Page 6 – The software for estate & letting agents.

March 12, 2013

Questions to ask tenants my top 10

Interviewing questions to ask tenants

The property has been painted, advertised, shown and now you have a couple of different sets of tenants that have expressed interest in taking the property. So you think you have all the hard work done in finding a tenant for your property. Well that would be correct now you just have to make sure that the tenants you select are the right tenants.

Here is a list of 10 questions to allow you understand what your tenants are.

Questions to ask tenants

1. Why are you moving?

It is a straight forward question which should give you the answers you need. This is a great opening question to ask tenants. The type of answers will be varied but typically- because of my job, looking for more room, prefer this location, lease expired etc. The information you are asking here should match with the references.

First Time Renter -If a tenant has not rented in the past it will be your choice to proceed or not. Every tenant has to start somewhere and just because they have not rented before doesn’t mean they will be bad tenants. Make sure to confirm this later by asking for a current bank statement.

2. When are you looking to move?

This is obviously important for you as the sooner you will have it rented the sooner you have revenue coming in on the property. Whilst it is always ideal for a tenant to say tomorrow or ASAP make sure you ask follow up questions. How come your looking to move so quickly? There could be a genuine reason behind this and depending on where your property is located the availability might be tight so they could be looking for some time. What you want to do here is see if the tenants story is all coming together on what they have said already.

3. How many people is in the group?

Just because a set of two tenants come to view the property it doesn’t mean that they will be the only ones living there. You really need to ask this question and back it up by saying it is important for the insurance on the property and it states in the lease that only the named people on the lease can live there. Tell tale signs of potentially extra tenants are 2 people expressing interest for a 3 bedroom property etc.

4. What is the total income of the tenants?

This for some can be a difficult question to ask and some tenants might get bothered by you asking it. It is a very important question, just like you get asked about what your salary is before getting a loan. The tenant needs to confirm they have the ability to pay what the rent is every month. Financial experts suggest that a maximum of 35% of your salary should go on rent. So if a set of tenants are on minimum wage they have a Gross salary of around £2,500 so there maximum rent should be £875 per month. A copy of a bank statement should confirm all of this.

tenant questions

5. Has the tenant got a months rent and deposit in advance.

I would highly recommend getting this from any possible tenant. If the tenant is unable to outlay this then I would ask questions on whether they are the right tenants for your property. If there are any doubts that the tenants are unable to hand this over on the move in date the likely hood is that this could be the same with the rent in the future.

6. How long of a lease are they looking for?

I would suggest here that a 6 month AST lease is the preferred option. If a tenant says anything to suggest that 6 months is to long of a lease period to commit to walk away. Tenants can say things like “I want to run the lease in line with my work contract which I only have 3 months left of but I would be certain it will be renewed”. It seems reasonable but if it doesn’t you are going to go through this whole renting process again in 3 months.

7. That the tenant is happy to rent as is

Having a tenant to move into a property and ask on the lease signing day for a new bed, sofa, wooden floors etc can get things off to a bad start. This can especially be the case if you have kept the property vacant for a couple of weeks for the tenant. It is going to a financial burden for you to say no and look for a new set of tenants. The best thing to do is ask if the tenant is happy with everything and if not to let you know now. If a tenant finds out the washing machine is broke after a week that is fine but wanting a new one because it has not a large enough drum is a problem.

8. Rental References

This is very important and although you might you a good ability to read peoples character I would highly recommend backing up the conversation to date with references.

Work reference– A letter to confirm the tenant is currently employed by the company and a name and contact number to confirm. Do not be too worried about full time permanent as a lot of companies do not offer this and prefer 11 month renewable contracts.

Landlord reference – Preferably with a land line to confirm the tenancy with the landlord.

This blog posting on rental references checking might also interest you

Utilities with previous address – This is a good way to confirm the previous address and is essential for a tenant stating it is the first time renting.

