Grrr, letting agency frustrations

[butterfliesinmytummy]

We own a house in Scotland and currently live overseas. We took on a rental agency to rent out our Scotland house long term 5.5 years ago on the basis of a recommendation from a friend. We have our second tenant in the house and it's our second corporate lease (lots of expats in the city).

The rental agency is slowly driving me to distraction however. They do a property inspection every 6 months and everything that is raised normally gets a green light from us to repair / replace as our tenants are really good. They have flagged up stuff like loose drawer handles in the kitchen and discoloured grout in the bathroom. We suggested that the tenants might avail themselves of a screwdriver or bleach to resolve these but the agency has insisted that we need to have them done "properly" by a third party with a call out fee... go figure.

Last May the tenant flagged that the wine fridge in the kitchen wasn't working. The agency faffed around for ages trying to get spares, coming to the conclusion in November that the model was discontinued and now they have decided to replace it (fine with us, we feel bad for the tenant) but still nothing has been done. I email them constantly but get few replies, most of them are a brush off....

There is also a slightly mouldy smell coming from the downstairs shower room. This was fully replaced including extractor and flooring 6 years ago so we asked the agency to investigate and let us know what the problem was, with a view to possibly replacing the rubber flooring. This was August, still nothing done.

Our tenants are frustrated, so are we. I wrote to the agency this week (I always copy in the manager) stating that I was dissatisfied with their service and so was my tenant and that I would be ordering a wine fridge from Amazon if they didn't get one within 14 days. No reply.

I don't know what else to do. Is there an independent ombudsman I can threaten them with? Can I change agency mid-lease?

I should add that in 2012 we traveled back to Scotland to visit family. We notified the agency and asked if the tenant (who was away at the time) would mind if we took a quick look at our former home. They were fine, we drove 3 hours from Edinburgh to Aberdeen with 2 small kids specially, agency lady met us at the house .... with keys that didn't work. Argghhhh! It was a Saturday so the office was closed and we had to be content with a peek through the letterbox. Must stop writing as I'm getting more annoyed, but any tips?

I've only been at the other end as the tenant.

However, I've learnt one thing about letting agents:

Once they have your money they no longer give a SHIT.

Any chance you can arrange with the tenant for them to rent directly from you and ditch the letting agent?

sadly that's my experience too. Agencies are good for tenant find etc but after that, staffed by village idiots.

time to get stroppy. Raise a complaint and demand to speak to management, demand compensation for wasted time and that they sort it out.

there is no regulation, you can try ARLA if they are members but don't expect much.

Same problem here; we are abroad, agency totally maddening! Defeats point of using them!

Hi I'm a reluctant landlady as dad has alzheimers and I have power of arttrorney, he has a flat " managed" by letting agents, who seem to thrive on any petty issue thrown up by the tenants and pursue me to agree for their contractors to get involved. I have responded by finding a local builder whom I trust. I really find the agents stressful and do not trust them. I now make a point of double checking every thing they say. I don't live in the same city, alrthough at least I m in the same country. If you ever have time I would recommend finding and cultivating a relationship with a good local builder/ workman,then contacting him when stuff crops up.

Thanks everyone, have received grovelingreply from crap agency and a promise that they will complete all outstanding work before the end of January ... With no prices! Hate it when they spend my money without telling me how much.

Good tip about local builders but we've been out of the country for a while and have no contacts, we only lived in Aberdeen for 5 years and did most of the work on the house ourselves. They use our plumber though as he understands our unnecessarily complicated heating system...

If you're happy with your tenant, I'd ditch the agent.

We have a rental property that we manage ourselves because our tenants are reliable and proactive. They will do minor things themselves and just let us know afterwards (then we reimburse them if necessary), we have cover with British Gas for the boiler, electrics etc so if something goes wrong the tenant can phone them themselves and arrange a convenient time for a repair man, and for anything else it's honestly not that difficult to phone round a few tradesmen. It is so much less hassle than going back and forth through an agent all the time, and of course we then don't have to pay 12.5% + vat every month!

We use the agents to find tenants, as they can do credit checks, references etc, but have honestly found it is far easier to manage things ourselves, even from a distance.

I have been a landlord for many years while we lived abroad - and a tenant of course - and I share your pain.

We have changed agents halfway through a tenancy, it's perfectly doable. The lease is between you and the tenants, so it just continues, the only thing that needs sorting out is the transfer of the deposit to the new agency's holding account. If you approach a new agent they should be able to sort this out for you.

I recently had cause to complain bitterly to our agent - on returning from an overseas posting we discovered the ensuite shower room, which had been fully gutted and replaced less than 3 years ago, was in a disgusting state with mould and condensation. A faulty fan had not been replaced although the work had been billed to us. Turned out that the person managing our house had not actually set foot in it after the property portfolio had been reapportioned among the team. Inspections had been done by an admin assistant but the wrong fan had been fixed.

On top of this, I got a whole lot of 'attitude' from the property manager every time I spoke to her or emailed her, so I went to the top and set up a meeting with the Head of Rentals. He was very agreeable, let me vent and then asked what I would like to see them doing differently, and ended up with me getting 3% reduction on our management fee, as well as rectifying the problems in the bathroom at their cost.

During the course of our conversation though, I was shocked to learn that each property manager has 40-50 properties to look after . No wonder things get missed.

So it's worth complaining, but also possible to switch agents. You do not need the worry or hassle when you live abroad.