Tenant wants to leave Letting Agent but stay with me in same bungalow

So what's your question Mick?

Hi Mick,

I obviously doubt you or the tenant want to pay £810 upfront.

How much would you save without the agents and then if it is important to the tenant can they top up the difference so that you save the £810 over a period of time you are happy with?

Couldn't you leave things as they are, but instruct the agent to go through you rather than direct to tenant for this one tenant? You would then be the point of contact for the tenant rather than the agent. I would try this first to defuse the bad feeling, but save you the money.

I doubt the tenant will leave if they don't have to deal with the agent & would otherwise have stayed put long term. Even if you bend over backwards for them you have no guarantee they won't move out anyway.

With the changes coming in banning agents fees charged to tenants there will be less objection possible from the agent in your taking over part of their duties I would have thought.

Hi Mick

Sorry, but you can't have it all ways, you can either:
- manage them yourself and keep the tenants and save money on letting agent commissions, but have the work to do, OR
- you entrust it to letting agents and let them mess it up for you and the tenant and charge you 10% commission for the process (but you have a little less work to do).

The other option is to lease it to an organisation that does "rent to rent" but we have already talked about the pro's and con's of this. - Sometimes it works well, especially for landlords who want to be really hands off, but I'm not sure this is ideal for you?

After many failed attempts at finding reliable and competent letting agents, I gave up trying about 10 years ago and now manage all of my lettings myself. I've also had the issue of letting agents trying to charge me to leave them, but they were so incompetent that it worked out good value paying them and telling them where to shove their "service". - I'm sure there must be some good ones out there, they all claim to be good, but finding which ones are and which ones aren't can be very costly.

Dump the agents and do it yourself. I do.

Reply to the comment left by "Kate Mellor" at "18/04/2017 - 16:46":

Sounds sensible Kate and also check how much notice he has to give to the agent to terminate their agreement without incurring a penalty.

My question is:
Can they charge this £800 for me to carry on with just me and tenant?

I've already paid £800ish for them to get me the tenant.

Ongoing fees are roughly £80 a month with the VAT.

Excuse my delays in replying, I'm biking in Gran Canaria up the hills.

It's the tenants that don't want to stop with the agent and I couldn't ask tenants to pay agents ongoing fee.

Yes we can never guarantee they will stop, but one does get feeling sometimes on certain people and they are 70 and instinct says they will be stopping if they hant got to deal with agent.
And if I'm doing it all anyway cause they won't deal with agent, we may as well take agent out loop. But it's tenants choice to not mine.

I have tried Letting Supermarket a year ago and the manager man never got back to me. Not good start and I know probably one off.
But I think some houses need to be locally managed and where is my local man?

Ha ha good old Rob straight to the point like me. Yes mess it up is the right words. Young kids running the show.

I dint think I wanted to be hands on, but I could live with maybe 10 hours a week as I've had a lot of tenants been with me 20 years 19 yrs 18 etc. And I think I get the balance right between keeping tenant happy repairs income profit etc. To keep tenant in there long time. And the letting agents don't seem good at this.

I've been managing all mine 20 years and surely someone out there is as good as me Aaahhh.......

So u have paid agents in the past too Rob? I'm sure if there was a way out, u would know.

Reply to the comment left by "Mick Roberts" at "21/04/2017 - 17:04":

Hi Mick

It's all in the small print. Check what your agreement with the letting agent actually says about this situation, if it is clearly there in the document (even in small print) that you have to pay an exit fee, then you are bound by that contract term. If it is not in print, then ask the agent to show you where you have signed an acceptance to such a condition, and if they cannot prove it then they probably can't hold you to it or sue you for it (but I'm not a solicitor so don't take my opinion as gospel).

In future, you might want to consider using an agent on a 'Let Only' basis. You can often negotiate the price & the exact services you want them to provide. This would mean you can delegate the bulk of the work of re-letting & take over from there for a one-off fee. Not much help in this instance tho I know.

As regards the exit fee, I guess as Robert says check the Ts & Cs carefully for the cancellation terms. There is probably a minimum period you've 'agreed' to stay with them for, if not it would probably be considered an unfair term in the contract if it endured for an indefinite period (like unending guarantor agreements) & as such void, but that would be for a court to decide...