Bank Statement – This should confirm the tenant’s ability to pay as it would be best to set up a standing order for rent. It can be used as a utility also but preferably as a separate document.

I.D- Copy of valid Passport or Driving license as a preference

National Insurance number- To confirm the identity and also needed for the PRTB registration.

9. Any Pets or Do you smoke

Might well seem like obvious questions to ask tenants but I would highly recommend asking them. I have personally seen many leases end due to the above. Some tenants may think its fine to have a pet dog or to smoke in the kitchen of the property. If this is out of bounds for your property make sure to ask.

10. And lastly…Any questions

This simple question could unearth a reason that this property might not suit this tenant which they may not realise until they move in.

After all of these questions hopefully you have a better understanding or your new potential tenants and which one suits your property best. If a potential set of tenants do not suit your property you need to walk away as having a tenant in which doesn’t suit can be very costly, stressful and time consuming. I hope this has been helpful for you. If you feel I have left something out in my questions to ask tenants please let me know

by Andreas Riha

March 11, 2013

Management of communication

Good communication between your Letting Agency, your Landlords and Tenants is a vital tool in keeping your customers happy and retaining them going forward. The office phone will usually start ringing from 9am until 5pm with numerous queries or information from tenants and landlords; where is this month’s rent? Can I have a breakdown of my accounts? There is a problem with my washing machine! The radiator in the main bedroom doesn’t work!

If you manage rental properties you will surely have heard some of these topics or issues arise from landlords and tenants. The problem today is there are too many ways of communicating issues or problems into your office and the information can get lost if you don’t set down some rules or guidelines.

I list below some of the main communication channels used by landlords and tenants when contacting you or your office.

Management of Communication

via Telephone

The trusty telephone is still the number one way landlords and tenants will communicate with letting agents and property managers. If you use this as your main point of contact for your customers, expect to get a deluge of messages come Monday morning on rent and property management issues. Depending on the size of your rental management portfolio you may need to hire a receptionist to take care of the queries coming in.

via Email

This is a very popular and a preferred way for some agencies to communicate with customers, especially with landlords who may be in a different time zone. With access to Smartphones, it is easier than ever to communicate with tenants and landlords and you can sync your work email up to your Smartphone easily. The downside is, you may never be off work with emails popping up frequently, and the communications never stop. The main danger here is that if you get an email in the night time, come the start of the next working day, you may have forgotten to act upon it.

via Text

Text message is another way of communication management used and sometimes preferred by your customers. It is usually used in non-urgent situations by tenants looking to rent a property or to alert property managers to issues within the property. Tenants along with potential tenants who have poor oral English will send a text as they tend to be better at writing than speaking over the phone.

via Office

You will still get some landlords and tenants who will call into your office to speak to you as they prefer a more personal approach to all of this (old/new) technology stuff. The good reason for having a nice office is to be able to welcome your landlords and tenants in for a chat. If unavailable, the best approach here would be to log the issues in a diary or leave a message with the designated property manager who will deal with the query if you are not there.

via Social media

Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter could be used to communicate with your customers but should probably only be used to promote your brand or notify of an emergency or announcement. This is open for debate and some Letting Agencies may prefer to communicate with people via social media as they can be seen to be proactive at dealing with things.

via distributed messages from different communication channels

Imagine a property manager using his diary to write down a call from a landlord, communicating with a tenant via text or emailing a landlord their invoices. If your agency uses all of the above to communicate with landlords on rent and property management issues it is vital you use a good tool for the management of communication. A good CRM or online diary with a task manager is a vital tool in your armoury because your information could get lost if it is not noted down or logged.

