UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi

I am thinking of renting out a Property. I am considering managing the property myself rather than an Estate Agent by using an online agent to advertise on Right Move and Zoopla to find me a prospective tenant. There are a number of websites which offer this service. Has anyone used one they have had a good service with which they could recommend?

Looked at various and some offer more services than others dependent on the price you pay. Would prefer but necessary dependent on how easy/difficult it is for them to complete the Assured Shorthold Tenancies (AST). I could do it myself but don't want do it incorrectly. I have had a look propertyhawk website and they have one I could download.

Also do most who use online letting agents use their own credit reference check service (letting agents) as their own seems expensive but If I get another website to do this it would work out cheaper. As well as that as I am thinking of getting Rent Guarantee Insurance (opinions please) so could get the same provider to do both. Anyone recommend any? Do people take Rent Guarantee Insurance? is it worthwhile? guessing but not seen it mentioned a lot

Apologies of the long first post but just too much information out there to make an informed decision of who to choose mainly. Thanks in advance and hopefully I'll contribute to the forum once I'm more knowledgeable. 

I have used openrent recently. It was easy enough and quite good. They were doing a deal to get it listed on all the usual places like rightmove for free for 5 days. It then stays on other portals for longer.
It did have quite a few enquires.
Might be worth a go if you don't want to use an estate agent.
Open rent also offers ref check but I didn't use them. I used another online reference check service. Tenant verify.
A proper AST takes time to compile but there are lots of templates online you can get ideas from.

Hope that helps a bit. I am sure some other landlord guru's will make stronger comments.
I am still a novice but I have had experience.

Quote from: paulaa on July 13, 2016, 11:29:33 AM
I have used openrent recently. It was easy enough and quite good. They were doing a deal to get it listed on all the usual places like rightmove for free for 5 days. It then stays on other portals for longer.
It did have quite a few enquires.
Might be worth a go if you don't want to use an estate agent.
Open rent also offers ref check but I didn't use them. I used another online reference check service. Tenant verify.
A proper AST takes time to compile but there are lots of templates online you can get ideas from.

Hope that helps a bit. I am sure some other landlord guru's will make stronger comments.
I am still a novice but I have had experience.

Thanks for that. Open Rent was on my radar but did not look into them due to too many being about and Open Rent was just one of those I hadn't looked at.

I have visited their website and I must admit the range of services they offer is quite good all at a very competitive price. Not going to try and make this post into a sales pitch but their Rent Now option includes all the services I wanted including AST and reference checks as well as Deposit Registration and first month rent collection which I don't mind doing myself but worth getting I guess. Their rent guarantee is also at a reasonable price compared to others so most services are all at reasonable prices.

It seems more than likely I will go with Open Rent as have read reviews since reading your post and all were positive. Just have to decide whether I go with free trial or not as Rent Now (premium option) doesn't include a trial. Most obvious advantage of that I could potentially get a tenant for free but will not get the additional services I require eg AST if I find someone within 5 days but I have had a look at the downloadable AST from Open Rent and there is not much to it so could complete it myself.

Quote from: paulaa on July 13, 2016, 11:29:33 AM
Open rent also offers ref check but I didn't use them. I used another online reference check service. Tenant verify.
A proper AST takes time to compile but there are lots of templates online you can get ideas from.

Hope that helps a bit. I am sure some other landlord guru's will make stronger comments.
I am still a novice but I have had experience.

Any reason why you didn't use the Open Rent credit and opted for Tenant Verify?

Open Rent can do an AST for you. Did you opt to do your own? Any reason why?

Sorry to ask but just want to ensure I get it right.

Other posters welcome to comment obviously..

Everyone starts-out at some point... no-one is already a Landlord at the beginning. The decisions you take now will either set you right for the time this gig is yours, or create a millstone around your neck.

Why would you choose to write your own AST? It shows you care? No, well - OK, it does do that too, but a Landlord should know what is in their own AST and taking a boilerplate AST (might as go down WHSmith) is unlikely to get you to that point - yes, you can read it (just like anyone else) but there's no substitute for writing up your own AST that contains everything you need / want and doesn't contain anything you don't want. Plus, you can (if you wish) tailor the AST for specific properties - for example, I don't have a clause in saying that cars should be parked either on the driveway or within the boundaries of the property for the apartment I let out, nor do I have the clause about the Tenant allowing access for the GSC to happen - it's pointless.

Your approach is half in one camp, half in the other... you only want to use an Agent for Tenant Find - that's cool, I do that. But then you're abdicating some of the ongoing responsibility to them - the AST, I would not do that. I'm not saying it's wrong - and I'm sure thousands of people do that - but it doesn't jive with how I would go about it. I use an Agent for Tenant Find only (really, it's getting access to the major portals, lead management and doing referencing) - then they're out of the picture - I do inventory and schedule of condition, check-in, deposit protection, management and check-out.

I have my own document set for these activities. I am not a big-time Landlord, >10 properties, but the effort put in was worth it because the scale is there still.

Quote from: Hippogriff on July 16, 2016, 08:07:00 AM
Everyone starts-out at some point... no-one is already a Landlord at the beginning. The decisions you take now will either set you right for the time this gig is yours, or create a millstone around your neck.

Why would you choose to write your own AST? It shows you care? No, well - OK, it does do that too, but a Landlord should know what is in their own AST and taking a boilerplate AST (might as go down WHSmith) is unlikely to get you to that point - yes, you can read it (just like anyone else) but there's no substitute for writing up your own AST that contains everything you need / want and doesn't contain anything you don't want. Plus, you can (if you wish) tailor the AST for specific properties - for example, I don't have a clause in saying that cars should be parked either on the driveway or within the boundaries of the property for the apartment I let out, nor do I have the clause about the Tenant allowing access for the GSC to happen - it's pointless.

Your approach is half in one camp, half in the other... you only want to use an Agent for Tenant Find - that's cool, I do that. But then you're abdicating some of the ongoing responsibility to them - the AST, I would not do that. I'm not saying it's wrong - and I'm sure thousands of people do that - but it doesn't jive with how I would go about it. I use an Agent for Tenant Find only (really, it's getting access to the major portals, lead management and doing referencing) - then they're out of the picture - I do inventory and schedule of condition, check-in, deposit protection, management and check-out.

I have my own document set for these activities. I am not a big-time Landlord, >10 properties, but the effort put in was worth it because the scale is there still.

Made some good points. Will definitely have to look into creating my own AST as kinda makes sense you can put what you want and make it more specific to your own needs.

Not looked at Inventory check in, schedule of condition and check out yet. Any websites on where to get the templates and more information on completing these? As this is extremely important as don't want items missing and most important don't want the any damage to the property.