Rent
Firstly although this may seem quite obvious to most, students must ensure that they are financially able to afford moving out from home before they even think of logging onto Daft, Myhome or any other property website to start viewing your potential accommodation. You will be surprised at the amount of tenants in the property market who after one or two months of paying rent realise they are unable to meet the monthly requirements in rental payments. If you are unable to pay the rent on a consistent basis there is a chance of possible eviction from the property and an increase in rent or late fee based on the poor punctuality of payments.
To avoid any of these issues make sure and set a budget for your intended stay in the accommodation and match that with your sources of financial income whether it be a part time job, financial support from your family or student loan can do the trick! Getting into issues over missing your rental payments is the last thing you want as a first time tenant as it will affect your future opportunities of securing high quality rental property on the market and the ability to provide credibility to financial institutions in the future. Obviously sometimes students can find themselves in trouble with rental issues over simple mistakes and sometimes easily avoidable issues such as:
- A lack of documentation detailing rents paid and upcoming rents
- Inconvenient payment methods between owner and tenant
- Paying the rent on time
- Poor communication between landlords/estate agent and tenant
Above (Two different snap shots of the Rentview property management software that allows tenants to see communication from property manager and upcoming/past rental payments.)
Rent is usually paid on a monthly basis for most of property you are going to find this summer, on occasion a landlord may require you to pay on a weekly basis and I suggest you avoid this as speaking from experience (paying cast to a landlord) it is extremely inconvenient. Unfortunately there is no set method in the industry for collecting rent, you may be asked to do any of the following:
- Pay the rent in cash
- Deposit rent money into the owners bank account via your local branch
- Transfer funds via the internet into landlord or agents account
- Set up on a standing order with the agency or property owner
During my time renting I have experienced all four of the above methods for payment and a standing order set up by the agency or landlord is the best option to avoid missing your rent. Organising cash for a bank deposit or collection from the landlord can often result in someone not having the money on time, this has happened to me when house sharing with four others and it resulted in a 50e penalty fee. If you decide to house share with other students be careful about who choose to live for this reason as it can be unfair having to suffer from the actions of others.
If you are one of the tenants fortunate enough to move into a property where the agency is using the Rentview cloud based rent and property management system you will be provided with the following features through your agency account :
1. Access to your schedule of rents for the lease period
2. Comments from your property manager on your rent schedule
3. Automated receipts sent via e-mail when rent is marked as paid
4. Agency and property contact information
To access the information all you need is broadband connection and a desktop,latop or mobile device to login and stay up to date on your rental payments and communication from the property manager. This will help you ensure that the rent is paid on time and monitored efficiently so as to avoid any potential extra costs, communication errors and or disputes over payments. That’s all for today folks I hope you enjoyed the read and I hope students will find this information useful as they start to plan moving out for the first time. Please share the blog if possible and let me know your thoughts and comments on twitter @cormac_nugent!
In the next post I will cover further issues relating to your rent payments during a tenancy including proof of your payments and rent receipts, rent increases by the landlord during a tenancy, rent books and much more!