RESIDENTIALlettings
PROPERTYdrum reported in October
2009 that, “The Chairman of the Board of The Dispute Service Ltd, John Hornsey, warns that the rise [in referred cases] has forced costs up by 42 per cent. Expenditure for the current year will be met from reserves, but if the volume of disputes is sustained, or continues to rise, increases in subscriptions will be unavoidable.” Based on that, agents may have budgeted
for an increase in fees of 50 or even 60 per cent so they were totally unprepared for the shock that landed on their desks. One agent, with 116 tenancies, had four
modest claims last year. Their fee for 2009- 10, was £1050. This year’s was £5220, an increase of 397 per cent, equivalent to £45 per tenancy. Another, larger agent, needed the smelling salts after receiving an invoice showing a fee 11 times that of last year.
HOT PHONES
The TDS office phone lines were permanently engaged with frustrated agents; those who couldn’t get through turned to their professional bodies. An ARLA survey received 1100 responses along with 250 complaints. NALS and The Guild of Letting and Management were similarly besieged. Robert Jordan, who was involved, as President of ARLA at the time, in the creation of the TDS, wrote to ARLA members promising to gain a resolution. After a turbulent week and a heated
board meeting, the TDS announced that it will re-invoice some firms. “A new flat rate charge per tenancy for NFOPP and RICS firms is to be £15. However, the average charge per tenancy through the TDS will be £11.22 as the discounts will be retained for firms who have only made limited use of the scheme. All subscriptions for the
second half of 2010/11 will be re-calculated in July on the basis of the number of live tenancies registered at the time. The Board has also accepted that there is a desire for quarterly payments of the subscription. The first half of the first instalment must be paid by March 31 and the second by June 30. Payments for the revised second instalment will also be accepted quarterly.”
We had been asking for
weeks how they proposed to charge for next year and were told they could not tell us, then on Monday we received the invoice! If we ran a business like this we would be out of business in weeks.”
CONTINUING UNREST
NALS members have a renegotiated flat rate of £18 per tenancy, but they are still unhappy about the disparity between their members and those of ARLA. Caroline Pickering, NALS Chair said, “As the first organisation to call for clarity on the new TDS pricing structure we now call on TDS to inform NALS firms in the immediate future of the more detailed explanation of the charges to the subscription to the Scheme with revised invoices.” The Guild of Letting and Management’s
members do not receive discounts and CEO Susie Crolla told PROPERTYdrum. “We have been inundated with complaints. Members of all the organisations, not just ours, are telling us that they will withdraw from the scheme. It’s not just about the cost either, it is the lack of clarification and arrogance in the way the invoices have been issued that has upset agents.”
This article is online – now have your say at
www.propertydrum.com/articles/tdsdebacle
The big issue with both these changes is that they were applied without notice, without recourse, without clarification and without due consideration.’
PROPERTYdrum MARCH 2010 47
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