08/12/2022
My story and why we now manage properties
As a budding new landlord and property owner in 2010, I bought my first investment property and carried out all the renovations myself except for the Electrics, Plumbing, Plastering and a new boiler installation, I was very proud of it as I achieved my target of budget and timescale. As a Project Manager with over 25 years’ experience in the communication and building trade I wanted to gain the experience of refurbishing a property completely from scratch.
I filled out the paperwork and applied for an HMO licence.
I contacted Letting agents to get it rented out, I chose 3 letting agents, they all sounded as if they knew what they were doing, all very friendly and accommodating and at that time very professional.
Anyway, after choosing the one I felt was the best fit they promptly started to provide tenants.
After about 6/7 months the rent started to come in later and later, so I decided to go to the house as I lived fairly local just to see if the tenants were ok and happy.
As soon as I stepped into the house the smell of ma*****na hit me like hitting a wall. This smell was throughout the whole house.
I stipulated that I wanted a no smoking policy in the property and had the Letting agent carried out the checks every 3 months like they said they would, they would have found these issues and taken steps to remove the tenant or at least given them a warning, while I was in the property l also found that two of the four tenants were out of work and had been for over 2 months.
Both issues were not reported to me as they were unaware of it. By the way, within the Letting contract the agency agreed to visit the property every 3 months and provide a report.
I also found out there were no systems in place, no flags indicating that checks need to be carried out at properties, including Health and safety, Gas safety checks. Fire and smoke tests
As you can imagine I was extremely angry and frustrated with the agents for not checking the property and just took it for granted that everything in the house was ok. They were also charging for things that they didn’t do, but that’s another story.
So, I started to self-manage the property.
At this time my property sourcing business was growing and as the renovation work was finishing my clients started to ask if I could help with renting the property as they had some very bad experiences with the ones they had used previously, they trusted my judgement as the work I carried out for them was on time and in budget.
I also had bad experiences with Letting agents, so I decided to look into it with more detail, I needed to learn about how the letting business worked, the rules and the legislation that needed to be followed, the affiliated companies I needed to join in case I need professional advice
After two years of research, we now have a small but growing Letting Agency business with a CRM system in place to run the back-office administration.
I am proud that I can help people with renting there properties and building an ongoing relationship with them
If you are currently unhappy with your current agent or are looking for an agent that will manage your property in a professional manner, please get in contact [email protected].
Why not book a 15-minute consultation to see if we can help
