Letting agents must disclose fees Letting agents will be forced to disclose all tenancy fees when marketing properties for rent, following a ruling by the advertising watchdog. On Wednesday, the Advertising Standards Authority criticised estate agent Your Move for not making it clear in an online listing that additional fees and charges would be added to the quoted price. The ruling comes in the same week as four big letting agents were accused of not being upfront about fees by consumer group Which? In a "mystery shopping" exercise, in which assessors posed as potential tenants, it found that Foxtons, Barnard Marcus, Martin & Co and Your Move failed to provide any information about fees in property listings on their website, or on Rightmove, the leading property portal. Guy Parker, chief executive of the ASA, warned that it would "clamp down on letting agents that hide fees." Our ruling today makes clear that letting agents need to get their houses in order and treat potential tenants fairly. It's now our priority to make sure agents across the sector bring their advertising into line," he said. The advertising watchdog stated that if fees could be calculated in advance then the agent should make it clear that fees had been excluded, and provide enough information for consumers to establish how fees were calculated. The ruling is likely to increase calls for legislation to protect tenants and landlords from letting agents. The government has so far resisted regulating the market. But calls have intensified in the past year due to the huge shift towards renting in the UK. There are now 3.84m households privately renting in England, compared with 1.9m in 2001. Last month, it emerged that complaints about letting agents had more than doubled over the past five years. The main property watchdog received more than 8,000 complaints about letting agents last year, a rise of 123 per cent since 2008. These now make up largest part of The Property Ombudsman's workload, at 53 per cent of all property complaints, as more Britons turn to renting. An amendment to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, which would require letting agents to sign up to a redress scheme like their sales counterparts, is due to be debated on Wednesday in the House of Lords. A spokesman for Your Move said its advertising was in line with current industry practice, but added that it will be reviewing its approach.