{"id":1104,"date":"2013-10-07T13:33:09","date_gmt":"2013-10-07T13:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1104"},"modified":"2013-10-07T13:33:09","modified_gmt":"2013-10-07T13:33:09","slug":"hmo-landlords-watch-out-for-hidden-fees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/hmo-landlords-watch-out-for-hidden-fees.html","title":{"rendered":"HMO Landlords \u2013 Watch out for Hidden Fees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Landlords are being warned to watch out for councils adding on illegal charges<br \/>\nfor <a href=\"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/video.hmo_multi_let.html#watch-demo-anchor\">HMO licences<\/a>. HMO and tenancy deposit lawyers are concerned that some<br \/>\nlocal authorities are illegally charging landlords with HMOs extra fees for<br \/>\nadministration costs and inspections when all they are allowed by law to<br \/>\ncharge is the cost of the actual HMO licence.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Widespread Problem<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Councils are not averse to adding on extra fees wherever they can get away<br \/>\nwith it, as a recent High Court case has proven. A group of shop owners<br \/>\nobjected to being charged extra fees that were not related to their original<br \/>\nlicence application. Thankfully for landlords, the ruling from that case also<br \/>\naffects them, so if you have recently received a bill from your local<br \/>\nauthority in respect of an HMO licence application, you should look at it<br \/>\ncarefully.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Property Tribunal Decision<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Oxford City Council has already had a go at illegally charging landlords extra<br \/>\nfees. One landlord in the city was so incensed at being asked to pay a licence<br \/>\nfee variation charges that he consulted a lawyer. The lawyer tried to recover<br \/>\nthe fees from the council, but they refused to backtrack. So the lawyer took<br \/>\nmatters further and the case was heard in front of a Residential Property<br \/>\nTribunal. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/video.setup_wizard.html#watch-demo-anchor\">landlord<\/a> won and the council was informed that their fees were<br \/>\nillegal.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Unlawful Fees<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>So if you were charged any extra fees when you applied for a licence from your<br \/>\nlocal council in order to operate an HMO property, the charges may be<br \/>\nunlawful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Landlords are being warned to watch out for councils adding on illegal charges for HMO licences. HMO and tenancy deposit lawyers are concerned that some local authorities are illegally charging landlords with HMOs extra fees for administration costs and inspections &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/hmo-landlords-watch-out-for-hidden-fees.html\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1104"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1106,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1104\/revisions\/1106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}