What do I ask the letting agent about when he values a property for rental?

[WilfSell]

I know I posted on this before and can't find the thread - sorry. But had some excellent advice from a couple of you, so would really appreciate a revision session .

Am meeting letting agent tomorrow for property we need to rent out. Am worried about being taken in by the old Estate Agent charm, signing up for 15% for stuff I could really do myself, and then he buggers off to hand the ignoring calls work to the 16yo modern apprentice etc etc.

Any advice? We live a good hour or so away from property so maybe we will need a full management arrangement (rather than just advertising/vetting etc)? What does this usually mean - what do they do for their money?

What tricks will he have up his sleeve that I need to know about? What useful information can I get from him? In fact, could someone come along and hold my hand?

Bumping for you.

well, im as a tenant `"managing" estate agents are quite good at failing to do stuff the landlords could fail to do themselves (eg replacing the effing cooker the week before xmas)..

actually that's not quite true - the agents did do the gas testing (though I'm not sure if they'd have tested said, extremely dangerous cooker had they taken on the house before we moved in).

15% is a lot.

you can vet tenants yourself (they just check 1 reference and do a credit check)
you an buy the legal forms
you can do an inventory yourself (but youmay need to be there on the day tenants move in in case of quibbles. most agents don't do that anyway though)
you can call a plumber when the boiler breaks down.

that's about it

there's a small posibility that they provide some sort of cover for tenants failing to pay etc in that 15% but I doubt it. ask that.

yes, sorry, "full managing" means they collect the rent and call the occasional plumber. I've never seen one actually turn up.

The agent we used to let out our property offered a three-tier service to choose from.

1. Find tenants, credit/ref checks, drawing up tenancy agreement. (This worked out at about £350 I think it was)

1. All the above plus advising Council/utility services of new tenants. (Can't remember off-hand what the cost of that was)

1. Total management of the property, i.e. all the above plus being the point of call for the tenant for repairs, etc. (15% per month of the rent or £75.00 plus VAT which ever was the greater)

We opted for 1 and were glad we did as the first tenants wanted a 12 month tenancy and paid upfront for the year.

The property is only 10 minutes from home so it's fairly easy to manage ourselves.

We took out one of those complete homecare gas contracts with British Gas which recently came into it's own when the boiler and radiators starting to play up. One call and they were round there to sort it.

Will put thinking cap on to see if I can come up with anything else. Good luck!

Thanks all. Met an agent today. Is offering full management for 10% but lots of added extras like VAT, 'introduction' fees (eg if we cancel, and keep the tenant they got for us, we have to pay one month's rent, or if the tenant buys the house, we pay them 1.5% of sale price...)

I'm really torn between having full management (and knowing deep down that they won't probably earn their money, though would be happy to be put right on that) or going it alone.

But we've never done this before, both work fulltime and are over an hour away with 3 kids.

Think I might try and persuade agent to include a 'get-out' clause in contract - review for free when first tenant leaves or after 6/12 months - does this sound unreasonable?

we use a tenant find service and have a local friend do the managing, for which we pay him a retainer. He also does the gardening at one of the properties. It has worked really well, as I can do the admin from my end and he follows it up at his end. I was really pleased we had this personal service last month, as one tenant approached him in great distress as his partner had just been killed. My friend was able to deal with him on a personal and professional level and I retained a tenant in extremely difficult situation.

Before this I always managed my tenants myself. It is not difficult and landlord zone website is great. We had used an agent many years ago, they never visited the property despite assuring us that they did, and when we visited the property at the end of a tenancy and found the whole kitchen floor ripped they wanted nothing to do with it and called it fair wear and tear! This kind of made me very wary and so since then I have done it myself.

Thanks sunnylabsmum,

Will have a look at that site and think a bit more. Maybe I can persuade my nephew, who lives round the corner, to help out...