{"id":1172,"date":"2013-11-25T10:01:26","date_gmt":"2013-11-25T10:01:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1172"},"modified":"2013-11-25T10:01:26","modified_gmt":"2013-11-25T10:01:26","slug":"letting-agents-forced-to-sign-consumer-protection-charter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/letting-agents-forced-to-sign-consumer-protection-charter.html","title":{"rendered":"Letting Agents Forced to Sign Consumer Protection Charter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The government is trying to clean up the rental sector by introducing a<br \/>\nConsumer Protection Charter for letting agents. The rental sector has been<br \/>\nblighted in recent years by reports of rogue <a href=\"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/SoftwareDemos\/LAM_Creating_Agents\/\">letting agents<\/a>. Tales of stupidly<br \/>\nhigh fees abound and many agents have ended up in court after defrauding their<br \/>\nclients. Some have even gone bust overnight, taking client money with them.<br \/>\nBecause of this the government has been reviewing how best to offer a greater<br \/>\nlevel of protection to landlords and tenants. They have come up with a<br \/>\nConsumer Protection Charter and all letting agents will be forced to join the<br \/>\nscheme.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What are the Key Points of the Consumer Protection Charter?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Independent investigation of complaints \u2013 Previously, clients had few<br \/>\navenues for redress if things went wrong.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Compensation scheme for clients \u2013 This will give landlords peace of<br \/>\nmind in the event that a letting agent goes bust.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Secure money protection scheme \u2013 There have been a few cases where<br \/>\nletting agents spent their clients&#8217; money after cash flow dried up.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Voluntary Code of Practise \u2013 Letting agents will have to be open about<br \/>\nthe properties on their books, which means telling tenants if critical jobs<br \/>\nneed doing.<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 Transparent fee structure \u2013 There should be no hidden fees cloaked<br \/>\nwithin the small print and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/SoftwareDemos\/PPS_LAM_Demo_7_Letting_Agency_Software_Property_Fees\/\">letting agents<\/a> must be upfront about what their<br \/>\ncosts include.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Compulsory Requirement<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The government hopes to have all schemes approved by the end of January 2014,<br \/>\nalthough it will be a while longer before it becomes compulsory for letting<br \/>\nagents to join.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The government is trying to clean up the rental sector by introducing a Consumer Protection Charter for letting agents. The rental sector has been blighted in recent years by reports of rogue letting agents. Tales of stupidly high fees abound &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/letting-agents-forced-to-sign-consumer-protection-charter.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-1172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172","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=1172"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1174,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1172\/revisions\/1174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.propertyportfoliosoftware.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}