Becoming a landlord is a dream for most people, a very small number of people manage to own one home, let alone a buy to let property or portfolio. You may be fortunate enough to have worked extremely hard in your life, invested wisely, and educated yourself to have taken the plunge into the buy to let market.
Your buy to let asset should be one of your most important things. It is your pension; it is something that can help build generational wealth and for some, it is a nest egg for the latter part of their lives should they look to use it as cashflow or to cash in the asset.
Regardless of what you decide to do with your investment property or properties, why should you have to settle for a mediocre agency handling your asset.
At Keystones Property, many of us are landlords ourselves, so we understand the journey of a landlord and can advise since we hold that journey with you.
Landlords are vital to our business model, we aim to look after our landlords by looking after their asset properly, believe that everything is in preparation, and nothing should be led to chance.
If you are looking at this post, you could be unsatisfied with your current letting and property management agency and thinking of a change, you may be thinking how easy or complicated this is. Surely it is easier just to leave the property with them.
I would like to challenge you on this and advise you to give us a quick phone call to see what we could do for you, maybe you are getting a good service and your expectations are quite high, but usually a gut instinct or something you are not happy with means that they probably are not doing their job correctly, so get in touch.
Maybe they are too expensive?
Are they doing inspections (and giving you photo proof)?
Have their fees increased?
Are the maintenance costs building up?
Are they immorally taking a commission on the maintenance without telling you?
Is there no communication?
Maybe they are just incompetent.
Call us on 01708909100 or email [email protected].
How easy is it to change agency mid tenancy?
Many landlords do not realise how easy it is to change agency mid tenancy. They get stuck with their agent and inertia sets in to settle for the mundane, lack of service that tends to creep in.
However, at Keystones Propertywe take over many tenancies for our landlords, it is pretty easy to do with the right system in place.
It doesn’t have to be a hassle. It is easy.
What do I do next?
You do not have to wait until the end of a tenancy to move agency, you can do it rapidly, however, you need to check a few things out first.
1. Your Agency Agreement – What is your notice period?
This is NOT your tenancy agreement, a tenancy agreement is between landlord and tenant, and an agency agreement is between Agent and Landlord. Check your notice period on the tenancy agreement and see what your termination period is.
Most agencies have a contract and a termination period, or a notice period that you may have to give. The notice period protects the agency from the landlord leaving straight away.
At Keystones we usually give a reduced tenant find fee under full management (Click here for our lettings prices) so if you were to come away from us, we can recoup this initial cost. It protects us from a client taking advantage of our agency.
2. Get in touch with your new agency
If you were to get in touch with us, we would ask you a few questions in relation to the tenancy.
Did you obtain an inventory? Do you have a copy?
Is the deposit protected and where?
What service are you currently receiving from your agent?
How is your tenant and are they paying consistently and on time?
This way you can find out the logistics of the situation first.
3. Give your Agency notice
Once you know your notice period, you can give your agency notice. We would then ask you to put us in touch with your existing agent to arrange for all the paperwork to be sent to us so that we can check and cross reference it.
We would be looking to obtain:
• Inventory
• Deposit Details
• Existing AST
• Property documents – warranties, certificates, and compliance documents
• Rent Report
• Maintenance History Report
• Tenants’ paperwork and tenant references
• Previous property inspections
• Keys
4. The MOT – The Paperwork
A lot of the time, what usually happens is that not all the paperwork is there, there is a reason why you are leaving your letting agency and it could be due to incompetence. So, we would do a full MOT on your legislation and documentation before we get in touch with your tenant. Again, every situation is different so we would work with you to get the structure right.
Once we are happy then we would go to the next stage.
5. The Tenant – Home Visit
Once we have had a look over the paperwork to make sure that you are compliant with the setup, we would then look to get in touch with your tenant over the telephone and via email to explain the situation and not cause them panic.
They could be thinking that we want them out, want to increase rent, looking to sell and we would aim to put their mind at ease unless you are looking at a rent review, then we would again speak to them about this matter too.
We would then aim to sign up a new Assured shorthold tenancy agreement, reserve all the paperwork so it is under our roof, and we know compliance has been served to our standards.
I keep harping on about compliance, but it is extremely important in UK Law, the success is in preparation (like anything) and we aim to make sure that you are not vulnerable.
We would then meet with the tenant to get the new paperwork signed, inspect the property, and build a rapport with the tenant to understand their situation and what they want to do.
We would then report back to you and move forward from there.
It is calculated and handled effectively and expertly so that nothing can go wrong, and no stone is unturned.
We take over many tenancies at Keystones Property and have a lot of experience in this field.
If you are considering changing agents, then feel free to get in touch with us.
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Keystones Property
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Keystones Property Collier Row
13 Clockhouse Lane, Collier Row, Romford, Essex, RM5 3PH, United Kingdom -
Email: [email protected]
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Telephone: 01708 909 100
