Not all Agents are ripping off money making con artists thank you!

An interesting Article on Letting Agents 

I came across a very interesting article here:

http://www.propertywire.com/news/europe/lettings-agent-industry-200905243127.html

Obviously reporting the bad news is of more interest than reporting the good news.  Whether other agents or not charge unfairly locally, I cant comment on, it is rare we hear from new tenants who have rented from our competitors that they were ripped off or overcharged.  I have seen paperwork from other agents locally who charge tenants for things we have never charged for and probably would never charge for.  I have heard of agents charging landlords for various supplementary items too.  Ultimately it is up to the customer (landlord/tenant) to make an informed decision on whether they are happy with the charges.  No-one forces anyone's hand here. It is very rare that we quote an admin fee to a tenant to be met by whistling through teeth that it is in some way too expensive.

Do we charge the Landlord and Tenant for renewing an agreement? No! Do we charge tenants inventory, check-in, check-out fees ? No! Do we charge anything but reasonable admin fees and nothing further? Yes!

This artice also states the following:
"It says that such charges are usually for carrying out tasks that are no more than the routine business of letting and managing a property. It found that 73% of tenants were unhappy with the service that they got from their letting agent"

I can give numerous examples where tenants have asked us to do work which is not part of our "routine business" or our daily role but we find ourselves doing it because ultimately it keeps the customer happy.  There may be a perception in lettings that the payment of rent is a legal obligation therefore effectively you have your tenant "tied" to you.  This is not so, especially in a small town where people talk and dont forget a tenant can also decide to leave a property if they are not happy with the service they are getting.  One letting agent once said to me "if they want the flat badly enough they will pay our charges".  Well, possibly but its not really the attitude towards a customer I believe.

One example of where a letting agent is asked to do things they are not responsible for is with tenant utility bills.  In this business and despite our best efforts most utility companies are a  nightmare to deal with when it comes to transfer of utility accounts.  We have a number of foreign tenants who come into our shop with a utility bill problem expecting us to phone npower, british gas etc on their behalf because they do not understand what is going on or they simply dont know.  They forget that it our telephone bill on the 0870/0845 number, its our time in being kept on hold for ages, ultimately doing something we are not getting paid for.  This is not me moaning about it or complaining about our tenants.  This is me merely trying to put it into persepective from the letting agent point of view.

We get calls saying "I have no credit, can you call me back please", "someone is parked in my space what you gonna do about it?" "next door has left litter (not even our tenants)" just minor things perhaps but nonetheless take up a significant amount of unpaid time.

We recently assisted a Management Company in employing a private parking contractor to control unauthorised parking in a block of 20 flats we manage in Gloucester.  We have made it clear that we are not responsible for anyone getting ticketed and are nothing to do with the parking control company yet are receiving repeated phone calls from tenants who have received tickets and are not happy about it, expect the letting agent to sort it out and even posting parking tickets to us to appeal against on behalf of the tenat!  Again even if you politely say this is not our responsibility you are still spending unpaid time on it!

To report our industry as "out of control" is slightly sensationalist I feel.  The media and Watchdog have on occassion reported on rogue agents and of course they exist, but I still believe most of us are here to do our job well, we love what we do, we do not take tenants or landlords for granted and certainly not "a licence to print money" as that report would suggest!

Posted via web from thelettingagent's posterous

New Gas Safety Regulations

Gas Safe Register replaced the CORGI gas register in Great Britain and the Isle of Man on 1 April 2009

Gas Safe Register replaced the CORGI gas register in Great Britain and the Isle of Man on 1 April 2009

There is only one gas safety register that you need to use.  Look for the yellow Gas Safe Register triangle not the orange CORGI registration badge.

Anyone carrying out work on gas must be registered with Gas Safe Register. If not, they are breaking the law and putting you and your family at risk.

Only a Gas Safe registered engineer is legally allowed to install gas appliances, boilers, hobs, ovens or fires in your home or workplace.

You must only use a Gas Safe registered engineer for any type of gas work, including installation, maintenance and servicing.

What is Gas Safe Register?

Gas Safe Register exists to protect you, your family, and your property from dangerous gas work.

Incorrectly fitted, badly repaired or poorly maintained gas appliances are a major cause of lethal carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning, and can also lead to gas leaks and explosions.

To carry out work on gas installations and appliances safely and legally, engineers in Great Britain and the Isle of Man must be on the Gas Safe Register. We make sure the 120,000 engineers on the register are safe by inspecting the gas work they have carried out.

We are interested in the experiences you have had, when using gas engineers. You can report good or bas gas work to us using our 'nominate gas work for inspection' service.

Who runs Gas Safe Register?

Gas Safe Register is run by Capita Gas Registration and Ancillary Services Limited, a division of Capita Group Plc.

