How much do letting agents charge in Leigh?

Three firms with a Leigh office publish a full management fee. They charge between 10.8% and 12% of the rent including VAT, with one-off set-up fees from £325 to £480. Other Leigh agents do not publish a comparable figure, so ask for a written fee schedule.

How much do letting agents charge in Wigan?

Across Leigh, Wigan and the towns around them, ten firms publish a full management fee. It runs from 10.8% to 15.6% of the rent including VAT, and seven of the ten charge 12%, which is the same as 10% plus VAT.

What is a typical set-up fee for a letting agent in the Wigan area?

Published set-up fees run from £238 to £700 including VAT, with the middle of the range at £474. Some agents price the letting fee against the first month of rent instead, most often at one month.

Do I need a licence to rent out a house in Leigh or Wigan?

Wigan Council said in a disclosure covering the year to November 2025 that it did not operate a selective or additional licensing scheme. Mandatory HMO licensing still applies to a house shared by five or more people from two or more households. Check the current position with the council.

Do letting agent fees in Leigh and Wigan include VAT?

Every figure in this guide includes VAT at 20%. Some agents quote 10% plus VAT, which is 12% in practice. Most private landlords cannot reclaim VAT, so compare every quote on the VAT inclusive figure and add the set-up fee.

Letting Agent Fees in Leigh and Wigan 2026: What Landlords Actually Pay

11 October 2026 · AgentCheck Editorial · 6 min read

Part of our UK Landlord Legal Guide

Across the letting agents in Leigh, Wigan and the towns around them that publish a full management fee, the rate runs from 10.8% to 15.6% of the rent including VAT, and seven in ten charge exactly 12%. Most add a one-off set-up fee of between £238 and £700. Because so many agents sit on the same percentage, the set-up fee and what the percentage covers decide who is actually cheapest.

Leigh, Wigan, Atherton, Tyldesley and Golborne work as one rental market. Landlords own across the borough, agents cover all of it from one or two offices, and tenants move between the towns without much thought. So this guide looks at the fees agents publish across that whole patch, then pulls out Leigh on its own.

The figures come from AgentCheck's data on letting agents with an office in the WN1 to WN7, M29 and WA3 postcodes, taken from the fee pages the agents publish themselves and read on 10 October 2026. Everything is shown including VAT, because that is what a landlord pays. We have left out any firm whose published fee is unclear.

Full management fees in Leigh and Wigan

Full management means the agent finds the tenant, collects the rent, arranges repairs, carries out inspections and deals with the end of the tenancy. Ten firms across the patch publish a percentage for it that we can compare on a like-for-like basis.

Full management fee (inc VAT)	Firms publishing it	Where they are based
10.8%	1	Leigh
12%	7	Leigh, Wigan, Standish and Tyldesley
15.6%	2	Ince-in-Makerfield and the Golborne area

Two things stand out. The first is how tightly the market clusters. Seven of the ten firms charge 12% including VAT, which is the same as 10% plus VAT. The second is that this patch is slightly cheaper than the country as a whole: across all the firms in our national fee data the median full management fee is 12.5% including VAT.

When most agents charge the same percentage, the percentage stops being a useful way to choose between them. The differences are in the one-off fees and in the service.

A narrow street of brick terraced houses with front doors opening onto the pavement — Photo: Unsplash

Leigh on its own

Three firms with a Leigh office publish a full management fee. They charge between 10.8% and 12% including VAT, with set-up fees from £325 to £480. Three is a small sample, so treat it as what is published and not as a market average. It does show that a Leigh landlord can line up real figures before picking up the phone, which is not true in every town.

Leigh has more agents than that. If an agent you are considering does not publish a fee, ask for the schedule in writing. Every letting agent has to publish its landlord fees on its website and in its office, so a missing fee page is worth a question.

Set-up and letting fees

Most agents charge a one-off fee when a new tenancy starts. It covers marketing, viewings, referencing and the tenancy paperwork. Seven of the ten firms publish a fixed set-up fee, and the spread is wide:

Lowest published set-up fee: £238 including VAT.
Middle of the range: £474 including VAT.
Highest published set-up fee: £700 including VAT.

