Tenants Fees in Ireland

Tenants Fees

Do you charge your tenants fees or administration fees? That is the question I asked letting agents across Ireland over the last couple of weeks.

So why did I ask it?

With the rental industry seeing huge demand at the moment most letting agents cannot get enough properties to let out. Most letting agents I’m speaking with on a daily basis are seeing increased costs in running their letting agency both legally and professionally. So with a reduced amount of vacant rental stock to let and increased overheads some letting agents are starting to struggle financially.

Letting Agents Survey Results-

Is it Legal to charge tenants fees in Ireland?

Well if you look at Section 90 of the Property Services (Regulation) Act 2011 it is not-
90.—(1) Subject to subsection (2), any provision (whether express
or implied) in an agreement in respect of the sale or letting of land
whereby the purchaser or tenant, as the case may be, is required to
pay or otherwise bear the cost of the licensee’s fees or expenses in
respect of the sale or letting, as the case may be, shall be void, and
any moneys paid pursuant to such a provision shall be recoverable
as a simple contract debt in a court of competent jurisdiction.

(2) Nothing in subsection (1) shall affect the liability of a person
to pay fees or expenses to a licensee in respect of the acquisition of
any land where the licensee has been retained by the person to
acquire such land and does not also act, in respect of such acquisition,
on behalf of the person from whom the land is acquired.

So from reading the relevant sections in the Property Services (Regulation) Act 2011 charging a tenant an administration fee would be illegal.

Prospects not Tenants

It however does not state if charging a potential tenant would be illegal i.e a person who views a property but fails to proceed into a lease.

A PSR representative quotes “As you may know, the interpretation of the law is a matter for the Courts. I am not aware of any Court action in relation to alleged contraventions of section 90 of the Act so cannot give you references to same. Section 90 refers to tenants (not prospective tenants) and it would be a matter for the Courts to interpret if prospective tenants should have the same rights.”

Charging tenants to view a property

You currently show potential tenants a lot of property with only a small percentage converting into becoming a tenant. Depending on your location some tenants may only view one property with you, so why would a tenant pay to view a property? Unless they are desperate I cannot see this ever happening and would see it as a disastrous business decision.

Receiving an Offer

This is an area where I personally feel along with other agents that there is the ability to charge an administration fee. This is how it works in other markets such as in the UK. If at any stage the tenant pulls out or has given misleading or false information about his/her references that the administration fee is charged. However if the tenant proceeds to sign a lease the fee be refunded in full.

Agent’s comments on this

“I think the fee could be refunded to the tenant if he/she takes a property from the agent. If however he/she is looking through various apartments with several agents then the fee should be retained for administration charges”

“In some respects it is a business crime not to charge tenants fees, especially if they walk away for he deal before signing, as can happen. Absolutely the norm in the UK for the tenants to be charged admin/credit check fees. Also very interesting that many tenants coming into Dublin from overseas expect they will be charged? I’m asked the question regularly! Would love to see it become standard industry practice.”

Charging Prospects

There is also the argument that by charging a tenant you are double charging the landlord.

Agent’s comments on this

“The landlord is king and pays a fee to find a tenant, charging a tenant could be the difference between an empty property or an occupied property as some tenant may avoid the agency solely because of this if I was the paying landlord I would not be happy and would seek another agency.”

“I feel that we get our fees from the Landlord so there is no reason to charge tenants as well. There are enough charges without adding“

Mid lease expenses

When managing some properties having fees in place will help with the overall costs associated with managing the property. These fees can be avoided however for example where a tenant consistently lodges rent in cash into an office or bank then a charge is incurred. Most banks charge approx .5% on all cash deposits so for the average agent this is 10% of your fee gone on bank charges.

Agent’s comments on this

“The reason we started was because Bank Charges are crazy and tenants even though they are asked to never transfer the funds but bring in the deposits/rents into office. This is causing higher bank charges and we have passed it on as we cannot afford to carry this cost. It is a small cost €30 for them to bare and to this date we have never received a negative comment.”

Check out these blogs on rent collection “costs of lodging rents” & “How to collect rent”

“I do have in my lease a 300.00 charge held from the deposit should the tenant break their lease which is very effective. It covers re letting costs as well as PRTB charge etc.”

Membership Fees

Even though the wording of the act states that you cannot pass on any fees to tenants some agencies charge fees. These agents call these fees “membership fees”

Agents Comments on this

“We charge this for each tenancy and at the renewal stages also now. It is an administration charge or a membership charge as such. This is only charged to residential tenants. These charges pay for reference checks, changing utilities, bank fees etc all the way to providing a character reference at the end of the tenancy.”

The Results

Well its clear to see there is a huge appetite from agents to start to charge tenants fees. 69% of letting agents who answered this survey are either planning to or willing to if other agents start to charge.

Analysis

So by charging prospective tenants at any point prior to them actually becoming a tenant is from my understanding the only way to work inside the act. Charging tenants for optional expenses incurred though out the lease term once highlighted within the lease may be the only other option as highlighted with banking fees above.

I am only opening the debate on whether letting agents should charge a fee or not, I am not in a position to legally advise any letting agent. If you are looking to increase your revenue but not looking to charge tenants fees here is a list of 30 free ways to market to landlords

Your Thoughts

What is your thoughts on tenants fees in Ireland. Are you a letting agent, landlord or a tenant who would like to share your opinion and open a discussion on this important subject.

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

September 25, 2012

Starting a Letting agency: Letting Agents and Under-used Marketing Tools

Starting a Letting Agency – marketing tools

After the success of last month’s blog on internet marketing tips for estate and letting agents I thought it would be a great idea to try a little something different this week. A more subtle and extremely under-used form of marketing is the utilisation of your customers for word of mouth promotion, in this case it’s the tenants and landlords. Word of mouth marketing has been defined as ‘a face to face conversation between consumers about a product or service experience’. From my research into the area it can also be defined from the agency’s point of view as the ‘Intentional influencing of consumer to consumer communications by professional marketing techniques.‘ Okay, so we know exactly what the term means know from two perspectives, let’s discuss three ways in which to implement some word of mouth marketing techniques.

