Re-Sign Fee for Tenancy agreement

[BagPussAA]

HI Abers. We have been living in rented accomodation for 4 years now and have always been very happy with the arrangement. The house is rented through an agency who come every 6 months for us to re-sign the tenency agreement and to look around to make sure that the house isnt falling down. They have never before charged us for this re-signing. They have come this week and told us that it will be �45 in future to sign our agreement. Is this legal? Do we have to pay them?

[kira000]

It is fairly common practice for agents to chrage fees for resigning the legal documents when you renew tenancy. Mine used to charge �90.

Assuming you are happy there and have no reason to move, your best bet is to ask to have it changed to an annual tenancy so at least you are only paying once a year and not twice!

[Eve]

Ours tried this but we said we just wanted to hold over the tenancy from month to month on the same terms and as there was nothing new to sign they couldn't charge us anything.