That is a gap of £462 between two agents who may charge the same 12% every month. For comparison, the median set-up fee across our national data is £360.

Some agents price the letting fee against the rent instead of quoting a fixed sum. Where firms here publish it that way, the fee runs from 90% to 120% of the first month's rent, and one month's rent is the most common figure. On a higher rent a percentage of the first month costs more than a fixed fee, so work out both in pounds for your own property.

Working out letting costs at a desk with a notebook, a calculator and a laptop — Photo: Unsplash

A worked example

Take a rent of £750 a month, which is £9,000 a year. We have used £750 as a round figure to show the sums. It is not an average rent for Leigh or Wigan, so put your own rent through the same calculation.

Management fee (inc VAT)	Cost per month	Cost per year
10.8%	£81	£972
12%	£90	£1,080
15.6%	£117	£1,404

The gap between the lowest and highest published rate is £432 a year on this rent. Now add the set-up fee for the first year. Two agents both charging 12% cost £1,318 and £1,780 in year one if one charges £238 to set up and the other £700. The agents with the same percentage are further apart than the agents with different ones.

What the percentage should cover

A fee only means something next to a list of what it buys. Before you compare two quotes, ask each agent whether these are inside the monthly percentage or charged on top:

Rent collection and chasing late payments.
Routine inspections, and how many a year.
Arranging repairs, and whether a percentage is added to contractor invoices.
Arranging the gas safety check, the electrical report and the EPC.
Registering the deposit and serving the prescribed information.
The inventory, check-in and check-out.
Serving a rent increase notice on Form 4A once a year.
Preparing a possession notice if you ever need one.

The last two matter more than they did. Since 1 May 2026 every tenancy in England is periodic, rent can only go up once a year using Form 4A with at least two months' notice, and Section 21 has gone. There is no tenancy renewal any more, so a renewal fee has no work behind it. If a fee schedule still lists one, ask what it pays for. Our guide to what replaced tenancy renewals explains the change.

Licensing in the Wigan borough

Leigh, Atherton, Tyldesley, Golborne and Wigan all sit in the Wigan Council area. In a published information disclosure covering the year to November 2025, the council said it did not operate a selective licensing scheme or an additional licensing scheme. That means an ordinary single let in the borough did not need a council licence at that point.

Two cautions. Mandatory HMO licensing applies everywhere in England, so a house shared by five or more people from two or more households needs a licence wherever it is. And councils can bring in new schemes, so check the position with Wigan Council before you let. Our guides to selective licensing and HMO licensing explain how each type works. A good local agent should be able to tell you the current position for your street without looking it up.

How to compare Leigh and Wigan agents fairly

Put everything including VAT. A quote of 10% plus VAT is 12%. Most private landlords cannot reclaim the VAT.
Add up the first year. Twelve months of management plus the set-up fee, the inventory and any other one-off charges.
Then add up the second year. With the set-up fee out of the way, the cheapest agent in year one is not always the cheapest in year two.
Ask what happens when a tenant leaves. Tenants can give two months' notice at any time, so the cost of letting again matters more than it used to.
Check redress and client money protection. Every letting agent in England must belong to a redress scheme, and agents who hold client money must belong to a client money protection scheme.
Read the notice terms. Find out how much notice you must give to leave and whether any fee applies if you do.

Full management or let only?

If you live nearby, have one straightforward property and are comfortable with the paperwork, a let-only service followed by managing it yourself saves the monthly percentage. On the £750 example that is roughly £1,000 a year. If you live away from the borough, own several properties or would sooner not keep up with gas safety, electrical checks, deposit rules and the Renters' Rights Act, full management usually earns its fee. Our guide to fully managed versus let only sets out what each covers.

Whichever you choose, do not pick on the percentage alone. In this patch most agents charge the same one. Pick on the first-year total, on what is included, and on how quickly the agent answers when something goes wrong.

Fee figures are taken from fees published by letting agents in the WN1 to WN7, M29 and WA3 postcodes and held in AgentCheck's data as at 10 October 2026. Agents change their fees, so confirm the current figure with the agent before you sign. This is general information, not legal or financial advice.

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