Landlord Question and Answer Forum

Not sure if anybody can help, but would appreciate any advice on this. We are prospective tenants who had looked at lots of properties in the last week, let alone today & heads where whirring. We found a flat we liked & went to the estate agents to pay the holding deposit. The rent was higher than we thought it was when we confirmed it with the agent, & we asked if we could make an offer, to which the agent said no, the landlord would not be accepting offers at this price. We discussed & agreed to the price they said & paid the holding deposit, as they had advised others were viewing it all day. When we later got home & looked at our nice new flat online again, we saw that all along it had been advertised on four different sites at a lower price. Are we in any way able to dispute this? Coincidently, the lower price we offered was the same as the advertised rent. We have not yet signed a tenancy agreement, only for the 'lettings reservation' for the holding deposit. We also do not want to pull out, we just want to pay the advertised rent. We do feel that we were tricked into the higher price & wish we had thought to double check the listed price before agreeing, but had not thought that would be a necessary procedure. We were hoping that as we have not signed the tenancy agreement, we might be able to dispute it (on good terms). I guess we can only ask them, it is just such a disappointing start to a long term tenancy. Thank you!

Hmmm that is quite fishy! I would def discuss this with your agent and agree on the advertised price. If you have documentation of such advertising that would be beneficial.

Posted by karen s, WI on Friday, March 22, 2013