BBC’s Watchdog aired a feature on letting agents on the 9th January 2008. They had numberous complaints about unfair letting agency charges. They featured one particular agent - Foxtons in London because they charge a renewal commission every time they renew a tenancy agreement. Now, if there is some work to be done then this is fair enough but the fee needs to reflect the work performed. They also named a few agents who charge smaller fees in the range £25 to £150 which would seem proportionate. The programme then went on to state that Kings Residential do not charge a renewal commission at all.
Our fee structure on a managed property is 50% of the first month’s rent for the tenant find plus 10% of the rent that we collect. When a tenancy renews we do not charge a letting fee again. In our opinion this would be a bit rude. However, we do manage the tenancy for the duration of their occupancy and we do collect a monthly management commission from this. This is totally reasonable in our opinion. In return for this commission we collect the rent, chase arrears, serve legal notices, attend repossession hearings if necessary, look after maintenance issues, carry out inspections, perform rent reviews, and pro-actively manage the tenancy to encourage a lengthy occupancy from the tenant. When the tenant does decide to leave we pro-actively market the property to minimise the void period between tenants. However, we have only found the tenant once so we only charge the tenant find once per tenant. Of course when a tenant leaves and we find a different tenant we charge the fee again.
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