Using a Letting Agent

Following on from my article entitled House Letting, in this article I plan to talk about letting agents and the kind of services they provide to a landlord. When I was a landlord I didn’t actually use a letting agent, as it turned out. I was luck enough to end up with a tenant I already knew and could trust, so was confident enough to let the house directly. However, when I first thought about letting the house I did research letting agents and their services, so these notes are based on what I discovered during that research.

Basically, the services you can get from a letting agent fall into two categories:

• Find the tenant. This is pretty much what it sounds like – the agent will just advertise the property and through the advertising find a tenant. The service may include background (e.g. credit) checks on tenants the agent puts forward to the landlord – check whether this is included or is an additional service
• Fully manage the let. This is the option aimed at landlords who want to minimise their involvement in letting the property. Assuming the agent provides a good service it is an excellent option for both the novice landlord and the full time landlord who is concentrating on the business opportunities to be found in increasing the size of his/her property portfolio. When the agent fully manages the let they will take on tasks such as collecting the rent and carrying out inspections of the property at intervals set out in the letting contract

Naturally, you can find bad service among letting agents like you can among any kind of business. The article Remain A Customer Or We’ll Sue You from Business Opportunities and Ideas is one cautionary tale. I suggest one thing a would-be landlord should do is join a local landlords’ network and ask around.