Letting Agent Ripped Apart by Social Media

The Resolution Foundation just yesterday produced a report recommending a single regulatory body for letting agents and there are posts on this very website from agents also calling for the same thing Madalena.

And yet all that happens is new standards being overlayed on existing ones. Boris Johnson is now looking into a London wide Blue badge scheme for agents. We need less regulation not more.

I was pleased when I saw 'Safe-Agent' come into play and straight away did a search of affiliated agents, and yet right there, in my working area was one of our well known ones whose name comes up most weeks in connection with something or other, people I would trust to run a bath.

Letting agents are supposed to be property professionals. People a landlord goes to to find tenants and set up a letting, hopefully leaving the landlord to put their feet up and/or concentrate on something else. Tenants too, approach an agent to find them a property and to be their mediator with the landlord in all matters. An easy enough task so why does the experience of so many landlrods and tenants cause them to take such a dim view of agents?

Solicitors have a single regulatory body. You can go on the website, check the person is registered and when they qualified and they can be struck off for malpractice.

Decent agents would have nothing to fear from being subject to a single regulatory body and framework and the dodgy and downright criminal ones would be forced out of business overnight. Its such a no brainer.

Ben, I believe it is important to understand that #SafeAgent is a mark of a company that use client monies protection. That is all. It does not denote any other standard than the fact that the landlord and tenant's monies are protected by an official scheme.

I think it is also worth noting that using a lettings agent does not divest the Landlord of any responsiblility. The Landlord is ultimately responsible for anything that goes on in their property, not the lettings agent. So I see the focus on Landlords acting as a barometer for the good and bad agents, by sharing their views on sites such as this. The hive mind of the Landlord community can influence the sector. Too many landlords though are interested in the rent cheque, but not being engaged or understanding or learning about their business. If more of them took a professional stance, the whole BTL arena would be forced to become more professional by default and the community could self-regulate.

I agree Ben, I do think with the prevalence of the PRS, there needs to be complete reform and a rethink on policies and it needs to be filtered down to local authorities and police.

This year, I covered a story of a landlord who arrived at an apartment block he owned with some 'hired help' to persuade the residents, some with young children that they needed to leave immediately. This particular landlord ( I cannot name unless I end up wearing concrete shoes) had not issued any eviction notices and was in desperate need to clear the building as the sale of the property was dependent on the block being empty.

He then disconnected the gas supply and threatened the tenants. Transco was called to cap the gas supply and called the police. However the police stated that it was a civil matter and not a criminal one. As you know Ben, this was indeed a criminal offence under the Protection from Eviction Act 1977. Yet no-one cared.

I had the matter brought up but it was too late. Luckily for the tenants, the rest of the private landlords in the area sympathized and rallied round to find them somewhere, foregoing deposits and up-front rent.

With you on all points Vanessa. Tenants too should be more savvy about renting. I have 2 local scam agents operating who have managed to take rent and deposit up front from people who didnt even get inside the property to view it. A testament to the persuasion skills of the agents but also to the cluelessness of the tenants.

I know Safe Agent is mainly proof of client protection but I see it being bandied about as if it is generally safer. Money protection is no small thing to have but doesnt in itself make a reliable agent overall.

When you complain of landlords not being engaged in or understanding their business I think this is because so few landlords see it as a business at all, that is why they go to an agent in the first place.

I rarely get complaints of harassment and illegal eviction made to me about portfolio landlords who do understand their business and as a result, rarely use agents. The legal breaches I deal with are almost totally committed by small amateurs who dont think of being a landlord as a business. Agents should be the pros in the field that do the business stuff for those landlords but standards, quality of service and knowledge of subject are so often very poor

Madalena we havent exchanged before so I dont know if you know my job. I'm a Tenancy Relations Officer for a London council prosecuting landlrods for harassment and illegal eviction. Sorry to say this but the tale you tell is one I get involved with around 3 times a week. Its not even a very bad one to be honest.

The police are the bane of my professional life. I wish they would just not turn up. It would my life so much easier.

Good on your local community of landlord's though. that's a tale that needs wider publicity

Why would someone down thumb this comment? surely asking for a meeting to sort things out is a good thing??

Great thread, but feel sorry for the parties caught up in the issue (Fay/Katie and, to some extent Victora Campbell).

I wanted to comment on something Vanessa said about using http://www.safeagents.co.uk/. It peeves me to see these self-appointed property industry gurus set themselves up as self-regulatory organisations and charge agents fees to register the fact that they (the agent) have a client money protection scheme in place to protect tenants' deposits.

I have started up a letting agency called Angels Property Services and I have set up 2 client accounts, recognised as separate to my business accounts by the bank (and I have a letter to prove this) whereby if I or my business went bust, the money in those client accounts would be ring-fenced and unaffected by my bankruptcy.

I don't belong to ARLA or RICS or NAEA because I'm a one man band and I haven't studied for their "qualifications"...yet I have been a landlord in the frontline of letting for over 15 years and have more experience and knowledge of the laws than any 18-40 year old working in the the letting industry. But without their "qualifications" I cannot join their self-regulatory bodies and thus don't have access to their client money protection schemes.

For those of you that don't know what a client money protection scheme is, it's merely an insurance policy that pays out in the event of fraud against the client money account by staff or management of a letting agent. I've been trying to find some way of buying my own client money protection insurance but I'mhaving difficulty finding someone to cover me. So I go with the approach that as I'm an honest and ethical person...I know that if I was stupid enough to run my business so badly I ended up going bankrupt, I would say to myself that what I did was my fault and at no time touch the deposits of the tenants or the rental money due to the landlords in order to help save my business...which is the opposite of what distressed letting agents are doing (EVEN IF they belong to a professional body - ARLA membership does not mean the agent is not at risk of going to the wall and taking the client money with it!).

So personally I refuse to join the Safe Agents database and pay them their fee...and in fact I couldn't anyway because I don't have client money protection insurance (which is what they state the agent registering must have). I have only my honesty and integrity in dealing with 3rd party money.

I am not questioning your integrity Gareth but your business model would concern me if you were managing my properties and tenants deposits because I would be the one responsible for repaying them if anything went wrong. In the absence of an insured scheme the deposits should, by law, be placed into the custody of the DPS. Why would you insist on holding them in an account to which you had access? Alternatively, why don't you advise your landlord clients to retain the deposits and set them up with their own "My Deposits" accounts? Many landlords beleive that they can contract their legal obligations regarding deposits to their agents but the law says different.

Mark.

I am well aware of the law regarding deposits...I myself had issues with agents in this regard and I'm the one telling them what they have to do! Some of them still don't get it! Any posit can be misinterpreted by a reader, as has happened here, so just to reassure future readers I'll add that as the agent, any deposits held in my long term client account number 2 (for deposits), would be registered with MyDeposits.co.uk and the tenants and landlord would receive all the paperwork related to the registration.

As you rightly say, the alternative would be to set the landlord up with a MyDeposits account (if they don't already have one) and then I would pay the money to MyDeposits directly rather than let the landlord do it. They are busy people and 14 days was never long enough for them to register it in some cases. Going forward this will change to 30 days to register, but as agent I just don't want to run the risk of a landlord "forgetting" to register it, if you know what I mean.

Phew! Thanks for adding that essential piece of clarification Gareth, I was getting very worried for you there my friend.