What form of management of communication do you use in your letting agency? We would love to hear and share with other letting agents and property managers what works best for them. Let us know!

by Colin Napper

March 7, 2013

Finding landlords – Expand your letting agency portfolio in 5 steps

Finding landlords

Finding new landlords is the biggest challenge for letting agents and property managers. For most letting agencies and rental managers, finding tenants in today’s rental market is easier than finding landlords. So how can you increase your marketability as a letting agency to new landlords? Well there are a number of housekeeping procedures that some letting agents fall behind on which we will discuss below. These can improve marketability to new landlords and help in finding landlords to expand an agency’s portfolio.

finding-landlords

1. Advertised properties on portals

A lot of landlords today look through property portals to try and estimate what their property will achieve on the market prior to it being available. They will look at properties in the area, pictures, descriptions etc. So it is very important that your listed properties are looking their best. Have a detailed property description, mind your typos, make sure your pictures are professional and not taken from a low mega pixel digital camera. I would also strongly advise against night time photos. Even if the market is busy and you know that if it was listed without pictures you would still get a dozen showings in 48 hours ensure every listing is as professional as possible.

2. Profile Page about your letting agency

Once again landlords are busy looking through portals and having a profile with 2 lines of text is just lazy. I am not saying list a page full of text but put some thought into what your services are and what makes your rental agency stand out against the busy crowd. If there is possible to upload thumbnails of the staff, do it. This is a service business and that means it’s a people business so let landlords know who you are.

3. About us

This is similar to the above and is also relevant to your website. There are a lot of property websites that I visit and I can’t find out any information on the staff in the agency. Have they experience? Who are they? Have they been working in the industry long? This is all information that potential landlords really love to know. So why not really sell yourself here?

4. Services

We provide a full letting and property management service. This sometimes is as much information that is on a letting agencies profile or website and it’s not going to get you a large volume of inbound inquiries. List your services and if there is something that makes you stand out list it. Do you provide Digital Inventories on all your let properties? Do you offer a landlord free online account login on all managed properties? Free energy certs on all rentals? If there is something you can offer or currently offer that makes you stand out let potential landlords know about it.

5. Testimonials

In the information age that we live in there is nothing more appealing than customer testimonials in finding landlords. Now a written testimonial by Jack Smith is good but landlords may think is it genuine? A picture of Jack Smith beside his testimonial is more powerful. You can take this to the next level and include a small video clip of Jack Smith giving a testimonial. One of my favourite types of testimonials I am seeing now is Jack Smith leaving a testimonial on a Facebook page. Extract this and post it on your website and link it to your Facebook page. This way your new landlords can see its genuine and also might Like your Facebook page.

finding-landlords-letting-agent

Following this list can only increase your brand and image as a excellent and trustworthy letting agent or property manager. I would love for you to tell me what number 6, 7 or even 8 could be on this list so why not comment and let me know? Finding landlords is not easy but I hope this list will allow you find more.

As always, please feel free to share and ask any questions you may have.

Letting agents software

by Andreas Riha

March 5, 2013

How to collect rent

Collect rent

One of the fundamental tasks a letting agent or property manager will undertake when managing a rental portfolio is to effectively manage the rent collection. There is a whole ecosystem working here and if you have a good Rental Management Software system in place, it saves you a lot of time and effort. It also helps if you have managed to secure good quality referenced tenants for your properties, then you can reduce the possibility of the extra work load.

The reality for some letting agencies is that managing the rental payments from tenants is quite a stressful (Full time) job. If all goes to plan and tenants pay on time via standing order or direct debit then the rent paying eco system flows perfectly. Tenant paying on time means the letting agency receives fees on time and the Landlord / Mortgage is paid on time. Usually what happens here is your landlord has a very good experience dealing with your letting agency and you retain the landlord as a customer.

collect-rent

When managing rental properties it is important letting agents and property manager’s setup efficient ways to collect the monthly or weekly rent. Agents who use Property Management Software can reduce admin time. Below I have listed some of the most popular methods.

How to collect rent

Standing order: The most cost effective way to manage rental payments is by setting up a standing order with your tenants for the rental payments. Make sure if you are managing multiple rental payments you include a reference code to identify the rent payment.

collect-rent-software

Direct debit: This is a great way to collect rent payments and gives letting agencies great control when administrating rental payments. Similar to a standing order but with better controls, please beware of any cost implications for your letting agency if tenants funds bounce. I recently came across a company who facilitate the collection of funds via direct debit called www.gocardless.com who charge up to £2 per transaction.

