PROPERTY STRATEGY BLOG

PART 2 of 7:

When is the right time to take lettings in-house?

If you have been considering taking over the management of your rental properties, there are some things that you really should consider first to ensure it is going to be viable for your business currently.

The first thing to consider is how good is your existing agent?  What is the level of service you are receiving?  You might decide that actually you don’t need to make the change now and would be better off using this time to improve on your other systems and your team.

Also think about what it means for an agent to be working well for you. You should take a look at your arrears, voids, how long they are taking to address any issues and come to a resolution.  Arrears and voids are a really important factor; you simply cannot upscale a business if you are having problems in these areas.

You should also be assessing what rents you are achieving, have they become depressed?  If they have, it would be worth assessing if this is definitely a wider market issue or not. If not, then this could be a good time for you to make the change. 

When you are dealing with potential new tenants yourself, you can take a much better view on people.  For example, a lot of agents won’t want to take on tenants on housing benefit.  We have over last 9 months or so taking on a number of tenants supported by benefits - the stigma just isn't fair in the majority of cases in our experience. At this time it has been a huge benefit to us as it has given us certainty with rents coming in still.  Taking lettings in-house has enabled us to make decisions on people as individuals rather than just having a blanket view on what tenants we should or shouldn’t take on.

If you have decided the time is right for you, look out for our upcoming posts to find out more about the systems, processes and team we have put in place!

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