Letting agent delays

bill_lehane

Hey

I just wanted to know is it normal for letting agents to give prospective tenants the run-around for days on end?

Myself and my wife have picked out a place in Lewisham since the middle of last week and yet we still haven't been allowed to sign the lease or get the keys to move in.

We have gone from a corporate flat rental to a hotel to a hostel as we continue to wait for these useless bastards. While I never used an agent in Dublin, I moved many times with only a single meeting with the landlord.

Any advice or shared experiences welcome

Bill.

silvervixen84

I had a showdown with my ex-letting agents only yesterday as they were giving me the runaround over my deposit. It was only when they slipped up and I uncovered their lies that they offered to lodge it to my account by same day transfer. I was fuming as I'd moved out of the apartment 6 weeks ago!

I'd say your best bet is to keep ringing them every day until they give you a decent answer. It could be the landlord holding up the transaction too but you deserve to know what's happening. Just make sure all your deposits and references are ready to go so they have nothing to throw back at you.

Best of luck

bill_lehane

Thanks Silver, it's good to hear I'm not the only one! You've just reminded me to give them yet another buzz. Wish me luck!

Fysh

Have they taken a holding deposit from you, or asked you for any further documentation or reference/background checks that might cause the delays?

First things first: write down the sequence of events that have happened thus far. Where possible give dates, times and the names of those present.

Second: contact the letting agent to express your concerns, ask for a clear date when you'll be able to sign a lease/get the keys/meet landlord. If you've already done this, say so and ask to speak to a manager.

Third: if this doesn't get you any progress, find out whether the letting agent is a member of an industry body like the Association of Residential Letting Agents, the National Approved Letting Scheme, The Property Ombudsman Service or the National Association of Estate Agents. If the agency won't tell you, you can contact the groups themselves by email to ask - they're usually pretty good and will reply within a day or two. Unfortunately they are only able to help if the agency in question is a member of their group. Pursue a complaint through them if necessary.

Fourth: Have a look at the advice from Shelter on this page, and look into the Alternative Dispute Resolution procedure. If in any doubt contact the Citizens Advice Bureau for further advice.

On a related note: If you've paid a holding deposit and the tenancy ends up not going ahead because the landlord has chosen other tenants (or for any reason other than you deciding to pull out), it is worth noting that the OFT has ruled in the past that you are entitled to the return of your holding deposit - see here for details.

Another related note: If you've already paid your full deposit and it has been more than 2 weeks since you did so, demand the details of the deposit scheme into which it has been paid. See here for more details.

breadmonkey

They are quite simply the most useless shower of talentless, unprofessional gob****es I've ever had the misfortune of being involved with. Only in the insane London rental market could such pathetic service be a sustainable business model. You'll just have to persevere.

bill_lehane

breadmonkey wrote: »

They are quite simply the most useless shower of talentless, unprofessional gob****es I've ever had the misfortune of being involved with. Only in the insane London rental market could such pathetic service be a sustainable business model. You'll just have to persevere.

Very well put! I couldn't agree more.

And thank you Fysh for such comprehensive advice. I don't have the exact dates but we put down a holding deposit last Wednesday I think, no full deposit or lease as yet. We did have three or four days of waiting for the referencing to go through which seemed very excessive to me, now waiting for the landlord to get back to the agent, who failed to tell us the landlord was on holidays! It's just frustrating because I didn't realise how normal it was for this to take a couple of weeks to sort out, it's an expensive wait!

LadyMayBelle

Keep pestering them op. We handed a deposit on our place and signed the agreement that the landlord would paint some specified walls and fix the bathroom etc, and when we went to pay the full whack and collect the keys, they messed us around for days and wouldn't let us view the house so we could check that the work was done before we finalised the money.. was really stressful and I contacted Shelter etc abour rights, and they advised us what we already knew..don't hand over a cent until you see the work is done!! Which we didn't, and lets just say us and the agency aren't on the best terms these days, simply because we wanted to see the property first.

Madness

ChRoMe

breadmonkey wrote: »

They are quite simply the most useless shower of talentless, unprofessional gob****es I've ever had the misfortune of being involved with. Only in the insane London rental market could such pathetic service be a sustainable business model. You'll just have to persevere.

Innit! **** me, out of everything I had to do with the move to London, securing a place to live with an estate agent was hands down the most stressful of them all.

bill_lehane

All commiserations gratefully received!

It completely slipped my mind to update this thread with the outcome for my little predicament. We finally got into the place last weekend some 8 or 9 days after agreeing to take it. On our last hostel night the fire alarm went off twice at 3am, and the agent was lucky he came through that day or else I might have chosen to murder him instead!

In a follow-up visit then yesterday I met the actual landlady, who ironically is perfectly nice and said she was paying a bunch of money to the agents for ropey service in return. Makes me wonder why the use of agents is so widespread here. Oh well. Barring major disasters the chances of us moving again while we're in London are about -500% :-)

djpbarry

bill_lehane wrote: »

Hey

I just wanted to know is it normal for letting agents to give prospective tenants the run-around for days on end?

Yes. Myself and the missus moved recently. The incompetency of the agency we dealt with was staggering. A brief summary of events:

Saw ad for flat, called agency to arrange viewing, no problems so far.

Showed up for viewing at address specified by agency. I could tell immediately that something wasn’t right as the property exterior looked different to the picture in the ad. Went inside and the interior was also different. We were obviously in the wrong property. Turned out the agency thought we were interested in buying a property (despite the fact that I specifically stated ‘rent’ in the initial emailed enquiry) which happened to be on the same street as the property we were interested in renting.

Honest mistake I thought, albeit a stupid one. So, I rearranged the viewing for a couple of days later. Agent showed up late. Without the keys for the property. Needless to say we were pretty exasperated at this stage. As it happened, the existing tenant was home, so he let us in to see the place, but conducting a detailed investigation isn’t really possible when the current tenant is present - you can’t really thumb through their stuff while they’re standing behind you.

In spite of all this, we decided to make an offer on the place (because it was the best we’d seen and is a pretty nice place) and pay a holding deposit, on condition that a second, proper viewing was arranged. The property is managed directly by the landlord, so we knew we wouldn’t have to deal with the agency once we moved in. So we met the landlord, had a proper look around, everything was fine. We were happy, landlord was happy, plain sailing. Or so you would think.

Informed the agency that we were happy having met the landlord, landlord informed agency of same. This was approximately one month before we were due to move in. We were due to go on holiday a few days after our move date, but we thought we’d have plenty of time to get everything sorted beforehand. And we should have had. But we didn’t factor in ****tard Letting Agents Ltd. Despite repeated requests, we didn’t receive any paperwork from them until four days before our move date (two of which were over a weekend), so apart from not being able to book a removal company due to the uncertainty, this meant that there was frantic to-ing and fro-ing trying to get everyone’s signatures on everything in time for us to collect the keys and conduct an inventory check with the landlord.

My dentist says I should stop thinking about handing over a couple of hundred pounds for the “service” provided by those incompetent fools – the grinding is destroying my teeth.

bill_lehane

Good grief, djpbarry! So even giving them 30 days to do 1 hour's work doesn't fly huh?!

I wonder why so many British home owners are reluctant to just do it themselves - I read a column in the Evening Standard (can't find link anywhere) recently where a landlord was saying she could have paid herself 60 pounds an hour for the work she did letting her place thanks to not hiring an agent. Go figure!