There will be TWO TYPES of Agents come the Letting Fee legislation change.
When the legislation changes and prohibits you from being able to charge your Letting Fee to tenants, there will one type of agency that will be on-charging the Letting Fee successfully to owners, and the other type of agency will believe they cannot charge the fee.
One will maintain their fee income through the change and possibly be able to charge even higher fees than before. The other will be adversely financially affected by not charging it.
So when an owner says ‘But the other agent isn’t charging a Letting Fee’ you simply need to respond confidently with the reason why you charge.
As long as you strongly believe the reason why you do charge it and have a good response and justification as to why you will find most owners will respond positively.
Here’s a possible response script you may find useful-
“Mr Smith, what we find when an agent chooses NOT to charge a letting fee, the pressure is on as they are not getting paid and will need to rent it quickly.
Therefore they will likely have a ‘FIRST TENANT’ policy.
This will jeopardise the whole management of your property and place you at risk and this will likely result in a lesser quality tenant being placed, costing you so much more than just the saving on a letting fee.
You might be saving hundreds of dollars but in the end, you’ll likely be losing thousands of dollars.
With us, we do charge a Letting Fee and instead have a ‘BEST TENANT’ policy.
We won’t compromise on the quality of tenant and will screen applicants very carefully to ensure we place the right tenant into your property, not just the first tenant that comes along.”
Other useful articles related to the NZ Letting Fee changes.
What to Say in Your Letting Fee Letter to Owners
[Script #2] What to say and expect when current owners call you about your new Letting Fee
How to answer ‘Why can’t you just charge me a FIXED Letting Fee’
