A property maintenance company has hit out at “letting agent scams” that it says the public should be protected from.
Property maintenance and refurbishment company Aspect says that although letting agents may become regulated by a recognised ombudsman scheme, this will only provide a system of redress after things have gone wrong and not “clean up an industry that is rapidly deteriorating into a racket”.
Will Davies, managing director of Aspect, decided to speak out about how letting agents rip off landlords.
"As an example, aspect.co.uk used to manage property maintenance work around London for Foxtons Lettings Agency. We stopped when they wanted to increase their commission from 15% to 20%,” said Davies, “Basically letting agents can milk their clients by charging them a fee to manage the property and then they take a commission from the maintenance companies they use so their clients end up paying more than they should be on top of the charges they are already paying for the service.
"We took a policy decision that we would not do work for any letting agents that wanted to charge a commission as we knew their clients weren't aware of this particular scam and we didn't want to be associated with that.
"The practice is still rife within that market and will not be within the remit of the proposed ombudsman scheme. Letting agents handle billions of pounds of other people’s money every year and the industry should be subject to full regulation.”
The government has shied away from the amendments proposed by the Labour peer Lady Hayter that would place letting agents under the auspices of the 1979 Estate Agents Act.
This would give the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) the ability to ban rogue agents, ensure professional indemnity insurance and protect client finances.
The government amendments to the enterprise and regulatory reform bill will be discussed in the House of Lords this week before returning to the Commons.
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Comments
I am a contractor and if I know the agent is going to deduct commission from my fee I just add that amount to quote and invoice !!!!!
Letting Agents I know take it off the contractors amount not add it on.
if Agents are supplying large amount of works to contractors why should they not charge for it?
are you telling me councils and local authorities don't take commission from building work?!
Well said Will this practice is so rife the major software providers like CFP and CARL have designed this practice into their programmes.