UK Landlord Forum / Life

Hi There, new to this looking for some advice. A letting agency on a scottish council website has offered me a guaranteed income no matter wether the tennants are private or dss. The rent rate is good, there take is a wee bit high (15%), but for this they do everything.
Question...Has anybody had any dealings of this kind? Please advise if good or bad.
To me this seems to good to be true or am i just synical.

Cheers
Rents

I've been approached before, but never taken the offer. 15% seems extremely high.
When you say "everything", what does that involve?

Kind regards

Hi There,
            They take care of inventories pics of property the writing and signing of leases, they also vet tenants and take care of any emergency call outs. They also pursue tenants for any unpaid rent. I have spoken to a lawyer who has said that it is all pretty standard, but i just wanted to know if anyone else had any experience of this.

Cheers
Rents

Hi Rents,

In my experience anything that is "too good to be  true" usually is... Just to clarify though - is this a letting agent saying that they'll guarantee the rent on a property you own as well as taking care of tenant finding and all the legals etc?

either way 15% seems a bit high to me - it tends to eat away at your profits and let's be honest, we ain't a charity 

Are they really doing something that you can't do yourself? It's all down to how you leverage your time in the end and how much you're prepared to pay for the service...

If it's just a rent payment guarantee you are after there are schemes that will cover that for you that I use all the time.

I'm a great believer in self managing whenever you can.

Keep us posted on this.

Cheers, Tim

The agency will almost certainly take all available precautions when vetting tennants plus they will possibly take out insurance against defaulting tennants.  Hence the higher costs.

Forgot to mention:  some Universities will lease your property from you for a given period guaranteeing both income and maintenance of property. You then have nothing to do with it until the lease expires when they must hand it back to you in the same condition it was taken on by them.
Newcastle Upon Tyne University do this for example but they will only accept good properties in areas where there are high student demands for property.
Something you might be interested in as an alternative.