Thinking of using a fully managed letting service

Skibunny40

Speak to various agents before deciding on one and if you can, before contacting them as a landlord, contact them claiming to be a prospective tenant. It'll give you an interesting insight on what they say v what happens in reality.

walwyn1978

We did, but we were living 240 miles away and it was a short term thing rather than a profit making enterprise. As already mentioned it's still not totally hands off though and you will still have involvement on a fairly regular basis.

If you're doing it as a money making enterprise I'd say no, it's not worth it.

need_an_answer

OP What type of emotional attachment to the property?

What type of figures are you being quoted for fully managed,I guess around 15%

What do you expect the agency to do for the money and what input do you expect to have with things going forward.

I'm a LL and when I first stared a few years back went fully managed,it was too constricting for me and I wanted more input to how things were done.

I now only use an agent to find the tenant and the immediate paperwork to move them in

My advice would be choose your agent very carefully and don't always expect things to run smoothly they don't take the responsibility of being a LL away from you and therefore you still need in my mind to probably be more hands on than you are currently imagining

shirlgirl2004

The best advice is don't look for the letting agent with the lowest charge. If they don't charge much then they won't be able to afford the staff to do much. They will need to get their money from elsewhere be it you, the tenant or both. 10% + vat of the monthly rental is about right.

westernpromise

I do this. I have used the same agent for 14 years for one property and have let out four at various times over the last 20 years, always managed.

In my view, it more than pays for itself. First off, if you pick an agent who manages hundreds if not thousands of local properties, this makes them a very powerful buyer of trade services. Consequently you do not see no-shows, ripoff charges or shoddy work by plumbers or whoever, because that loses the tradesman all work from that source for good.

Second, prospective tenants don't have to worry about maybe having to pester the landlord to get things done. If something needs fixing, they call the agent, and the agent gets it fixed without reference to me. If it's obviously tenant damage they tell me that too. Otherwise they take the cost out of the £750 float that they hold. I find out about it at month-end. If something expensive needs replacing, like a fridge, they would call me, but otherwise it just goes ahead.

There's none of this farce of telling the tenant to call British Gas and take a day off work hoping British Gas actually show up and don't send a monkey who makes it worse. The agents keep a set of keys, so the tenants don't even need to be in, unless they want to be. The electrician or whoever calls at the office, collects the keys, does the job and drops them back. Gas safety certificate same thing.

If tenants have experience of amateur landlords trying to manage properties themselves, which typically means stinting on everything and getting the tenant to manage the property, the above is IMHO a significant selling point over landlord-undermanaged properties. I think I get a higher rent, longer occupancy and fewer, shorter voids in consequence of paying for management, which means it's not a cost, it's free or a benefit.

I should note that this is a flat that lets for £30,000 a year so neither it nor the tenants are typical of the PRS as a whole. The flat upstairs is quite similar, is under-managed by an absentee landlord overseas, and it persistently lets for less than mine does, however.