Any landlords renting flat without Estate agent?

[stirling]

Hi,

Please could you recommend a good online agency - I've done a quick Google search, upad and purple bricks and iamtheagent have come up - but is one better than the other?

How long might it take on average? To let I mean

Many thanks

BC

Depends where it is and how you price it.

You are of course fully up on all the legals, costs and risks I hope.

I've used OpenRent without problems. I would be interested to hear if anyone has positive experiences of easyProperty as their management rates (I manage the property myself at the moment) are very tempting.

Thanks. I'm aware of the costs but not the risks?

Open Rent was great. Join the National Landlords' Assoc so you can access standard documents and tenant checking services.

Another one b happy with open rent. I manage property myself but am thinking of paying a good person I know. Anything not to pay an agent who were approximately useless and caused huge trouble with previous tenants

I use an estate agent to market the property, just because the properties arent really local and its alot of hassle to drive there and wait for potential tenants NOT to show up!

Unfort Ive never found a decent Agent to manage the properties so do that myself, but I have been doing it a long time now and spend time making sure I keep up to date with rules and regs. I dont think if I was new to it, I would do it myself intially - its a minefield and you cant get it wrong as its the tenants lives at risk and your financial security.

risks include:

• tenant not paying
• tenant trashing place
• tenant subletting to someone different who does the above
• have to evict; legal costs, lack of rent

do you know your obligations and the consequences if you don't meet them?

• deposit protection: get sued for 3 times its value
• right to rent checks - big fine
• gas safe - big fine/prosecution
• not getting tenant to sign for receipt of all documents - cannot evict
• not keeping property in good repair - fine/cannot evict
• correct insurance - obvious risk if not in place
• HMO?
• Wales or other compulsory registration area?

and so on...

Visum is another worth looking at. How nearby are you to the property? That would be a big influence on my decision - I rented a property out 150 miles away and used an agent but had it been nearer I would have managed it myself.

As Specialsubject says if you are going to go it alone you really need to be very clear about your responsibilities as a landlord.

In 7 years of renting my property I have had one set of bad tenants. During all of that time I paid agents fees of 12% and when it came down to the set of bad tenants the letting agents had not referenced them properly in the first place. Fortunately the letting agents then ensured that I was not out of pocket. Had the property been nearer I would have managed it myself and put the 12% in a savings account in the event that I needed legal advice in the event of bad tenants.

T b h even with an agent the buck stops with you, and you need to be fully up to speed.

The agent does not get fined and does not pay the costs if they get one of things wrong.

BTW eviction costs about £700 with just the court fees, add a solicitor and it goes up to £2k - and all the solicitors charge the same. You would need a lot of cash at 1% to cover that. You can get insurance but you really need to shop around to get both reasons for evicting covered.