With anything in life, you’ll come across risks or fears that are attributed to a decision. You could fear a commitment with buying a new car on financed repayments and being concerned with the commitment or hiring a builder for renovations with worries that they won’t do as good a job as you’re hoping.
Top 7 Fears Of Using A Letting Agent [& It’s Solutions]
These fears are part of a natural thought process and go through everyone’s minds, the steps to move forward are dependent on how your concerns are addressed.
So here we are, I’ll be listing the top fears associated with using a letting agent like Abbey Property, with hopes to alleviate your potential fears.
I Fear I’ll Get A Tenant That Doesn’t Pay On Time?
A fear of having a bad tenant that doesn’t pay rent is a real and justified one. A tenant having missed just one rent payment could be enough to create difficulties, especially if you have commitments such as a mortgage repayment due!
But to solve this we offer a rent guarantee service for anyone with this concern! As part of our referencing process, we have incredibly strict criteria a tenant should match, which means all our tenants qualify for a rent guarantee as default.
Opting in for a rent guarantee is as easy as letting us know before the contracts are signed that you’d like it implemented. With incredible competitive costs for this service, it is a no-brainer whether you are concerned about this, or not!
For some perspective, in the 7 years, we have been operating (as of April 2022), we have set up 547 tenancies, with only two cases of default so far! This works out to a 0.04% chance of a tenant default from our track record so far. It’s all thanks to the highest standard we hold when finding you a tenant!
What If My Tenant Moves Out So Soon, I Don’t Want To Pay Another Fee!
Your tenant needing to move out only a mere-few months after moving in is a frustrating situation. Not only are you worried about who the next tenant is, but we’re sure you won’t be enthused about paying another tenant find fee!
Tenants’ relationships breaking up, or them expecting a new child definitely shake up their thoughts and priorities on their housing situation, but if it means they need to move out we’ll do what we can to resolve their concerns. But if they’re adamant, we’ll allow them to move on.
The sticking point to remember, however, is that we will find you another just-as-reliable tenant free of charge. There aren’t many agents out there that can assure you this, but we can! Leave the headache to us, and we’ll gain you your income back in no time!
I Fear I Can’t Trust An Agent With My £XXX,000 Property?!
Trust is a huge consideration when it’s got anything to do with a property!
Probably one of the most expensive assets you own, a plausible fear, it’ll be something you want to make sure lands at the feet of the right people! I’ll outline a couple of key points you should consider when ensuring you are using the right company.
Firstly, check the website. For example, we have made Abbey Property’s website incredibly informative, as well as easy to navigate. We are transparent about as much as we can be, we freely show our applicable fees when working together, have a wealth of knowledge for landlords, tenants, vendors, and buyers (whether we work together or not!), and always only show properties we have available right now.
In addition to that, check reviews. The most popular and easily accessible are Google Reviews. As of April 2022, we have 700+ reviews on Google alone! It stands to point those customers and clients will only go out of their way to leave reviews when they feel they genuinely have felt a real value in the product or service. Otherwise, it’s not worth attempting to remember your login password!
Everyone’s perspective of how they view and build trust differs, there’ll be more points to add that you may find contributes to the level of trust you’re able to build with a company. It’s all about finding your own way whilst still remaining cautious.
How Do I Know An Agent Is Competent?
A competent agent will alleviate your fears of mismanagement. There will always be responsibilities to keep up with, such as keeping property safety certificates up-to-date, ensuring the tenant still has the legal right to rent in the UK, that all maintenance is recorded and kept for future reference, all documents are retained in the correct way being in line with GDPR regulations, and much, much more.
First of all, have an open and honest conversation with the agent regarding your thoughts, and note the response that you receive back to alleviate any concerns you may have. The representatives of Abbey Property thoroughly engage in transparency in everything we do, as the more we speak out and question things, the better and more rounded individuals it makes us.
We utilize our diaries in a way where we set forwarded dated reminders for anything that we need to look into and check it’s up-to-date. It is a publicly accessible calendar for the office so we’re all aware of any updates that’ll come up.
In addition to this, we are regulated with the Property Redress Scheme, all property agents who carry out estate, lettings, and property management work, have a legal responsibility to belong to a redress scheme.
Meaning that we essentially need to uphold high standards in order to satisfy all parties, if at any point an agent falls short of this expectation the complainant has the right to register their dissatisfaction with the redress scheme to always meet the communication and accessibility needs.
I Want To Know Complaints Will Be Handled In The Right Way?!
It comes down to transparency again, an agent should be open and willing to speak regarding any issue that comes up, whether it’s a difficult conversation or not.
Focusing on the big picture, we strive to have all types of conversations, and in the small number of instances we’ve done something wrong, we have always gone over and above to rectify and create a positive attitude moving forward.
One big factor to consider is the current age of technology. Many with a bad experience tend to relay their dissatisfaction online, the best way to gauge this is by checking online reviews. Have a glance over the latest reviews for the business and see if there are any correlating reviews with bad experiences.
It’s My Property, And I Want To Be Kept Updated!
As you should. Yes, having a property overlooked by management is convenient, but if a repair needs to be made, or your tenant has a change in circumstances, that doesn’t mean the landlord shouldn’t be informed.
Have an open and honest conversation surrounding this topic with an agent of your choice and make it clear that a clear line of communication is to be kept at all times regarding any changes or updates regarding the property or its tenancy. If you can get this agreement in writing it’d support your request, and also make the agent bound to agree to it.
A little tip, however! Set a limit – let’s say £100 for argument’s sake – in which the agent can carry out remedial works to the property if any issues should arise, anything below the £100 threshold and they won’t need to seek authorisation. It helps eliminate involving yourself for small and menial issues that you may not mind just having carried out.
How Do I Know My Property Won’t Be Overcrowded?
Overcrowding the property is a pain. It’s something no landlord wants; more people equal an increased rate of wear and tear. Not only that, but if it is overcrowded how do you know if all the occupants are legal, or that the property is even safe enough to accommodate such a number of people?
Not only is it an issue for you – the landlord – it is also a cause for concern with a letting agent. They were the ones with a responsibility to ensure an acceptable number of people are planned to live there. Beyond that, whoever is managing the tenancy should be conducting periodic inspection visits, as well as checking the overall condition, any signs of additional people living there, or overcrowding of any sort.
Here at Abbey Property, we ask all the relevant pre-qualification questions to ensure there are an acceptable number of occupants for a particular property. We also include on the tenancy agreement ‘Number of Permitted Adult Occupiers‘, if the tenants add to this initially agreed number without informing us, they are in breach of the contract. We aim to conduct inspections every 3 or 6 months (depending on landlords’ requests) and will look for any evidence to suggest there are more than the requested people living there.
Anything Else?
Yes, fear is something to potentially be afraid of. But most fears that come to mind are to be overcome so that they either no longer affect you, or to make you better informed so you are in the best position to deal with it if it should affect you again.
The best way to initially overcome a fear such as this is to have open conversations, discuss your concerns, and get a feel for if they get addressed in the way you’d like them to. Without doing this you’ve got a potentially skewed opinion of letting agents as a whole which is possibly hindering your decision process.
Have a chat with us regarding your wants and needs in an agent, any concerns you may have, and even if you have any opinions on areas for improvement from a landlord’s perspective. Relay them to us, we’re always open to implementing changes to keep growing as a company!
