The Landlord Who Found Out Her Agent Was Being Paid by the Contractor

The invoice that didn't match the quote

Priya manages two flats in Leeds through a letting agent she'd used for six years. When her EICR came back with two "remedial items," the agent sent a contractor round, then an invoice for £640. Priya didn't think much of it — electrical work isn't cheap — until she mentioned the figure to another landlord in a local Facebook group, who'd had near-identical work done for £310 through her own contractor a month earlier.

Priya asked her agent for an itemised breakdown. It took two follow-up emails and seventeen days to get one. When it arrived, the labour rate was roughly double what a local electrician had quoted her directly for a similar job the year before. She asked, plainly, whether the agent had any financial relationship with the contractor. The answer, eventually, was yes — a referral arrangement that had never been mentioned in her management agreement or disclosed at the time of booking.

Nothing about this was necessarily illegal. Referral fees between agents and contractors are common, and plenty of agents disclose them properly. What bothered Priya wasn't that a fee existed — it was that she'd had no way of knowing, and no way of checking, until she happened to compare notes with someone else.

Why this is so hard to spot from the landlord's side

Most landlords, especially those with one or two properties, don't get multiple quotes for reactive repairs. There isn't time, and the agent is meant to be handling exactly this so the landlord doesn't have to. That's a reasonable division of labour — but it only works if the person doing the choosing has no reason to prefer the more expensive option.

The structural problem is that a lot of proptech and agency software is built the same way: the platform or the agent gets a cut when a contractor is booked through it, and that cut is baked into the price the landlord never sees itemised. The landlord experiences it as "the agent sorted it," which is exactly how it's meant to feel. Visibility into who's being paid what, and why, isn't something most systems are designed to surface — it has to be asked for, awkwardly, after the fact.

This is a genuinely different problem from bad workmanship or slow contractors. Priya's electrician did competent work. The issue was entirely about who benefited from the price she paid, and whether she'd been given the chance to know that before agreeing to it.

What Priya did next

She didn't fire her agent — the relationship had otherwise been fine, and switching agents brings its own risks (documents and certificate histories don't always transfer cleanly, which is its own kind of mess). Instead, she changed how she worked with them on three things.

First, she asked for three items on every future work order over £150: the contractor's name, a written note of any referral or introduction fee the agent receives, and a plain invoice breakdown separating parts, labour, and any margin. Most agents will provide this if asked directly and in writing — reluctance to answer is itself useful information.

Second, she started keeping her own record of who did what work, when, and for how much, independent of the agent's paperwork, so she had something to compare future quotes against.

Third, she asked whether she could see and approve quotes before work was booked, rather than after. Her agent agreed, with a note that for genuine emergencies (a gas leak, a burst pipe) they'd proceed first and inform her immediately — which is sensible; you don't want a fire risk waiting on a signature.

Where CertMinder UK fits, and where it doesn't

CertMinder UK's work-order flow exists partly because of stories like Priya's. When a certificate is due to expire, the system flags it and lets the landlord or agent request quotes from contractors — but CertMinder UK doesn't take a fee, commission, or kickback from any contractor for being included or chosen. The contractor list is there because it's useful, not because someone's paying to be on it. That's a deliberate line, not a marketing claim: we don't get paid by your contractors, so there's no reason for the system to nudge you toward one over another.

That doesn't solve the whole problem on its own. CertMinder UK can't tell you whether a given quote is fair — pricing varies by region, property type, and how urgent the work is, and a landlord or agent still has to exercise judgement. What it can do is keep every quote, invoice, and work order attached to the property record in one place, so a landlord can look back over eighteen months of jobs and compare, the way Priya now does manually.

The takeaway

None of this requires assuming bad faith. Most agents disclose referral arrangements properly, and most contractors charge fairly for the work they do. But a landlord who can't see who's being paid what has no way to tell the difference between an agent who's doing right by them and one who isn't — and that's a gap worth closing before it costs you a few hundred pounds you'll never quite get an explanation for.

This article is informational and doesn't constitute legal or financial advice. If you're unsure about the terms of your management agreement or a specific dispute over fees, it's worth getting advice from a solicitor or your local Trading Standards office.