. Statistics also demonstrates that an average landlord spends approximately £2,685 in the course of 20 months (length of an average tenancy) on letting and managing agents’ services.