Collecting cash: The oldest method used to collect rent. When managing rental payments, this is the one method I would not recommend you implement if you are managing a mid-size portfolio. There are too many issues with collecting rent via cash from tenants each month. I hear from too many letting agencies who allow their office to be used as a bank for tenants to lodge cash. It is better to use another method to collect rent. Some of the issues which could arise include:

Losing or misplacing cash in office.
Leaving your office open to robbery.
Fraud issues with staff members administrating cash transactions.
Cost of bank charges for cash lodgements can be expensive.
Administration time managing cash lodgements.

Bank lodgement: Allowing your tenants lodge funds directly to your bank is another method used by some property managers for their rent management. Agents need to be aware of the bank charges levied for allowing tenants to lodge to your bank account when using this method to collect rent. You will also need to be aware of lodged rental payments which are not referenced and from previous experience managing a rental portfolio, I can tell you that this can be an administration nightmare.

Credit card: With increased access to debit and credit cards this could be a way to collect rent in the future but the costs are just too high at the moment and to get a merchant ID from a provider is sometimes difficult. Would you pay 2.9% or (£14.50) to collect rent of £500 from your tenants?

You may also be interested in this infographic on The Costs of taking Monthly Rental Payments .

Let us know what your experiences are in rent management, or if you have any questions, do get in touch!

by Colin Napper

February 27, 2013

Letting agents revenue

I recently got a call from a Rentview subscriber who was hoping to maximize her letting agency revenue opportunities from her current portfolio.

When we got chatting, we went through what percentage of her landlords had taken the letting agencies full property management package against the let-only service The response was standard enough with approx 1 in every 4 landlords choosing the full property management package. So that meant that the remaining 75% were choosing the let only service.

letting agents revenue

Letting agents revenue can be restricted by lack of communication

The problem here is that letting agents will not typically contact a let-only landlord during the lease cycle. The majority of letting agents using letting agency software or an organised filing system will only contact the landlord and tenant in the last month of the lease. The result of this can be rewarding for a letting agency, but what if there was greater communication throughout the lease period? The rewards could be even greater.

In a typical letting and management agent’s portfolio, they have let-only landlords who are midway through a lease period and others that have gone by the initial lease period signed. So for each type of landlord there could be a different approach used.

Methods to increase letting agents revenue

Mid-lease landlord– a landlord who you helped to find tenants but who is not receiving your management services.

One way to deal with this potential repeat customer could be a quick check-up call with the landlord to see how everything is going with the tenancy. Is there anything that you can help the landlord with? Is there any rent outstanding? Is the tenant maintaining the property? Does the landlord need any advice on new regulations?

Being a landlord isn’t easy, and as you are the experienced professional, you can offer your assistance. It is a great reminder of your services and shows the landlord that you are an agency focused on customer service and increasing your letting agency revenue

Expired lease period landlord– a landlord who had been contacted at the end of the lease term and wanted to renew the lease himself or let the lease roll.

Here you could use a similar approach to the above but it can also be used as a direct revenue opportunity for your letting agency. Why not offer something for free to this landlord, like a quick midterm inspection? A midterm inspection is a quick drop into the property to see how everything is going. This typically won’t take more than 5 minutes inside the rental property with the tenants, followed up with a call to the landlord.

Better still why not offer the landlord a detailed midterm inspection report? This typically would involve pictures along with notes on the property condition, items which may need attention and give the landlord a feel for how is property is being maintained.

increase letting agency revenue

What you can charge will depend on how you deliver the inspection. I know that letting agents using the Digital Inventory reports are charging somewhere around £80 for this service. A digital inventory report includes detailed date-stamped and geo-tagged photos, detailed condition reports and is all accessible on the cloud. Check out how to use the Rental Property Inventory App.

