Letting agents are already telling landlords that their charges will increase in the coming months despite no firm date being set for the tenant fees ban.
A message from an unnamed agent to a landlord said it was increasing management fees by 3.5% to compensate for lost income from the fees ban, and also suggests upping the tenant’s rent to cover the cost.
The note then offers to increase rates by only 1.5% to longer-term customers.
The message was revealed in a post on the housepricecrash.co.uk forum.
It didn’t reveal the name of the agent, but said the fees ban will create a “massive loss of income” and proposes the new charging regime from December.
It said: “On average, other agents in the area are increasing their fees by up to 5%.
“We are only looking to increase our overall management fees by 3.5% but I have spoken to x and as we have been managing your property for a while now, have a good relationship with you and value your custom, we are only going to increase yours by 1.5% so minimal impact.
“What’s happening on tenancy renewals is that the rents are being increased to incorporate the increase and make sure you are still earning more money.
“Your tenant’s contract is ending in December and she has confirmed that she wants another 12 months.”
David Cox, chief executive of ARLA Propertymark, said he hadn’t heard of agents already raising landlord fees, but said he wouldn’t be surprised.
He told EYE: “I would suggest it is sensible to prepare the landlords now.
“These fees aren’t going to go away, they will be merged into something else.
“You can’t take the sort of money out of the industry and expect it to disappear.
“Tenants will end up paying the fees through their rent.”
No date has yet been given for the introduction of the tenant fees ban.
The Bill will reach the committee stage of the House of Lords next week.
Cox said he expected it to start in April next year unless there were delays and extra secondary legislation was needed due to amendments, in which case it may start as late as October 2019.
https://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/index.php?/topic/233552-agents-crying/&
Comments (10)
As a landlord, I have already decided that “enough is enough”, and hence have stopped using agents.
Whilst that is completely your decision, I would advise you to make sure that you keep abreast of all of the changes in legislation.
Sounds like you haven’t used the right ones to date IMO. If you had you would see the true value that they can bring. As above, just about everything is changing and if you don’t keep up you risk your investment costing you more than a small increase from your agent.
It won’t be long until England adopts the licensing scheme already seen in Wales.
We are increasing management charges to new landlords, and the start-up costs for all new tenancies will probably increase in the new year. As many of my landlords have more than one property, I can’t charge different management fees for different properties.
We’re hiking rents to combat the increased cost of running our Business and the increased costs our landlords face and allowing the lowest income tenants to become the local authorities problem. After all, the government were well aware this would happen. We kept telling them, they ignored every email we sent.
I know this is pedantic of me, but to increase the fee from, say, 10% to 11.5% is not an increase of 1.5%. It’s an increase of 15%. To a lot of people – some of my landlords included – the way things are worded matters.
As for increasing rents, small adjustments may be an option in some cases, such as when renewing tenancies. But when it comes to new tenancies, what dictates price is supply vs demand. It’s not entirely up to us; we’ve always tried to charge as much as we can. It’s not like we’ve been thinking to ourselves that because we charge tenant fees we’ll ask for less rent than we could get.
With no fees there are less barriers to the market for tenants and will therefore be increased demand, increased fees to landlords will restrict supply and thus the market will have rebalance itself. Rents will go up as a direct result of this legislation
In areas of demand, the simple solution, in areas of very or little demand, then you have a problem.
So this will end up costing tenants more due to rent increases?
Whoever knew??!!!
Surely agents will negotiate part of the fee up front and monthly instalments of remainder on rent receipts Good for cashflow and landlords will be happy .too .Also ties an umbilical chord between landlord and agent maintaining a relationship