The life of a Letting Agent is a very varied one!

 

We are a fairly small team and therefore we know the majority of our tenants and can link them to the right property as soon as they phone. However this isn’t always the case for some of our colleagues within the company who are not involved in lettings on a full time basis.   A great part of the day of a letting agent is spent on the telephone and the office experiences a very high volume of calls; this can mean that the person best placed to take your call will need to call back. To try and minimise the irritation caused to our tenants if they cannot speak to their preferred member of staff straight away we have decided to introduce a maintenance report facility via our website. This will enable tenants to enter brief details of any maintenance issues they need to report at their convenience and the appropriate member of our team will act upon this.

 

As well as spending huge amounts of time dealing with telephone calls we naturally have spells when we are out of the office. We may be carrying out a market appraisal, a viewing, a management visit or even attending training courses or meetings. We try to run our diary as efficiently as possible and anyone wanting to view a property is accommodated wherever possible. As a rule one member of staff should be available to carry out a viewing as short notice but naturally these do have to fit in with previously arranged appointments. If a property is being marketed and the outgoing tenant is still in residence we do have to respect their privacy and endeavour to give them as much notice as possible.

 

Returning to maintenance issues, we are lettings agents not plumbers, electricians, pest controllers or any of these other trades that we regularly have to call on. We use a ‘bank’ of local trades people who we have to try to build a good relationship with. We give these people a lot of work so they charge our landlords fairly – they also know that if they let us down we will not continue to use them. It also gives us great ‘pulling power’ – we were able to persuade plumbers to visit people in the snow at short notice when individual customers would not have succeeded. However we are reliant on the advice that we receive from these tradesmen because as I say, we are letting agents! If an electrician tells us that an installation is not up to standard it is pointless a landlord telling us that it never electrocuted him when he put it in!! Once such an issue is bought to our attention we naturally have a duty of care to investigate and ensure the safety of the tenant. 

 

And then there is legislation! Oh how the Government likes to make work for us. When they introduced the Tenancy Deposit Legislation we applauded despite the extra work and cost involved as overall it is a fairer system. There are things we don’t like about this particular legislation but I feel sure that most of you would glaze over if I continue to discuss it! The introduction of Energy Performance Certificates for the rented sector is something else altogether – I really fail to see the point of those but again the purpose of this blog is to try and entertain and inform not to bore!

 

So, that is a just a few things that may crop up in an average day. There are many, many other things do be done to ensure that all our properties are running along smoothly, whether we are looking for a new tenant for somewhere or managing an ongoing tenancy. We are handling client money on a daily basis so the accounting side of the job is ‘awesome’ but with the help of an excellent, if expensive software, very satisfying at the end of the day when the books balance! 

 

And then there is the time it take to write a blog …….