Taking care of lettings – why we’re different from the competition

This week, I’ve returned to work after maternity leave and jumped back in with both feet to property management. Having recently helped some friends acquire a rental property in an extremely competitive rental market I had reason to feel quietly proud that at Roberts & Co we run a tight ship on both sales and lettings. It reminded me that there are still lots of agents who see potential tenants as someone they would rather not be dealing with; a time drain, an interruption to their day. Vanishingly few agents were qualifying potential tenants or had any curiosity about who they were, what they did and what was prompting their move. Many enquiries were simply not responded to and requests for viewings went ignored. To me, finding out more about tenants is an absolute bare minimum requirement – there is no point arranging a viewing for a tenant with a pet if the landlord will not accept them and both landlord and tenant will feel short changed if a short term tenant is put into a long-term property.

It’s no wonder many tenants feel hard done by, and it didn’t surprise me to read that in a survey earlier this year two-thirds of landlords and tenants felt unhappy with their letting agent. Many tenants cited issues with repairs as the number one source of frustration, with landlords complaining money was not paid on time and they were confused by much of the jargon used by their letting agents. Tenants and landlords both felt they were also not kept up to date with legislative changes throughout the course of the tenancy.

It's easy to look at that survey and say, “we’re different, we’re not like that” but I genuinely believe at Roberts & Co we are offering a service which far surpasses expectations. We’re not a call centre -we have a small property management team who handle absolutely everything, from move-ins to repairs to evictions, and everything else in between. We keep everyone fully updated, whether that’s by calls, texts or emails, so both landlord and tenant know exactly what is happening with repairs and what the next steps are.

One of the main differences we have with many of our competitors is that we have a dedicated in-house compliance lead (me!) and I constantly review legislative changes which might affect our clients. This allows us to respond quickly to any changes needed, amending processes as we go, to ensure our clients remain compliant for the duration of their relationship with us. Our property management team is also very experienced, with both lettings managers having over 15 years each in the industry.

There is absolutely a place in the market for agents or platforms to offer a very basic tenancy set-up service for the experienced landlord whose sole job is to look after their portfolio. However, if you’re time-poor, unsure about requirements and legislation, or just generally feeling like it may be more than you can personally handle then you shouldn’t feel that all lettings agents are the same. If you have arrived at this blog post because you’ve received a poor service from your agent – we’re not all the same and at Roberts & Co we’re confident we offer a 5 star service for both landlords and tenants; all we ask is the opportunity to show you what we can do.