Tom Burke

Hello All, Apologies for the delay - in addition to us being incredibly busy at work, I'm getting married very soon and there seems to be a million things left to do which have crept up on us, so spare time is at a premium! In response to the admin fee query - the tenant's agency fee is 1.5 week's rent+vat per property. I really do want to address any problems that you have with the company so we can learn from them and continue to improve. I'm afraid I just don't have time to respond to each individual question via the forum, (not to mention the subsequent questions that my responses provoke...) but I am more than happy to deal with anyone directly - just give me a call and I'll do my best to explain/resolve any questions or concerns - you'll notice from Lizanne's post above that if you do get in touch then issues will be dealt with promptly. This will be my last post for a while, I hope my responses have been helpful. I'll be in the office for another 10 days before the wedding then I'm on honeymoon for a couple of weeks - please do pop in for a chat or give me a call any time if you have concerns, questions or just want any advice on the market. Have a nice Easter and I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks, Tom 02082998777 07966648352 [email protected]

Hi Bouncy, reddulwich - apologies, I've obviously not made it quite clear enough - the ?1000 isn't a fee of any sort - it's basically a deposit; a proportion of the final move in monies which must be paid in advance as a show of commitment. For example, if you were moving into a property at ?200 per week, the move in monies due would be: ?866.66 (first month's rent) ?1200 (6 weeks rent as deposit) ?360 (agency fee) totalling ?2426.66 You would have already paid ?1000 of this - ?500 to make the offer and then ?500 once the offer was accepted - so the balance due before your move in would be ?1426.66 I hope that makes things a little clearer. For anything else, please feel free to contact me directly. Thanks Tom

Hi A lot of you are bringing up complaints which I?d really like to look into. Quite a lot of different issues are being raised, so it?s almost impossible for me to respond to them all here, particularly without knowing the details for a lot of these cases. If you would like to contact me directly on 020 8299 8777 or come into the office, I?d be very happy to talk through your complaints. One of the issues that has come up most often is on the money involved for tenants making an offer on a rental property, so I?ve done my best to clarify this issue here. We don't approach a landlord with any offer until a tenant has put down a ?500 reservation fee. This is to ensure that we're only approaching landlords with genuine offers from serious tenants. If the offer is rejected then the tenant will have the opportunity to improve the offer, but if we can't come to an agreement then the ?500 is refunded in full. If the offer is accepted then we take a second ?500 from the tenants, which officially takes the property off the market and changes it's status on our website to "under offer" and stops any further viewings. The ?1000 then goes towards the tenant's move in monies (deposit, first month's rent and agency fee). The only way that tenants can lose that money is if they were to pull out once the offer had been accepted. We introduced the second ?500 is to make absolutely sure that tenants are committed to the property. Before we introduced this second payment, we had had circumstances where tenants were wiling to pull out and sacrifice ?500, which put our landlords in a difficult position. With ?1000 paid, we and our landlords can be very confident that tenants are fully committed to the property. I hope that helps. As I say, I would be very happy to talk through this issue or any of the others raised in this blog. Please get in touch and I'd be happy to set up a meeting. Thanks Tom

My name is Tom, I'm the lettings manager for ludlowthompson in East Dulwich I'm a regular forum reader and I've noticed a bit of bad feeling towards ludlowthompson in recent weeks. It's a real concern for me and the team - providing efficient and friendly service has always been a top priority for us, especially so in the 18 months since I've been in charge here. We deal with over 250 lettings and more than 1000 customers per year in Dulwich, and we hope that for the vast majority of our tenants and landlords the experience is a positive one. Inevitably though, there will occasionally be problems and misunderstandings, and we are very keen to put these right as soon as they arise. With that in mind I'd encourage anyone with concerns or queries to get in touch with me - I am happy to explain and clarify anything you'd like to know about the company or the lettings process, clear up any misconceptions (we aren't owned by an MP for a start) as well as of course deal with any specific issues directly. Feedback is important to help keep us on our toes and we are keen to keep on improving. You can get in touch with me on 02082998777 or come and visit the office if you happen to be passing. I look forward to hearing from you Thanks Tom Burke