Should I use a letting agent or manage a property myself? (Our definitive guide)

Managing your own rental property

If you are new to being a landlord you may be under the impression letting a property is a fairly simple, quick and easy process. However, having worked in the property industry for over 10 years, and having been a letting agent for over 5 years,  I can assure you this is rarely the case.

Firstly, there is the issue of time. Letting a property requires time and commitment, from advertising the property on various platforms such as Facebook, Gumtree and Spare Room, to dealing with an endless stream of, frankly, silly questions from those enquiring about the property. And all this is before you even take into account viewings. Once the tenants are in place you need to take time to ensure maintenance on the property is kept up to date and even more time dealing with ongoing phone calls from tenants asking about various aspects of the property. But if you have plenty of time on your hands and are a full-time landlord you may find none of this daunting. If on the other hand being a landlord is more of a side hustle you are likely to find managing a rental property, saps more time than you expected.

Secondly, you need to consider responsibility and liability. As a landlord, you are wholly responsible for ensuring your property meets or exceeds all the required regulations for rental housing. This includes completing health and safety assessments, Legionella risk assessments and the list goes on. For more on this check out this blog. Once again if you are an experienced landlord with a large property portfolio this may all seem easy-peasy but for the inexperienced or newbie landlord, this can be one headache after another.

If you want to manage your own property the things you need in ample supply are time, tolerance and energy. If you are lacking in any of these a letting agent of some form is likely to be of huge benefit.

Why use a letting agent to let my rental property?

So, what is the advantage of using a letting agent to manage your property rather than doing it yourself? Firstly, marketing the property. I have already mentioned the time taken to advertise the property on various sites, but what about the enquiries stage. If you have an ‘in demand’ type of property you could get 30+ calls over a couple of days often at ‘out of office’ times of day, don’t be surprised by calls at 10 pm or even 6 am depending on the prospective tenant in question, plus the endless emails.

And then you have to try and work through all those enquiries to find a shortlist for viewings unless you decide to do viewings for all of them wasting even more of your precious time!!

So now you have arranged the viewings, but you still have the issue of do they all turn up (probably not), do you have time-wasters who neglect to tell you that actually, they have 3 dogs and a granny who they want to move in too. You finally find the right person!! But now you have to carry out the referencing, unless you use a referencing company, you will spend hours verifying phone numbers and double-checking that the person giving the reference is genuinely their boss and not just a mate from down the pub!

How many hours or days will that take of your time, stop and think. This is why you use a letting agent; they could deal with 50 phone calls and emails and do 20 viewings to find you that
tenant. You would still pay the same fee.

Once the tenants are in

Even once you have got the tenants in your property there is still plenty to keep you busy at all hours of the day. First, you should ask yourself ‘how accessible do you want to be to your tenant?’
this especially applies if you live close by or even next door. Are you prepared to be on call 24/7?

Tenants are usually more respectful of letting agents and unless it is a real emergency, they won’t call out of hours. But as a landlord, you could be called for even the littlest task (and yes I
mean changing light bulbs) and at any time day or night. When using an agent, all maintenance can be arranged by the letting agents, at Bright Star Lettings we have our own trades or can use our Landlords traders if preferred, but you will never get invoiced for replacing a light bulb!

And what if things get a bit tense or silly over something or the tenant has become your ‘friend’. That makes it far more difficult to control the situation. Your letting agent is your buffer, they deal with both the trivial and the major, and generally, you won’t hear about the trivial. They give you some distance from the situation, they are the strict parent to your fun one. This is especially true when it comes to the tenant exit, tenants will leave, they will move on its almost as inevitable as death and taxes. Managing that exit can be stressful especially if a deposit claim is necessary. It’s the Agent that facilitates the process to make it as stress-free as possible and works to find you a new tenant with minimal void periods.

Time is valuable to us all, think about the time it would take to do all the above, consider if you have that time available and if you could use it better, let that help you make your decision as to whether you should use an agent.

What are the costs of using a letting agent?

Letting agents normally offer two types of services fully managed and tenant find only, you can find out more about both of these services in this blog.

For tenant find only there is normally a fixed fee, in our case, this is £400 but we offer a competitive fee structure and can offer reductions on our standard charges for multiple property portfolios. For Fully managed this is normally priced as a fixed monthly fee plus a percentage of the rental value, for us this is £300 + 9.5% monthly.

However, there is another way at Bright Star we offer the option of ‘’pick and mix’’ service packages from as little as £75, you only pay for the services you need, to find out more click here.

How do I find out more about using a letting agent?

If you still have questions about using a letting agent or are unsure of which service level would suit your needs the best thing to do is simply give us a call or email. I promise we don’t bite.