Private renters in England have saved nearly £1 billion in letting agent fees since the 2019 Tenant Fees Act, research by campaign group Generation Rent has found.
In the year before the ban came into force, 45% of the one million tenants who moved home were charged fees, costing an average of £269 per household.
The campaign group calculated that had the fees continued at this rate, tenants would collectively have been charged hundreds of millions of pounds more when they moved, every year.
In the run-up to the Act coming into force, some in the property sector warned that the banned fees would be added to rents.
However, this did not appear to have happened, according to the group, which says that rent inflation increased slightly in 2019, but only in line with wage growth, before falling in 2020.
Generation Rent also found there have been 68 Tenant Fees Act tribunal cases where almost three-quarters (72%) returned a positive outcome for the tenant, meaning that at least some of the contested sum - or, in the case of 62% of all cases, all of it - was returned to the tenant.
Chief Executive Ben Twomey (pictured), says before they were banned, fees gave letting agents a licence to print money, with some agents charging as much as £800 to start a tenancy.
“Renters had little option but to pay the fees, which also made it difficult to compare the true cost of renting a home,” he adds.
“Since it came into force, the Tenant Fees Act has saved renters nearly a billion pounds and simplified the process of finding a home. But there is still much more to do to make renting more affordable and reduce unwanted moves.”
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