Letting agents may go bust as illegal fees campaign takes off

Some of these are excessive, some are fair game. For example - reassigning a tenancy. Have you ever tried to get a reassignment done on a 10 bed student let? You need to get all tenants (incoming and outgoing) at the same time to sign a deed of assignmnent.

One genuine problem is agents are ultra competive on their management rates bu a dominant position allows a few to ramp up the tenant charges. The only time I can see a tenant sign Ho fee costing 400 is if the rent is £40k a week.

Is this about '
extortionate and unjustified upfront fees' to tenants, or any fees at all to tenants? Is Shelter saying that any agent charging a fee to a tenant is ripping them off?

Hi Jan

I stand to be corrected but I believe a law exists in Scotland, but which has been ignored for years, which makes it illegal for Letting Agents to charge fees to tenants. The Scots are really clamping down and are also in the process of introducing compulsory custodial Deposit Protection. It's going to be a blood bath!

Glad we're in England then!

And the Welsh this week announced proposals to licence and regulate landlords, which is interesting. Its as if the ghost of Rugg is still hanging around, despite English parliament saying they will not regulate.

You have to ask why. Is Shelter's campaign and the thinking that is out there in society having an effect? Are common and repeated stories of letting agents going bust getting into wider consciousness? Are programmes like Channel 4s Rogue Landlords supporting a groundswell?

I appeared in the Channel 4 follow up, I acted as researcher for their last one on property conditions and since then I have been appproached by no less than 3 other TV production companies looking to do programmes and series on housing, a pilot for one I filmed 2 weeks ago and am meeting Panorama next week about a housing edition.

Why are so many TV companies wanting to do stuff on housing?

All this seems to me to suggest that the public's attention is turning to our world, it's ceasing to be a little corner of life and actually moving centre stage, rather than Cameron simply stating it is.

Housing should always have been centre stage.
What are councils going to do when hunbdreds of thousands of Greeks and Spanish present themselves in the UK  as homeless.
Pity anyone on a council waiting list.
These EU migrants will take precedence as they will be deemed to ne in greater housing need.
If you think housing is in dire straits now, just wait til the Greeks start coming.
And they won't be bearing any gifts!!, they will expect the full range of the wonderful world of UK benefits which will be paid out by the DWP and councils.
Uk taxes will have to go up to pay for all the EU migrants and the benefits they will be given.
It is about time that the free movement of labour in the EU was stopped.
We are full up and cannot afford anymore
Plus they are not needed.
EU migrants should be turned back at the UK border.
We don't want them or need them.
We have millions of UK nationals underemployed and unemployed not to need any low skilled EU migration.
Will any of this happen.
NO
Prepare for conditions to worsen even more in the social housing sector and property available for UK national LHA claimants.

I know. I have been listening to radio 4 today and heard how the government is setting plans to deal with the fallout of the Eurozone crisis if people from the EEA, who have a right to housing services, fetch up on our shores, fleeing the fallout of their own country's fiscal system.

We do indeed live in interesting times.

This week I read of well-heeled French people fleeing a socialist government and also Greeks abandoning a sinking ship.

Think Jugaad though Paul. Instead of focussing on the problem hjow can we make it work?

A pessamist sees the difficulty in every opportunity whereas an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.

Yes. Do you know that the Chinese use the same written character for crisis and opportunity?

I keep banging on about this Mark but we need to always look at what can be done, not the obsatcles. Working that way you can get some fantastic and radical ideas. In that sense we should be celebrating these developments.

Look at Trevor Ballis and his wind up radio. the more restrictions we get dumped with the more creative we get. It is human nature.

It is also human nature to gripe. We have a choice

I just can't see the juugard principle working. for housing.
It would have been thought of by now.
Having a massive influx of EU migrants is hardly going to be the catalyst for imaginiative ideas.
The ONLY solution is to stop giving QE money to the banks and embark on a mass housebuilding programme to equal the 60's.
Give the money to the housbuilders to build but at cost only.
No profits to the builders, just BUILD.
There needs to be assurances that this social accommodation will NOT be given it imigrants ,  EU or otherwise.
UK nationals should have precedence in social housing.
I am afraid the only way we can ensure govt social housing goes only to UK nationals is to imposed border controls on all immigrannts.
We do not need anymore from anywhere unless they are highly skilled.
We have enough idiot unemployed to fill all the low wage jobs.
Housing infrastructure is the best way of injecting demand into the UK economy.
Only govt money ansd pressure will force the issue.
New towns need to be created and expansion of others needs to occur.
I think there is something like 10 million of pent up demand for social housing.
Just imagine demand for 10000 sofas and cookers.
Trouble is most of the household goods will come from China.
I think only Agas are made in the UK now.
None of this will occur and as a consequence the national debt and defecit will continue to increase massively with the burden being imposed on the hard pressed tax payer.
Those on benefit will continue to coin it in without having to bother working.
What a sad state of affairs the UK is in.