This may be a ‘closing the door after the horse has bolted’ post, since most landlords on here will be looking at letting without an agent, but I thought I would say it anyway.
If you are signing up with an agent, they want your business so you don’t have to agree to their standard terms and conditions - you can negotiate!!
I knew that I wanted to start to manage properties myself eventually (but hadn’t found Openrent) when I last signed up with an agent. Their contract had an ‘as long as the tenant remains’ clause - ie no cancellation. I didn’t like that so changed that section to 1 month’s notice and sent it back to them saying that was what I would sign, take it or leave it. They wanted my business, so they agreed.
They also had a 1.8% fee on sale (to the tenant, or to a seller they introduced) or a flat £600 fee (if sold another way) whilst the tenant was in situ. I had no intention of selling and wouldn’t use a high street agent anyway, but fees around here are about 0.9% for an agent to sell it for you, so 1.8% was just plain greedy. So I made them take that out too even though it was never going to affect me.
They had obviously recently updated the contract to introduce the £600 fee because the preamble drew my attention to the fact that fees were payable for as long as the tenant remained, even on sale, unless the new owner agreed to pay them, and drew my attention to the £600 early determination clause.
So the bottom line is, read the contract and, if you don’t like something, tell them you want it changing and, if they don’t agree to something you can live with, walk away and find someone who will agree!
