Students are a special class of tenant imo. You cant expect them to know how to look after a house or properly use appliances as most will still be living with parents. They need much more handholding in the early days of the tenancy.
My Agent was charging me for YEARS 16 sterling a light bulb… I eventually read the AST and realised I should not have been asked to pay for this and the Agent should not have done this. This is just one such example from this Agent in Middlesbrough - whenever I called them out on such breaches and fradulent billing they just became abusive and just recently are threatening by email to “undo” roofing work… they owe me thousands - any advice? we have parted ways but they are now threatnening, then paid back deposits without permission, they receive a deposit and never paid it to Me.
er… eventually… after “YEARS”? 
I’m always astonished by fire-and-forget LLs who seem surprised that they get issues. Hopefully, all that you’ve been through has made you wiser if not simply older.
Well noted, or too trusting? It’s their legal Terms of business one would assume they abided by them? given where I hail from perhaps. I only just today found out this same agent Clarke Munro is adding 30% to the Roofer’s invoice and I guess all invoices. Is this legal? Do they need to disclose this?
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Any management fee should be in the contract .30% is a rip off 15% is more common
Assuming someone would abide by terms of business would make signing any such terms absolutely pointless. If everyone did that, we wouldn’t need to have contracts in the first place. Yes, way too trusting. If you use agents, you need to be on them like a hawk and know exactly what the legalities are so you can hold them to account. Seeing as how you may not have read it, what does your contract with the agent say about their fees for arranging contractors?
This is one reason why, when I used agents when I was overseas, I instructed them to coordinate with contractors I found (checkatrade was helpful) who were in turn instructed to bill me directly. The agent’s only responsibility in this scenario was to liaise between tenant and contractor which is what a fully managed service already includes.
One on single occasion, the agent (Browns of Stockton), unilaterally requested a friend of mine who was a handyman to respond to one of my tenants. When he got their invoice, he realised that they’d added 5% to his bill and immediately contacted me to let me know what was going on. They revised that invoice pretty sharpish after my phone call and never played that game again.
For the record, I have no idea where you hail from nor why morals there should be different from Middlesbrough (says this Teesside resident).
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The Agent is in Teeside! no their terms don’t state a percentage. But it says they will take a referral fee from the Contractor I just noticed. Now my partner is also going to check with his Agent, he gets original invoices from one Agent but Co invoices from another.
I’m selling up. 3 offers accepted and still have a 6 bed 5 bath HMO that has viewings going on.
Yep I hail from a place where this stuff doesnt happen, in fact managing agents dont exist as they are not needed. You sign a tenancy, pay the rent and when its done you move out. no regulations here and we just had Gas guy come in and check the heaters - its all free…
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why do you sign a tenancy agreement then? What’s the point when everyone just abides perfectly by the law?
Fitting sealed LED lights puts the responsibility back on the LL to change the whole unit.
A daft approach that I would not recommend
These are really cheap now & last a good length of time with great light so we will agree to disagree Neelix.
that is rhetorical no?
We’ll just have to disagree. Sealed down lights do fail and a spark would charge £60 - £90 to change one
Or the tenant changes a bulb
That’s the choice
Bulbs for me all the time
not at all. If a place exists where everyone abides by rental law, how can it be that tenancy agreements are required there. The whole point of a tenancy agreement is to act as a legal fallback should either party fail to maintain their part of the contract. If no one does this, a legal contract is pointless.
Actually I think legal contracts are generally useless - our AST are very clear - but how often in UK are they breached and most landlords just say - let them off - just pay it - etc. With a broken court system and Judges stacked against us too -
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They certainly are if you a) don’t read them and b) don’t hold people to account for breaching them. I recommend both. They are especially useless in a land where no one breaks the law though.