Communities and Local Government CommitteeWritten evidence submitted by Catherine Walls

Having now reached retirement age, living alone and surviving mainly on a government retirement pension—I find it necessary to live in the private rented housing sector as my situation is not considered critical enough for social housing.

However, I am finding it increasingly difficult to maintain the agent’s fees and charges which seem to be going up and up, and vary from one estate agent to another.

Below, I have copied the exact figures from my latest potential move through the agents known as Fulford’s, who incidentally also expect me to take out contents insurance to a cost of over £20 per month on an UNFURNISHED flat.

Invoiced items	Net	VAT	Gross
Rent due 21/01/13	450.00	0.00	450.00
Security deposit	550.00	0.00	550.00
Agreement fees due	125.00	25.00	150.00
Reference fees due	62.50	12.50	75.00
Inventory check-in	60.00	12.00	72.00
Administration fee	41.67	8.33	50.00
Invoice total £	1,289.17	57.83	1,347.00

I would therefore like to recommend that the government introduce stricter control on the limits to which estate agents can make charges to potential tenants because sure, a sum of £347 purely in estate agent charges to a tenant (not including what they usually charge a landlord of perhaps one month’s rent) is outrageous and totally unwarranted.

I feel a much fairer system would be that all agents are subject to a maximum charge of £100 per new tenant.

January 2013