landlords and tenants

May 22, 2013

Tenant maintenance – Top Tips

Tenant maintenance property management issues

When managing multiple rental properties, it is important to deal with all property management issues in an efficient manner. If you manage a portfolio of 50 rental units, you will be dealing with a considerable amount of potential property management issues within the month. Remember, tenants can call at any time and depending on the urgency of the matter you could receive calls out of hours. I am sure any experienced property manager has received that phone call whilst sitting down to dinner, from over-excited tenants who have lost their keys or set off their alarm.

Make sure you have tenant maintenance procedures in place

tenant maintenance

Credit Image: epSos.de

1. Acknowledge the issue with a prompt reply

Acknowledge the issue with a prompt reply to the tenant to ascertain that you have all the correct information. Once you have noted all of the information from the tenant, inform the tenant that you will update the landlord. Depending on the relationship you have with your landlord or the agreement you have in place, you may be able to make property management decisions without your landlord’s permission. Most letting agencies have an agreement with landlords that any property management issues costing under £200 can be overseen by the agent. If this is the case, make sure that you have this covered in your agreement with your landlord before proceeding.

2. Contact tradesmen immediately

Get onto your handyman or tradesperson immediately to organise a time to fix the problem. Remember some tradespersons will be busy working on different jobs and could possibly let you down at the last minute. It is always useful to have a backup tradesmen you know who could possible give you credit until the rent is collected. If you are a more established letting agent, you may employ your own tradespersons or contractors, so you will know how efficiently they normally operate.

3. Non-emergency property management issues

Aim for a 24-hour turn around for non-emergency property management issues. This is a must to avoid disgruntled tenants from burning your ears by talking about you in a negative way or somehow getting in touch with the landlord. For emergencies, obviously the problem needs to be solved immediately and would most likely involve you visiting the property to deal with the issue head on!

Sure isn’t that why the landlord pays you to manage the property?

Tenant maintenance

Some of the common issues tenants will have:

Plumbing problems
Electric problems
Lost keys
Complaints from neighbours
Parties in the neighbouring property
Washing machine is broken
Fridge is broken
Faulty alarm or forgotten alarm code
Shower pump gone down

The list can go on with many more issues ultimately its how you deal with your tenant maintenance requests that make you a good property manager. Some agencies use task manager software to help them.

by Colin Napper

Articles of interest

Management of communication

Questions to ask tenants

April 5, 2013

Creating your YouTube channel

In our previous blog, Why use YouTube for marketing, we discussed the benefits of using rental marketing videos for your letting agency.

Creating your YouTube channel

So the first step in rental marketing videos is setting up a channel to host the videos. There are a number of video hosting platforms but we have used the most popular, YouTube. In this demonstration, I am going to go through creating your YouTube channel.

When creating your YouTube channel it is very important to keep SEO in mind, as this is really going to help the channel to get traffic. If you didnt know already, YouTube is owned by Google, so by using SEO with your brand’s keywords and marketing message in your YouTube profile, you are feeding Google’s search appetite.

Below is a video blog showing how to do this and here is a link to the YouTube channel I just created: Letting Agent UK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsZckmGYfU8

Creating your Letting agency video channel (by Rentviewsoftware)

by Andreas Riha

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

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

September 5, 2012

Rentview Launches new Free service for Tenants

The team have been hard at work lately preparing for the launch of https://tenant.rentview.com/ a new free service to tenants. The new service was designed to help a tenant through the letting cycle by:

Aiding them in securing a property and becoming more marketable.
Help with the moving in process and management of Utilities.
Help them protect their deposit and the landlords assets through Inventories
Act as a payment reference for future properties or loan requirements

All great services to offer to people currently renting property throughout Ireland and abroad.Take a look at the homepage below for a better idea of the service:

