Rogue Estate Agent

Hi All,

I'm at my wits' end trying to help my mum get out of a situation she found herself in!

My mum signed a contract with an estate agent to rent out her house in Yorkshire. The contract was signed in mid February this year. My mum vacated the property in the middle of March this year and is currently abroad for an extended period. Through her neighbours she found out that there were tenants at the property and moved in at the end of March. The issue is that the estate agent didn't say anything about this and my mum hadn't seen the tenancy agreement until she hounded the agent and he sent her what looks like a tenancy agreement with one female tenant. According to the neighbour there are two men living at the property so we are not convinced that the tenancy agreement is legit.

I looked into the agent more and I believe that my mum has been scammed and the person isn't a real estate agent. For starters they aren't registered with the property ombudsman nor are they members of the property redress scheme, which I think they are legally required to be. The agent has now stopped responding to messages or emails. The director of the agency seems to have setup and dissolved three companies before this one. My mum never visited an office and I’m not quite sure how she found them!

My mum hasn't directly paid this person anything, but she hasn't received any rental income either. Also, the tenants haven't done the utility and council tax transfer. She's notified her electricity and gas supplier, but water and council tax wasn't easy because she was told that she needs to provide details of the tenants for the transfer to happen.

We tried contacting the property ombudsman and we were told that they can't do anything as this agency isn't registered with them. Fraud action was a dead-end too as they told us that this isn't a matter they can deal with. We tried contacting the police and we were told that this is a civil matter. We have contacted a property litigation solicitor to investigate the matter but things are just taking forever because the solicitor seems to be off sick. The solicitor's plan is to write a strongly worded letter to the agent and work out where we stand legally because of the contract my mum signed with the agent.

We contacted Citizens advice and did everything they say including contacting fraud action and ombudsman. Citizens advice now are saying that they haven't got anything else to suggest.

I'm also worried about the Renter's Right Act because I believe we are legally required to send each tenant at the property a summarised and a copy (or link?) of the full Act, and that we need to prove that each tenant received it. The issue is that we don't know who is at the property and I don't think we can just turn up.

Due to the shifty nature of the agent, we are also worried about if there could be anything illegal happening at the property. We don't even know if the people at the property have the necessary permit to rent in the UK (like a residency permit if not UK nationals).

We're all at a complete loss so any help would be much appreciated.