The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has decided that all charges that will be imposed on a proposed Tenant must be made clear in all advertising of the property prior to the letting. In other words, no hidden fees.
This comes after a complaint was made against Your-move.co.uk Ltd ( Your Move) stating that an advert that had been placed on Rightmove did not contain details of compulsory charges such as administration fees. It is worth noting that the advert in question stated that fees would be payable and even then had a link to Your Move’s own website that did specifically detail the charges. The ASA decided that this in itself was insufficient and the exact fees needed to be stated on the advert itself. In addition to this, if there are fees the value of which are not known at the time of advertising then it will need to be explained how those charges would be calculated.
The fact that this issue has been addressed now is not surprising given the report that the OFT ( Office of Fair Trading) has recently published which criticised the disclosure of letting agent’s fees which are payable by Tenants. With these findings coming it would be prudent for Letting Agents to “get their houses in order” to quote Guy Parker, the Chief Executive of the ASA, and ensure that fees are transparent so that they are not the ones that fall foul of latest requirements.
Currently, Rightmove’s own policy is that fees are not included in any of their advertisements. Whether they will be looking to change this in light of the above is unclear but as this case shows the letting agent will not be free of the obligations simply by following Rightmove’s protocol and so it should be requested that the fees are included in any such advert taken out on their site.
It would appear that there will be a tough approach on this and as such until proper guidance has been given (we would expect a number of relevant authorities, Office of Fair Trading included, to be issuing guidance imminently) our advice is that all advertising or publicity material (including window cards, brochures and website posts) contain the non-optional fees payable so that it is reasonable that any proposed Tenant looking in to the letting of a property will know the exact amount that they will be required to pay.
Filed under: England & Wales, Europe, fees, OFT, Unfair Terms
28 March, 2013 • 13:46 0
Arla annual conference 2013
A big thank you to all those who came to chat to us at the Painsmith stand on Tuesday. It was great to see the old faces and put names to new ones. Please keep following our blog – we have some interesting ones coming up, including more on deposits ( oh yes), an HMO ruling to name just two. You can leave comments as well. Don’t forget to look at our website too for info.
Filed under: England & Wales, comment