Gas Safe Register is the official gas registration body for Great Britain (GB) and Isle of Man, appointed by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) for Great Britain and HSWI for Isle of Man..

Gas Safe Register replaced CORGI as the gas registration body in GB on 1 April 2009. The HSE carried out a review of gas safety in 2006 which, after consultation with the gas industry, engineers and the public, led to the decision to change to a new gas registration scheme. The contract to run the new scheme was awarded to Capita and we launched Gas Safe Register. The sole focus of the register is on improving gas safety.

What about CORGI?

The CORGI gas registration scheme in Great Britain and the Isle of Man ended on 31 March 2009. It is no longer recognised by law as the gas safety register.

We asked all CORGI gas engineers to transfer over to Gas Safe Register.  Check and see  if your gas engineer is now a Gas Safe registered engineer. You should also ask to see your engineer’s Gas Safe Register ID card.

Posted via web from thelettingagent's posterous

Letting with Pets

We have been working for a while on a project to highlight to Landlords that renting to Tenants with pets is not a nightmare as the industry sometimes perceives.   We have frequently rented to tenants with pets and no scare stories reported.  Just as I was about to hit the button with my finished article I came across an even better one on Pet Lettings written by Tessa Shepperson with excellent advice so all credit goes to Tessa and www.landlordlaw.co.uk and her kind permission to use her article.

A special mention also the Dogs Trust   www.dogstrust.org.uk with whom Steadfast have also been in touch with for a while now and are really campaining hard to educate landlords in accepting tenants with pets.  Of course not every Landlord is in agreement and we respect the wishes of the landlord – its your property and your choice, however with the right advice and education it will widen your market significantly as there are naturally a huge number of responsible pet owners out there often happy to pay the full rent, a larger deposit and generally very happy with any supplementary clauses in the Tenancy agreement.

The link to the article is here;

http://www.landlordlaw.co.uk/pagedetail.ihtml?id=8356&page=non

We have for a while worked very closely with a truly excellent local company Animals at Home Gloucester Ltd www.glosanimalsathome.co.uk who will visit the prospective tenant and carry out an informal interview to assess the suitablity of the pet for the property, generally look at how the pet owners deal with their pet and provide recommendations.  It is run by Wendy and Jean  whom I have known personally for many years and whom our tenants have used also for general pet sitting, dog walking and other services.  Highly recommended!

In July 2007 when Gloucestershire and other counties were affected by the severe flooding there were large numbers of flood victims desperate to rent temporary property but who could not findhouses to rent that accepted pets.  This caused a major problem at the time to people desperate to leave their flooded homes and settle into a temporary home until theirs was repaired.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or require further information on aspects of renting a home to pet owners.

Posted via web from thelettingagent's posterous

A record month in May

May as mentioned before was a record month for us.  Homelet who do all our referencing reported that we were in their top 15% nationally for the number of references they carried out for us in the month of May.  (and looking at the invoice that has just come in I can well believe it!) Considering how many businessess far far larger than us we know use Homelet this is an excellent result.

There has been a drop in enquiries seen for the start of June, however talking to other agents too, there seems to be a lack of valuations and landlord instructions at the moment. We have let virtually all our houses and not much new seems to be coming onto the market.

Houses by the nature of the tenants they attract make much more longer term tenancies than flats do, which have a far higher turnover of tenants.  Houses in the school catchment areas and close to good road links/town centre also do well.  We have a pretty healthy managed portfolio of properties still with the original tenants in these houses so one can assume that houses make longer term homes for people and this perhaps explains the lack of houses on the market presently.  The current economic climate and general uncertainty could also be making people stay longer where they are until there is some stability out there again.

We recently had a number of high-end houses to let at above £1300pcm and all of these flew out of the door very quickly and we are still getting enquiries for these. There are, it seems, still a lot of people out there with really good budgets looking for quality family homes which are not coming onto the market!  Certainly the viewers looking at our top end houses reported that there was very little on the market locally.

I can only speak for Cheltenham/Gloucestershire market but currently there seems to be a big tenant demand for houses and reasonable demand for flats.  Certain properties in this town will always do well by their very nature and location especially the period properties (which is essentially part of the Cheltenham "charm").

We really could do with a lot more houses coming onto the market

Posted via web from thelettingagent's posterous

Did I lose my 15 minutes of fame?

Recent weeks have seen a phenomenal increase in lets!

Is it just us? Is it an improvement in the market?  We are now running low on properties, which to be honest is not a bad thing! An empty property does not earn you a living - we are in the business of renting after all.  Naturally our Landlords are pleased we have rented them and our new Tenants hopefully will be very happy in their new homes.

