The Tenant Fee ban has caused various unintended consequences since its introduction this summer.
The Fee Ban means that agents and landlords cannot charge for admin, key hand overs, inventory reports and any other miscellaneous costs which now must be paid by the landlords. Part of the Fee Ban covered a cap on tenancy deposits allowed to be requested.
This meant that any rental agreement under £50,000 in England can only ask for a maximum of five weeks rent equivalent as a deposit. For any rental agreement over £50,000 six weeks can be requested from the tenants.
Alongside this holding deposits that are taken to secure a property that a tenant wishes to apply for are allowed at a maximum of one weeks rent.
It is now apparent that there are hundreds of tenant’s due refunds on their rental agreement deposits, some having paid eight weeks and over to abide by their landlord’s requests in order to win the tenancy agreement from a landlord.
One of the tenancy deposit protection schemes has just stated that since this piece of legislation was introduced, they have had 2,550 repayment requests amounting to over £817,000.
Danny Zane, the chair for The AIIC and MD at My Property Group stated “This is just the tip of the iceberg as for many years deposit requests had been on the rise in the highly competitive Private Rented Sector. I am certain there will be many more requests as many tenants will not even know about this and their rights”.
The highest payment released so far has been over £3,300.
Zane concludes: “This is exactly as our Government intended with deposit caps coming into force and renters being given back some of their hard-earned monies. Great news for tenants all round”.
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