Your portfolio and your clients are your letting agency’s assets and if you don’t take good care of them they will depreciate. Letting agencies that want a better way to manage their property management portfolio may be interested in our Letting Agency Software.

Letting agents’ revenue on let-only clients should not be restricted to an annual letting or renewal fee. By offering additional services and communicating with landlords, letting agents can increase revenue!

by Andreas Riha

February 12, 2013

Letting agency business model changing in Ireland

With fewer properties on the rental market and more Estate Agents offering a letting service, letting agents will need to diversify to retain previous years’ revenues.

Letting agency business model changing

According to the the latest DAFT report issued on the 11th of February, the availability of Rental property in the capital is at a 6 year low and 4 years nationally. In fact there is only a 1/4 of the amount of properties listed today that were listed back in 2009 in the capital.

letting-agency-business-model-changing

With the average tenancy in place at 19 months the tenancy churn is not there for agents to make fees more regularly. That is unless an agent gets a property to full management where they can take a fee every month. The Rentview team speak with letting agents on a daily basis. These agents are looking at property and rent management as a way of increasing revenue and being able to forecast revenue month on month. Something that they are not able to do in a let-only model.

Currently there are just over 2000 properties marketed in Dublin and a pool of approx 200 agencies. That’s an average of only 10 units per agency. This does not take into effect the number of ghost units being advertised also (units which are let agreed or marketed with a number of agents) … and they say the Taxi industry is overcrowded!

recession-business-model-changing

So what else are letting agents doing to increase revenue? Well they are being creative and flexible as to what their landlords require. Some are offering complete inventories, midterm inspections, lease renewals. In fact, we even came across a few agents who are offering marketing services, to save the landlord the work of marketing properties on online portals. So as we can see, many are offering bespoke services to suit a landlord rather than just a let-only or a let and manage service.

How is your letting agency standing out from the crowd and keeping solid revenue coming in? Is your letting agency business model changing? You may also be interested on our blog posting finding landlords.

by Andreas Riha

Letting Agents Software

February 7, 2013

Letting agency website design

In our last blog post on letting industry challenges we looked at how winning new landlords was one of the current biggest challenges for letting agents. Apart from providing an excellent service to your landlords and winning referrals, your website is currently your next best marketing tool. The problem is, as we discussed, that many letting agents neglect their website and their letting agency website design.

How to use your strong letting agency website design to build a portfolio

Image Credit: Jayel Aharem

Letting agency SEO

So let’s start by doing a quick health check on your website to see how people are currently finding you. There are a couple of simple enough ways to get under the hood of your site, I would recommend using Google Analytics (click here for a previous blog on Analytics) or Google webmaster tools. You can access these by simply setting up a free Google account (if you haven’t already got one) and simply searching for them. You will need access to the control panel of your website to install a simple code into your website as a security feature. It’s quite simple but if that is something you are not comfortable doing, just ask who ever looks after your site to install the code.

Analyse your website

If you can’t access either of these a simple way to get some information on your website is to got through Alexa. Here you can get a quick overview of where your website ranks. It also gives you the chance to see keyword queries that bring a high percentage of traffic to a particular URL. So when here, check your own site and then perhaps a competitor who is doing well.

Once you get the site up, you can go through and click onto search analytics to see the top search queries which are driving traffic to your competitor’s website. Compare it with your own. Is your competitor generating more traffic through search terms? Are the search terms they rank highly in ones which you wish to gain traffic through? If so, they are probably working more effectively on SEO than your own site. Most letting agents are looking at finding landlords through their website SEO.

How to use your website as a visitor

Search the term that you think a new landlord would search to find a property manager or letting agent in your area, then see who ranks the highest. Now visit their site on Alexa to find out more about them. Learn from their website and implement changes needed to move your website up the search ranking.

