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Generation Rent

Pages tagged "letting agents"


Parliament abolishes £410m-a-year scam

Posted on Blog by Dan Wilson Craw · January 23, 2019 3:38 PM

The House of Commons has read letting agent fees their last rites! This afternoon MPs voted to approve the final version of the Tenant Fees Bill signed off last week by the House of Lords.

From 1 June, private renters moving home will no longer have to pay fees to start a new tenancy in England. Agents will only be able to ask for rent, and refundable holding and security deposits (capped at 1 week’s rent and 5 weeks’ rent respectively). The only exemptions are fees to cover the cost of lost keys or late rent payments.

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Lords send ministers away to fix fees ban

Posted on Blog by Dan Wilson Craw · November 06, 2018 6:55 PM · 3 reactions

The letting fees ban has inched closer to being law. Yesterday a Grand Committee of the House of Lords went through most of the Tenant Fees Bill, line by line. There are still potential loopholes that could leave tenants vulnerable to exploitation.

Following lobbying by ourselves, Shelter and Citizens Advice, and amendments by peers including Baroness Grender and Lord Kennedy, the government has now agreed to examine them before the Report Stage.

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Letting fees ban moves closer - but loophole remains

Posted on Blog by Hannah Slater · May 09, 2018 4:13 PM

Good news for hard-pressed private renters facing rip off fees from letting agents.

The Government has introduced the Tenant Fees Bill into Parliament, which aims to ban the fees commonly charged by letting agents for new tenancy agreements. This is part of the Government’s promise to make private renting cheaper and fairer and it’s a much-needed piece of legislation, especially as a quarter of us in the UK will rent privately by 2021.

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Government launches secret landlord blacklist

Posted on Blog by Dan Wilson Craw · April 06, 2018 1:19 PM

Landlords get to ask tenants for a reference, but there's no way we can check what a prospective landlord is like. That's why we've long been calling for a central database that names and shames criminal landlords.

From today we've got one. But there's a catch: only local councils can access it.

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Fees ban concerns remain as Bill completes first stage

Posted on Blog by Dan Wilson Craw · March 29, 2018 10:03 AM · 1 reaction

The Commons Housing Committee has published its report on the Draft Tenants' Fees Bill today, making recommendations to the government for when it formally introduces the Bill to Parliament. 

Generation Rent, along with charities, landlord groups, local councils and other industry organisations, gave evidence to the inquiry earlier in the year. There were positive outcomes on rents and deposits, but more work is needed to make sure the ban covers all fees - and that it's enforced properly.

Here's a summary of what we asked for - and what we got.

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Planned shake-up of rental market complaints system

Posted on Blog by Dan Wilson Craw · February 23, 2018 4:37 PM · 1 reaction

Last October, Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Communities (and now Housing) said that he wanted to start requiring landlords to join a redress scheme if they did not already use a letting agent. 

The government is now consulting on plans for this. The good news is it is considering doing away with the three different schemes tenants have to navigate when they have a complaint at the moment.

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Disrupting the market to help tenants

Posted on Blog by Dan Wilson Craw · October 27, 2017 1:07 PM · 2 reactions

The internet has already shaken up the music industry, television, taxis and self-catering holidays. Investors are now looking for the next industry to disrupt with technology and property seems ripe for the picking. 

As the national voice of private renters, we agree that the property industry as it stands fails its consumers in too many ways, so things need to change. Even when we succeed in changing the law, like the forthcoming letting fees ban, we still need to ensure that it's implemented properly and the industry adapts in the right way. 

But we can't allow slick and revolutionary new services or initiatives to simply treat tenants as cash cows in the same way that many letting agents and landlords currently do. So this is what we think the market needs - and how the tenant should benefit.

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Tory conference announcements pull punches on housing crisis

Posted on Blog by Dan Wilson Craw · October 05, 2017 11:35 AM

At the General Election in June, Labour won a majority of the votes of the under-40s. This was a wake-up call for the Conservative Party, many of whose members are now filled with a new urgency to address this cohort's biggest concerns - including a rather large house-shaped one.

Their annual conference has duly been bursting with new housing policies, particularly for private renters. But while they are (for the most part) improvements, the proposals fail to address the urgency of the housing crisis.

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MPs debate letting fee ban

Posted on Blog by Dan Wilson Craw · September 07, 2017 3:27 PM

The ban on letting fees is currently the government's flagship policy to help renters, and we're currently waiting for a draft bill to be published, which follows a consultation that we and hundreds of our supporters responded to.

In the meantime, MPs gave us a taste of how the legislation will proceed in Parliament yesterday morning by debating the subject for the first time since last year's Autumn Statement.

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One promise the Prime Minister must keep

Posted on Blog by Dan Wilson Craw · April 20, 2017 10:22 AM

Theresa May has broken her word. She ruled out a snap election five times, then called one.

Our question is: what other promises is she going to tear up?

The government is consulting now on proposals to ban letting fees, and the deadline of 2 June is a week before polling day.

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