Letting agents 'turn to rent reminder charges'
News Category: Industry News
Published: 31-Oct-2008
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Some letting agents have adopted a charging system, designed to encourage tenants to pay their rent on time.
Lee Dribben, chairman of the Residential Landlords Association, suggested that landlords could add charges to rent accounts when they have to send out reminder letters for rent payments.
The practice has been adopted, he indicated, because landlords have no specific power to forcibly evict tenants when they fail to pay their rent on time, which could prove problematic in the current economic climate.
The main pressure landlords can currently place on tenants who fail to pay their rent on time is "spurious threats of [a] financial penalty", Mr Dribben said.
He argued that to remove the occupants of a rented property, landlords have to follow a long drawn out process which ultimately favours the tenant.
"The vast majority of tenancies are ended by tenants, often without the contracted notice period being given to the landlord," Mr Dribben said.
According to mydeposits.co.uk, which runs a scheme to protect tenants' deposits, letting agencies and landlords were allowed to keep deposits in 11 per cent of disputes which the firm handled between April 2007 and March 2008.
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