Estate Agent - IS this normal Practice?

aamadami

Hello Everyone,

I was managing my Buy-to-Lets for last 11 years. Due to other commitments I have given both properties to estate agent to manage from past few months. Both houses are on same street with new tenants and they don't know that I am a landlord.

I believe EA is taking advantage of this situations. They look for small problems and send their engineer for repair and charge me extra money. something like cleaning, I used to pay £80 but for same work they were going to charge me £150. at the end we settled for £100. same goes with GAS certificate and plumbers.

Just wanted to know do all agents take commissions in repairs or is this part of monthly maintenance fees?

ReadingTim

Maybe they do, maybe they don't - we don't know the extent to which you're a "good" landlord who proactively cleans or repairs, or not. The EA might be trying to fleece you, they might simply be doing what's necessary to attract a certain sort of tenant.

At the end of the day though, if you don't like it, keep negotiating the costs, or manage the properties yourself.

Puflet

When my property was rented out, I opted for full management by the estate agents because I lived so far away. When there were issues with the property, some of the quotes were on the high side of reasonable, but reasonable nevertheless. However, when I received a quote of £50 to replace a battery in a smoke alarm - and other, frankly silly, quotes, I made the journey and did the work myself.

I asked the agents to let me know if there were any problems before they took action. I also got quotes from more than one source - as you would if you were an owner-occupier.

aamadami

that's my question. Do all estate agents works like this? I was planning to change estate agent but if they all like this, i have to consider either either managing by myself or consider selling it. With new tax rules, I hardly make any profit.

need_an_answer

If you opt for a managed contract then to some extent you are handing the maintaninance issues over to the agent to resolve.

I believe to some extent all agents will almost certainly charge more per job than you could either source it for or do it yourself.
That's not because they charge commission,its more to do with the fact that they just employ the tradesperson who is available to do the job,ringing round and obtaining 3 quotes and choosing the cheapest or whatever isn't something they usually tend to do.

You could mitigate the situation by advising your agent that you do wish to be consulted prior to a job being carried out and that way you can choose whether to "project manage the repair" yourself do it yourself or let the agent sort things on your behalf.

In principle the idea of a managed service is very appealing but having had one for a year during my new days of being a LL it opened my eyes to just how much it costs to allow someone to spend money on your behalf.
Sure you don't get emails from tenants at inconvenient times and there is always a tradesperson to do the work but yes it does come at a price

Like with most things the less you want to be involved then the more it may cost you to resolve simply because you are paying someone to complete the job on your behalf.

G_M

We cannot read your contract with the agent. What does it say?

Does it require them to fix everything for you? At your cost?
Or to bring repairs to your notice, with quotes, for you to authorise?
Or does it give them a limit on what they can spend without further authorisation eg £100?

We don't know!

But the reality is that repairs arranged by the agent are always likely to be more expensive than what you could arrange yourself. Indeed many LLs do simple repairs theselves as DIY. You are paying for convenience.

See


* Letting agents: how should a landlord select or sack?

yksi

The short answer is no. The long answer is: even a good agent needs to keep his tradies on side. If the agent is continually asking those tradesmen for better prices, they'll soon have better things to do than be available at short notice for this agent.

Slithery

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.php?p=75404660&postcount=5

aamadami

Thank you all for your reply. Shall I talk to Tenants and introduce myself? for non-urgent issues, I can get engineer with three quotes. at the moment, EA is saying that's they are passing cheapest quote.

need_an_answer

You need to read your contract with the agent and if necessary break the contract correctly.

I'm not convinced that its a good idea to approach the tenants until you have a good idea of what you plan to do regarding the managed contract.

By asking them to contact you for non urgent repairs is a little vague in my opinion,with respect a tenant either thinks all issues are urgent or wont bother to contact anyone until the issue becomes urgent.

Your best option is to speak to the letting agents and ask about terminating the fully managed agreement if you wish to take a more hands on approach from now on

yksi

Don't approach the tenants. Just tell the agent that you would like to arrange repairs yourself, except for emergency repairs. The agent should be perfectly capable of noting this on your file. We had several landlords who liked to DIY, and the arrangement worked well.

However, can I just say that obtaining three quotes for each repair is taking the absolute p!!!? How do you think your tenants are going to feel? Let's say that the shower has a problem and you expect them to let three different plumbers into their house on three different days for the quotes, then they have to stay home from work a fourth time when the plumber comes in to do the job. Meanwhile they've gone a week without a shower and missed four days of work. That's not reasonable, that's treating your tenants poorly.

If you want control over repairs, because you happen to know, say, a good plasterer and a reliable handyman, fine. But if you don't, I would suggest you let the agent get ONE quote, then google "what does it cost to" (whatever the issue was) and then if the quote's reasonable, tell them to go ahead.