Another interesting statistic to find out is how many back links your competitor has. The more back links a site has, the more attractive the website is for search engines to return that site on the first page of a search result (or SERP). A back link is your website’s URL on another website. Below is how a back link looks:

https://rentview.co/blog/data-backup-for-agencies/ or if hyperlinked in text, the same link might look like this.

If you want to know more about link building strategies this is a great place to start. In order for your website to generate traffic, it is very important to look at your letting agency website design.

by Andreas Riha

February 5, 2013

Letting industry challenges

What is the biggest challenge in the letting industry today?

This is a question I ask letting agents regularly, and it seems that winning new instructions is one of the biggest letting industry challenges out there at the moment. With rental properties being in such high demand there has never been a better time to rent property. With the average tenancy term increased and more people renting – it’s simply supply and demand. So what can letting agents do to increase their rental listings?

Where do most of your tenants find your listings at the moment?

Letting industry shop window

letting-industry

The internet is the majority of letting agents’ biggest shop window and a lot of the time it is better than any shop window on the high street. The problem is that many agents neglect their own website thinking that just because it is live it will get them new listings from landlords. However, the internet is a very busy high street and if you’re not managing your website correctly the competition is going to attract the lion’s share.

I mean, you would not open a letting agency and not place a sign over the door or advertise the fact that you are a letting agency, would you? I would not have thought so, but this is what some agencies are doing on the internet. So how can you find out how easy you are to find on the internet for potential landlords, and tenants for that matter? Begin some search engine research today! SEO or search engine optimization is important for all businesses, including those within the letting industry, who have an online presence nowadays. For more information on SEO, see our blogs below.

letting-industry

Blogs which may interest you on this topic

Find out more about letting agency seo

How to win customers through a Google adwords advertising campaign

by Andreas Riha

January 18, 2013

Letting agency accounts

Letting agency accounts update

We have been busy gathering feedback from our users and implementing changes to improve your experience and needs with your Rentview agency account. So what’s new?

With the development team’s time spent primarily on accounting and preparing the client account for the last quarter of 2012, there was not a huge amount of visual changes to Rentview. Your Rentview account will now track all monies in and out of your client’s account in line with regulation.

Via the Accounts toolbar there are now 5 Tabs

Rents- The “Rents” tab allows you to track what rents are overdue, due today and due within the next seven days. This is shown through a traffic light system. Here, you can reconcile the payments as received and partially paid. As you know, this is can be the busiest part of the maintenance of your letting agency accounts.

Statements- The “Statements” tab monitors what rents have been processed as received; either in your client account or in cash en route to be deposited into your client account.

Deposits- The “Deposits” tab reports on what tenancy deposits you are holding in your client account. This will only report on the deposits that are selected as held in client account when starting a new lease term on a property. Once a tenancy has ended after the lease term or prematurely the deposit can be reconciled out of the client account.

Fees– The “Fees” tab reports on what Agency Fees are currently being held in your client account. An agency fee will appear in your client account after you process payments from a landlord’s statement page as paid. An agency fee needs to be added as such under the landlord’s statement page under each monthly invoice. You can clear your agency fees from your client account into your business or office account as often as you wish.

Tradesman- The “Tradesman” tab allows you to track what deductions are in your client account and due to be taken from rental payments. A tradesman invoice is any deduction to be made from a rental payment which is not an agency fee. Deductions could represent a tradesperson, supplier, petty cash, ad hoc expenses etc. You can select any tradesman account to see what is currently outstanding in payment, what is in your client account and can be paid, and what was paid in the past.

Making your letting agency accounts easier to manage

All of the information here will allow you to reconcile and report on what monies are currently in your client account and who they belong to in line with client account regulation. An accounts summary tab in your agency configuration will report on the accumulated amounts. An accounts feature to be released in early 2013 will be the accounts statement / ledger page. This will show you the history of money in and out of your client account, similar to your bank statement.

That’s it for today folks, if you have any questions, you can get in touch with us on our Facebook!

by Rentview

Articles of interest

How to collect rent

Letting agent revenues