by Stella Kaye

Created on: November 28, 2010

Lettings and Management Choices

Depending on the individual circumstances and location of the property to be let, there are advantages and disadvantages to letting and managing a rental property yourself or entrusting the whole exercise to a real estate agent.

Finding tenants is relatively easy with the popularity of online advertising but finding one that is suitable is a different story and any prospective landlord must be informed as to what checks need to be performed before a tenancy can commence. Doing your homework first will save you a great deal of hassle later.

The prospective landlord can choose to do everything himself or he can hand it all over to an agent but there is usually a ‘Tenant find’ option whereby the agency will help the landlord find a suitable renter and then the landlord will deal with the ongoing management after that. There will be minimal cost to the landlord to place an advert online for a 'Tenant find' but an estate agency can often charge you a hefty chunk of your first month’s rental income.

Anyone letting a property for the first time would perhaps be best to seek advice from a reputable residential lettings and management company unless of course they already know other landlords who can provide them with sound advice and assistance should things go wrong.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself to see which would be the best decision for you:

Is the property more than fifteen to twenty miles away from your home? If it is then you would perhaps be wiser to opt for the total management package as you will soon come to resent travelling to and from the rental property on a regular basis.

What are your maintenance skills? If you are a builder or a plumber or an electrician you are in the enviable position of being able carry out just about everything anyway and will have no need to rely on anyone else to maintain your rental property.

The rest of us however will need to find a set of people with those skills who can be summoned at short notice to put things right. An agency will already have a selection of such skilled tradesmen on their books and this will thus save you a great deal of bother; however you will have to pay upwards of 10% of your rental income to the agency to manage the property for you and still pay bills for repairs and maintenance on top of that. If you are determined to be organised or you have a number of properties in the same area it will be more cost effective to manage them

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