As mentioned in point one above the online service aids a tenant in securing the desired property of their choice. Once a tenant joins tenant.rentview.com they can start building their profile. This can include uploading a profile image and a short description of who you are and your requirement. You can also begin to upload some previous landlord references, a work or college reference , guarantors reference etc. All of this important information is now stored in one secure place and ready to be shared with the landlord or letting agent of a property you wish to rent. This saves you time and money in organising your references and also improves your chances of securing a property which may be in high demand. Here is a quick video describing how to get started with your account:

I will be continuing this blog series over on the new tenant blog at http://rentviewtenantprofile.tumblr.com/ along with the student renting series. Look out for some more great content on this blog as we look to continue the online marketing series and up the humorous content too! Thanks for listening guys, follow me at @Rentview_ and the new @Rentview_Tenant profile and don’t forget to like us on Facebook here and here.

by Rentview

June 25, 2012

How to read your electricity / gas bill with Electric Ireland

“How come my bill is so high?” As a letting agent or landlord a common question you may get from a tenant is exactly that. In most cases its not that the bill is so high its about understanding the bill. For some tenants they may not be familiar with how the utility companies work. This can be the case for first time tenants and foreign tenants renting in Ireland for the first time more so. They may not be familiar with deposits or how the billing system works.

Through this useful link provided by Electric Ireland you can now see what exactly everything means. Now the next time you get a call from a tenant asking “How Come my energy bills are so high” you can go through the bill and help them understand what everything means.

From my own experience a lot of the times I got asked this question was based on 2 points.

1. Reading was an estimate. A bill can be estimated when the meter reader employed by the utility company to visit a property and read residential readings could not gain access to the meter. (Meters can be located inside a property and sometimes locked away in communal meter rooms) If this is the case the utility company estimates the readings based on previous consumption.

2. Security Deposit. When you open a new utility account the provider in most cases will seek a security deposit against the account. This has been brought out over the last few years to help protect the utility company against tenants absconding with a large unpaid bill.

You may also find our previous Blog on: Opening an account with an energy provider useful

Click through here to view the interactive bill Reading your electricity / gas bill with Electric Ireland

As always we would be happy to hear your feedback on this topic.

Please feel free to comment, share , tweet etc.

by Andreas Riha

March 13, 2012

Rental property – Fake landlord scam

Following on from the cheque cashing scam its important to remember that not only the agent / landlord who is the potential target in property rental scams. Through out my career within the lettings industry I have spoken to numerous tenants who have experienced such a scam. The fake landlord scam is where tenants hand over a deposit and possible rent upfront to a fake landlord. This scam normally happens as follows.

A home hunter responds to an ad normally on a free advertising website but could also be on a property portal, local paper etc. The home hunter arrives to view the property which is priced below the norm in a well sought after area. The tenant very much interested and in assuming they are getting a bargain is convinced to hand over a deposit. So what is wrong here you ask? Well this landlord is doing this to every set of tenant who has called to view the place. The landlord could do this for the whole day in 30 minute intervals or even a couple of days. The first time anyone is made suspicious is when the phone number the tenant contacted the landlord on is no longer reachable. Here is the story of a particular case in Dublin of such incidence.

In some cases the brazen fake landlord will also arrange to meet, sign a lease, hand over keys and collect the rent in advance perhaps in a hotel lobby or coffee shop. When the home hunter arrives with lease and key in hand at the dream property the key does not work. There might even be a queue of new tenants looking to see if their key works. Here is such a case where once again the con man was caught.

So as you can see just because someone has possession of a property it does not mean they are the owner or acting on the owners behalf. It is ever so important to know who you are handing the deposit over to. Bank draft & cheques are always the best way to give a deposit as they are traceable. Under some genuine circumstances a property may require something to hold it for a night. Perhaps until you can get a draft and if you are placing a cash deposit it should be only a token amount to show you are serious. I would say nothing more than €50, this should be ok for one evening. Most if not all professional agents and landlords will be fine with this and if they are not it might be better to walk away.

The above incidents happen to a very, very, very small percentage of rental properties. But it can happen and it is always better to be safe then sorry.

Other blogs which may interest you are The Rental Property Scam & Property Rental scam cheque cashing

by Andreas Riha