Foxtons / standard lettings practices

[simond]

Hi

Just wondered if any landlords had experience with them. I'm a prospective tenant looking to rent a house in West London through Foxtons. I've been warned they're tricky bu**ers and they seem to be showing their true colours.

The main sticking points currently are that they demand 6 weeks deposit and one month's rent in their bank account, plus the tenancy agreement signed, before they'll stop marketing the property. This, after I've paid £320+VAT for them to forward my offer (which has been agreed by the landlord) and draw up a contract, which they said was all they needed before they'd stop showing the property. Now they say they need the money and signed contract. They haven't yet managed to produce a contract with the specific details we've agreed to.

I would have no particular objection to signing the contract now rather than in 4 or so weeks time when I'm due to move in. I do object to handing over such a large sum so far in advance - I'd rather be getting the interest than them.

With previous agents, I've handed over a bankers draft and signed the contract on the day I was due to move in.

What do you guys normally do? Any experience with Foxtons?

Cheers,
Simon

[Jonboy]

wasn't it foxtons who were just on watchdog for charging £750 for 3 hours cleaning of a flat?






p.s. to all the solicitors reading this,: i think foxtons is a wonderful company and £750 is a bargain for cleaning in my humble opinion.

[janey]

Yep...
3 years ago my boyfriend rented a flat through Foxtons. The place was filthy when he moved in and he noted this on the inventory. He also wrote down that he would not be professionally cleaning it at the end of the tenant as it hadn't been cleaned prior to his moving in.

They witheld a lot of money from his depost when he moved out for 'professional cleaning'!!!! The flat was tiny and it would not have cost this much for cleaning. And we cleaned the place before he moved out anyway so there wouldn't have been anything much to do.

The inventory handed to him at the beginning was very confusing (well for us simple minded folk!!). Basically it was a combination of check-in and check-out inventories from previous tenancies. From what we could tell the last tenant's check-out inventory had been used as my boyfriend's check in inventory. Fair enough, but they then charged him for a check out inventory when he left and I'm sure they would have charged this to the landlord as well as it would have formed the next tenant's check in inventory.
It also took them over 2 months to pay his deposit back because the landlord was abroad and couldn't be contacted - like they all seem to be when deposits need to be returned.
They only supplied one set of keys for a two bedroom flat and he had to spend his own money to get another set. The mistake he made was to not withold this money from the rent.

For any solicitors reading this - great company and very reasonable behaviour and great experience all round.

[simond]

Thanks for the info.

I've never withheld deposit, never felt it was necessary. I always trusted the agent and landlord to behave sensibly. But it seems some agencies have no respect for their tenants and basically force them into it. I saw a letter from the agent to the current tenants saying they were behind with rent and it would be deducted from their deposit.

So does this sort of thing affect credit rating, or is it not relevant?

I don't understand why landlords use such agents if practically every tenant is withholding rent to ensure they get their deposit back. Surely landlords would twig that either they're getting a lot of bad tenants (in which case they're not being vetted properly by the agency), or something else is up.

Cheers

[janey]

They seem to have a big share of the central london market and higher end properties. Maybe those landlords don't have much of a choice?