Has anyone used Sheldon Bishop, residential letting agents in North London?

[catalinki]

Has anyone used Sheldon Bishop, residential letting agents in North London?

I was about to pay a holding deposit to them when I looked them up online and found a couple of bad reviews. Would love to hear what others' experiences are.

Wary of a particularly expensive inventory fee of £100 too, in addition to £90 per person admin fee!

Cheers,
Cat.

[garethcthomas]

Cat,

Never heard of them or used them so can't help you on that point.

However as regards the inventory, you don't say how many bedrooms the property you're looking at renting has, but £100 for an inventory fee is not expensive, assuming the inventory report is being done by a professional AICC registered inventory clerk. If it's the agent doing the inventory (which I'd never advise you allow because they don't know how to do them properly) then £100 IS alot of money. Negotiate on that figure for sure!

The admin fees don't appear to be outrageous either. This should be for the credit checks, paperwork gathering, preparing and managing the signing of the AST (the tenancy contract) and so on. I would question whether there were any other fees and in particular be careful about renewal fees payable by the tenant (usually the renewal admin fee is split equally between the landlord and the tenant for preparing new contracts etc).