It’s 11 a.m. and the letting agent is late. As I wait outside an apartment block for my viewing, I watch as two drunk men fight over a packet of Wotsits. By the time the agent arrives, one of the drunk men is motionless on the floor. The other sits on a bench, licking orange Wotsit dust from his fingers. ‘Great location!’ says the agent. ‘Couldn’t get closer to the station if you tried.’
Once inside, I immediately cover my nose. ‘What’s that stench?’ I ask. ‘It smells like someone microwaved a used nappy in here.’ The agent shrugs. He shows me the rooms, of which there are few. I point at the mould in the bathroom which is beginning to take on a humanoid form. The agent shrugs again. We finish the tour in the kitchen. I try to turn on the tap but the faucet comes off in my hand. I look at the agent. ‘Do you want this flat or not?’ he asks, apparently nonplussed. ‘I’ve got three more viewings this afternoon, so think fast.’
For anyone who has ever rented a property, this story may sound all too familiar. But – we are told – the days of over-priced, dank rental properties are coming to an end thanks to the Renters’ Rights Act, which came into force this month. The Act is designed to provide greater security and higher housing standards for the 4.7 million privately rented households in England. That means abolishing section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions (meaning landlords can no longer evict tenants without reason), capping rental increases to once a year and scrapping fixed-term tenancies. These are all positive changes. But what the Act fails to tackle is one of the market’s biggest downfalls: indolent letting agents themselves.
I have always struggled with letting agents. Growing up in Clapham, I was surrounded by them. Their ‘yah, yah’ city accents. Their Moss Bros. suits with the pink ties and Russell & Bromley brogues. Their names: Charlie, Barney, Hugo. But it wasn’t until I started renting that I realised how inept letting agents can be: uncommunicative, uninformed and apparently incapable of solving problems once the tenancy’s been signed.
Worse, it’s not just an issue affecting twenty-somethings like me. The number of private renters between the ages of 45 and 54 has been gradually increasing over the past decade, according to the English Housing Survey, with almost one in five rental properties now populated by this group. With rising house prices and larger deposits pushing up the average age of first-time buyers, dealing with difficult letting agents is no longer a rite of passage. Rather it’s an increasing inevitability of an increasingly unstable market.
It wasn’t until I started renting that I realised how inept letting agents can be: uncommunicative, uninformed and apparently incapable of solving problems once the tenancy’s been signed
Perhaps I’ve just been unlucky. A few years ago, I rented a glorified bedsit in south London. At the viewing, I asked the agent what the room by the staircase was. ‘Oh, that? That’s a storage cupboard, I believe.’ He tried the handle, but the door was locked. On moving-in day, much to my horror, I discovered that the storage cupboard was not a storage cupboard at all: it was a third bedroom belonging to a 30-year-old accountant called Michael. To make matters worse, Michael had more wires, machines and fans in his room than an AI data centre. (Would we be splitting the electricity bill?)
I called the letting agency in a rage. They told me there was nothing to be done. I’d signed the contract. ‘We can terminate your tenancy immediately,’ they said – but even that would incur a cost, which I couldn’t afford. In the end, I stayed for the entirety of my fixed-term contract, skedaddling as soon as I could.
This is not to say that all agents are bad. In fact, my current flat is managed by a letting agency that cares about its clients. When we viewed the flat, they gave us several days to decide – not that we needed them – and are immensely good at fixing things when they say they will. If that sounds like a low bar, I’m sad to say it is. In my experience, decent agencies are few and far between, and competent agents are about as common as a trustworthy used car salesman.
And, I fear, it could be about to get much worse. It is estimated that the Renters’ Rights Act could spark a landlord sell-off, with around 220,000 rental properties expected to disappear from the market by the end of the year. That means fewer homes. And fewer homes means higher demand. And higher demand means higher prices: excellent news for ambitious, commission-hungry letting agents. My worry is that an increasingly competitive rental market will only encourage lazy agents to take their foot off the pedal even more. After all, why help your clients make a house a home if you’re making money from them anyway?
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