What is wrong with letting agents?

Cocora

His_Dudeness wrote: »

If you're just starting up as a landlord you may find useful and re-assuring to use an agent.
If you have a large portfolio, or don't have much time, you may find useful or necessary to use an agent.
If you live far from your properties, you may find necessary to use an agent.

We can't make generalisations, it really depends on people and circumstances.

If I'd need to use an agent being a landlord, I'd be on top of them always to see how are they doing it. Have a friend to call them posing as an interested tenant and such... It's not time consuming. A 10 minutes call max.
I'd also insist to have my tenants phone and email to be in direct contact with them.

Mate, the problem is that landlords in general are lazy as well, they don't give a !!!! about the people living in their 'assets' as long as they have the rent in their accounts every month. Said this, I must say I had great landlords too, but they were always in direct contact with me.

Pixie5740

I think the mistake landlords make, especially landlords who are just starting out, is that letting agencies know what they are doing in respect to the law when quite often they don't. It's only when the !!!! hits the fan that the newbie landlord discovers that the regular inspections they have been paying for have not been carried out and the deposit hasn't been protected.

Then there's the old chestnut about having to renew at the end of a fixed term. An easy way to scalp landlord and tenant alike.

There are good letting agents out there who can tell their !!!! from their elbow but landlords need to do their homework to find them.

DaftyDuck

I reserve two circles of Dante's Inferno for Estate Agents and Lettings Agents. I'm stumped as to which set gets to take a dump on the other, so have not yet allocated them to which.

All I know is they will suffer, terribly, and for eternity.

gingercordial

Oh, they are awful. I absolutely hate how they keep properties up and showing as available long after they've been taken. It's frustrating when you're looking for a place and it's really alarming when you think you've secured somewhere and yet it's still showing as available.

For the place I'm about to move to, I paid a holding deposit about six weeks before the start of the tenancy and it took another four weeks before they issued an actual tenancy agreement to sign despite several reminders from me and promises from them to get it to me "today", "first thing" and so on. For all this time it was still showing on their website and on Rightmove as being available, which didn't fill me with confidence that they might back out at any time. It only turned to "let agreed" two days ago, five days before my tenancy starts. I don't think they care in the slightest that this might cause me to worry in the meantime about whether I'm going to have somewhere to live.

I walked past an estate agent in Islington recently and they still had a windowful of my friend's very nice, very expensive house for sale. I knew they were moving the following day!

gazapc

To be fair number three isn't that unusual. Atleast they are asking and not just barging in on the tenant's life.

But agree. I CANNOT wait to get rid of letting agents and buy my own place.

stator

I agree with all of the negative things said above. Rental agents are some of the biggest explotitive rip off merchants out there.
Most of them have a high turnover of staff because even the employees know how dispicable they are.

marksoton

DaftyDuck wrote: »

I reserve two circles of Dante's Inferno for Estate Agents and Lettings Agents. I'm stumped as to which set gets to take a dump on the other, so have not yet allocated them to which.

All I know is they will suffer, terribly, and for eternity.

They don't deserve one each, make em share....

gingercordial

marksoton wrote: »

They don't deserve one each, make em share....

Market it as two good-sized circles of hell when it's really one adequate-at-best circle and another that you couldn't swing a hell-cat in.

cloo

And they'll do anything to rent the place out, despite LL requests - a former colleague asked agents to get a professional tenant/tenants for her flat. They got some drifter who occasionally worked in restaurant kitchens and left the place covered in fag burns with lots of broken furniture.


I'm also convinced a lot of the complaints about 'dodgy landlords' are down to agents who can't be bothered to pass on complaints to owners, making the landlord look negligent and uncaring when they'd be perfectly happy to effect repairs and solve problems if told.

DaftyDuck

marksoton wrote: »

They don't deserve one each, make em share....

I was planning on writing a couple of stanzas, agent selling their circle to lettings, lettings doing viewings on the agents'circle. I doubt my tercet literary skills extend to doing it - my Italian certainly isn't that good!

No, a circle each; their torture and pain can be far, far more specific.