Check out fee question

Tenant Discussion
1

Good evening everyone!

Myself and my partner rent a property (joint tenants) and we moved into a property in Feb 2019 , we got stung heavily by estate agents fee’s before they where banned , anyway looking at the invoice we where charged a advanced checkout fee…, At the time we where told it’s when you leave it covers the inventory costs ect , we where told we had to pay it before we moved in rather than when we leave .

Anyway a couple of questions about this fee, I am aware a check out fee is now banned under the tenancy act ( I am aware we payed this prior to the law coming in ) however we have since renewed this contract in 2020 and it’s still currently valid , where do we stand with this fee ?

To make things a little more complicated is that the current landlord who allows the house to be fully managed by the estate agents has sold the house , luckily the new landlord is happy for us to stay will provide a new contract ect and will leave the estate agents, so realistically due to this where not even going to benefit from this fee we paid anyway by no fault of our own…

I appreciate it’s a little complicated and I’ve tried to word it the best I can

Kind regards

2

Tenant’s fees are illegal on all contracts old or new.
The fact those clauses were in contract when you signed in 2020 is worrying and illegal.
I would ask the estate agent who their ombudsman is and report them
Whatever the contract says the TFA banned fees in the TFA 2019

3

It was legal to take the checkout fee at the time, but it was only valid until 31 May 2020. If you hadnt checked out by this date, the lsndlord/agent has only 28 days after that date to refund it or they are in breach.

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