In the current economic climate we are being pummelled by the media in doom and gloom.  Lately is MP's expenses, the recent gloomy budget, job losses, you name it.  I often complain that there isn't enough good news.  There are plenty of people still well employed, businesses still doing well, the high street looks busy.  Im frustrated that the media doesn't highligh this. Yes of course there are redundancies, there are a lot of worried business owners out there, a lot of worried families and individuals.  Even the local paper wasn't interested in a particular success story we had to share. 

I offerred my services to the BBC who I found out were looking to produce a programme in May about property and further offerred to appear on the programme with the Letting Agents perspective.  I may be wrong but can only assume it is the current BBC2 programme Property Watch as I was approached in February and told it would be aired in May.  I spent probably an hour on the phone to the BBC Researcher at the time and was so frustrated that the direction of her questions were all geared towards the negative and the bad.

Did I know tenants who had been evicted? Did I know of any Landlords having their properties reposessed? Did we have any serious rent arrears? Did we have problem tenants? Were landlords pocketing the rent and not paying their mortgages.........Could I put them in touch with these people currently "suffering"?

Hold on! I daresay bad news, sensational news makes better viewing figures, but what about educating people? Giving them the benefit of your experience? Advising them? Helping them?  The BBC researcher was just not interested.  I offerred to speak on achieving maximum rental return, preparing your property, how to deal with falling property prices as a Landlord, what to do if you've bought a property on a development with a high number of rental properties, how to assist tenants looking for property, advice to Landlords on the new Local Housing Allowance which replaced Housing Benefit, Deposit regulations, companies like Inside Track (thankfully gone) who convinced people of untold riches by buying off plan properties at home and abroad, how Landlords can widen their market - the list went on, but none of it was of interest.

Its only my opinion that these are relevant topics but hopefully such a programme will be aired in the future.

Posted via web from thelettingagent's posterous

Not often I reflect but.............technology is bloody wonderful!

Its 3am and Ive been working since I got in from the office.  But i was just marvelling at the wonders of modern technology and what a wonderful age we live in.

Im 40 and old enough to remember learning to type on golf ball typewriters, then the sinclair computers, BBC Basic, the Amstrad 1512, Brother Thermal Typewriters etc etc.  I thought we were pretty tech'd up then but lookin at what Ive been doing this evening with various things online is another league altogether. 

Forget the problems of modern living, modern society etc for a second and just reflect on the amazing technology and what we can do. I'm no techy and dont understand a vast amount but I'm watching something on BTVision that was on on Wednesday (ok, ok its Waterloo Road - dont take the piss) and marvelling at just being able to recall a programme at my leisure to name and thinking back to the telly we had in our living room as a child without a remote control and then a new Remote Control telly, with the remote connected to the telly with a lead! hehe

Without a doubt I think the most amazing bit of kit has got to be the iphone.  I cant remember if my first mobile was the handset on the brick charger or a sony phone with a red amber and green light instead of a display and a contract with BTCellnet (remember them?).  The iphone is just amazing and those who have not got one, you dont know what you're missing!

One down side to writing this particular piece is that I've suddently realised how old I bloody well sound.............

Posted via web from thelettingagent's posterous

When good service gets noticed.

This blog is intended as a personal kind of thing rather than promoting our business but on this ocassion but I wanted to mention something relevant in these current economic times to prove that good service counts - even when  good service in question is ours!

We put our prices up by 1% to all our landlords who's properties we manage.  It's the first price increase since we commenced trading and naturally in the current climate we were nervous about putting prices up, no-one likes putting prices up but we felt we were justified in doing so as like any business we have had increased costs oursleves.

So with some trepidation I started to compose a price increase letter.  I was used to doing these in my former industry when our aluminium suppliers and glass manufacturers would without fail put their prices up to us every year.  That was an easy letter as most of our customers also dealt with glass and aluminium suppliers so were used to it. 

As I typed and erased sentences and then typed and erased some more trying to make putting prices up sound like a positive thing, I thought....hold on! It is a positive thing.  Hold on a second you landlords.  The vast majority of you since we started working with you have never had a void period, have got excellent tenants, get your rent paid on time and in short dont have to worry.  Then I got to thinking that what we charge is what we charge and no more.  No hidden extras, no supplementary charges, other than routine maintenance etc.

Then Mike and I talked about the investment we have made.  Our lettings software is probably the best in the business, the mutts nutts as some would say. This and other things made me realise that you have to have confidence in what you do and if you believe something is right, then fight your corner.

So out went the letter with new management agreements.  In the post, first class.  Slowly slowly the signed agreements start coming back to us in the post.................its been three weeks since they went out and you know what?

Not one single customer has complained about the price increase! 

Posted via web from thelettingagent's posterous