What are the benefits of using a Letting Agent?
Guest Blog Article Contributed by Nykky Banks of iLet Property Management
Let’s go back to when you first purchased your buy-to-let property or decided to let out your own property. Around that time you started thinking “I need to hire a letting agent”, but why did you pick the letting agent you ended up using and what were your expectations?
Having worked in the property sector for many years, this is something I ask any prospective landlords or clients. Specifically, I ask them three questions:
- How did you hear about us?
- Why did you decide to use the services of a letting agent, and
- What are your expectations of us as a letting agent?’
It’s amazing how many different answers come out of these questions (I won’t bore you with the details as I’m sure you’ve got a fair idea of the outcomes), however, just by asking those three questions above, I get a pretty good idea of my client’s needs and expectations of a letting agent in managing a buy to let property.
Mostly, the landlord is only interested in the rental return, right? Not necessarily. This may indeed be one factor, but not always the most important one.
Most of all, I’ve found that landlords want to work with a letting agent they can trust, have easy communication with and attain a decent rental return on their investment.
Have you had a bad experience as a Landlord?
Don’t let one bad experience put you off. Remember, in life everyone has bad experiences and it doesn’t mean that the next agent you work with will do a worse or better job. Having a bad experience affords you the opportunity to reflect on what is important to you in your choice of letting agent, to consider what your expectations are and to communicate those considerations upfront and honestly with whichever agent you decide to work with.
And of course, not all agents are the same, nor do they all offer the same service. There are agents who can provide you with a whole number of services – whether that’s full management or tenant search only. If you didn’t want to use full management some letting agents could offer to assist with legal paperwork, inspections and tenant issues only.
There is a vast amount of information online about landlords and their experiences with letting agents, including some sort of “propaganda” portraying the lettings industry in a bad light, such as “10 reasons NOT to use a letting agent”. Of course in life you may experience issues using an agent, and this may put you off using an agent again in the future, but overall the cases of bad experiences are more than outweighed by the thousands of landlords who are very happy with their letting agent and continue to reap the benefits of this mutually valuable relationship.
Picking a letting agent to manage your buy to let property
Letting agents deliver many benefits to landlords:
- We keep up to date with legislation
- We deal with safety certification
- We deal with the tenant’s deposit
- We arrange inspections
- We deal with all maintenance issues
- We vet the tenants, and
- We deal with the finances of renting your property.
My advice is to find a letting agent who fits your criteria, explain clearly what your expectations are and ask the letting agent for testimonials. Remember, of course, that word of mouth is probably the best form of finding an excellent letting agent to manage your property (and of course, look at Lettingweb.com where there are many excellent agents!)
Guest Blog Article Contributed by Nykky Banks of iLet Property Management. For more information, contact Nykky at nykkybanks@iletonline.com.
iLet was founded in 2009 as an online property management business. Since then iLet’s property management portfolio has steadily increased gaining them a reputation for great delivery of service. They are passionate about property and believe in being honest, reliable and competitive whilst offering a great service.