#1 Utilise what you have first

Stop worrying about all the different ways to market your services to new landlords and tenants. Obviously the more traditional mediums are still of use but it is the dawn of a new era, so agencies need to start thinking outside of the box. In fact, launching new campaigns, which I will mention below, can have a double effect as you start to build relationships with your current clientele while developing the potential to spread your agency via positive peer to peer communication. Check out the video below from a previous blog on Rentview, where I touch on word of mouth potential with tenants at the end.

#2 Stop shouting, start listening

I often see large banner ads placed along major property websites with prices listed for management fees to landlords. Nothing wrong with this obviously, for an integrated marketing communications plan you need to have 360 degree branding (hitting the target market with your message at as many points of contact as possible). However, what is the most trusted influence on a landlord in my opinion? I would say their fellow property owners and what they have to say about a service they have experienced.

#3 Rewards and relationships

Your tenants are handing over a lot of money – hundreds and often thousands per month for the lovely property you have given them. Obviously that’s the deal in place, but in the long run you want them to continue their stay for many years to come. That means, in my opinion, that you need to stay in touch and build and maintain that relationship with your database. What about creating a monthly newsletter with some property tips from your agency team? What about a monthly competition where you invest 300e of current marketing spend into a nice gift like a smart phone to raffle via your social media pages? These are just a couple of quick ideas on how to relationship build for the future.

That’s my top three tips, I hope they were of some help to any agents reading and please give us your feedback and thoughts by heading over to the Facebook or the Twitter pages. I leave you with some happy customers!

by Rentview

September 10, 2012

Rentview Featured on Siliconrepublic.ie

OK so a little late sharing this with you, had this in drafts to go be published Friday but Rentview was featured on major Tech news site siliconrepublic.ie last week. The Irish website featured an article on the new Rentview Tenant Profile service we offer to tenants. The full article including quotes from Rentview co-founder Colin Napper is below, please share this with your friends to help us out:

Irish online rent and property management start-up Rentview has just soft launched a new service for renters so they can build up a a free online tenant profile for landlords and agents.

Rentview itself was co-founded in 2010 as a rent and property management cloud-based platform for estate and letting agencies. The site’s co-founders are Andreas Riha and Colin Napper, both previous owners of a letting agency in Dublin.

Napper said they soft launched the servicethis week to tie in with students looking for properties, as the new college year kicks off.

“The purpose is to allow people to build a profile, upload references and share them with landlords and agents to get rentals more quickly.”

He said the service also includes an inventory app that works on the iPhone and will shortly be working on Android devices.

“The inventory app will allow people to document the condition of a rental property once they have received the rental offer from an agency. This means they can protect their deposit.”

Napper said that via this app people can log photos and they can also speak into their phone to dictate their voice notes and create a report on what the property looked like when they moved in. “They can print that report off and get it signed by the landlord. Then, when they are moving out tenants can do a moving out report.”

He said tenants can make their overall profile private and allow agents and landlords to access it by sharing their URL and a unique password.

According to Napper, rentals in Ireland are up 47pc since 2007, meaning there is strong competition for the right property.

He said the aim is to launch the tenant profile service in other markets over the coming months.

Click the share buttons above the article to help us raise awareness of this super new service for tenants. Thanks guys and this week we are looking to push out some interesting and helpful content to the property community, Cormac.

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

July 31, 2012

Video Blog-Cormac speaks on the benefits of adding tenants to Rentview

This is the latest of the Rentview video blogs where I take you through the top benefits of uploading your tenants onto the Rentview system. As many of you are aware Rentview differentiates itself from other software solutions with its unique tenant and landlord features available due to the the software operating on the cloud.

I note the various benefits a tenant receives such as the online lease, the utility set up, online inventory and statement of rents paid and due and an end of tenancy reference. I also note the benefits to the agency as you can manage your database with more ease & efficiency as well as the end of lease benefits such as retention and word of mouth marketing.

Enjoy the video and ignore the few stumbles and interesting facial expressions I like to make, the video blogs are a new area in which we look to create useful content that’s easier to digest and more appealing for engagement.

Video Blog – Uploading tenants details to your Rentview.com account from Rentview on Vimeo.

Be sure to click the ‘LIKE’ button below to share this onto your Facebook or Twitter or drop us a comment with your thoughts below & tweet @Rentview_

Cormac

July 25, 2012

Internet Marketing for Letting and Estate Agents

Hi guys Cormac here with a new blog on some creative and effective marketing tips for agents. During my year writing a dissertation on viral marketing and social networks I’ve picked up some useful tips on their purpose for businesses online strategy. The attitudes of the consumer (for example your targeted landlords/tenants) are completely different to what they were five years ago. The way i like to describe it is the hunter has become the hunted. What I mean by this is that no longer are we standing still and brands/marketers/companies shout their marketing messages and push advertisements in our faces but we decide exactly what we want to engage with. The power of TV and newspaper continues to fall as we spend more time online and become more attached to hand held devices.

What does this mean?

So the consumer is now the one looking for the brand, once they decide what they need they will go online and start researching what available, they wont be listening to the radio when they have the I-pod blaring and they wont be seeing your ads when there reading the news on their latest phone app. So what an agency needs to do is increase its presence online. There is a wide range of areas you can engage in when implementing an online strategy as you can see from the infographic below complements of alltopstartups.

Today i’m gong to discuss part one of the online marketing strategy which is search engine marketing. Search marketing is broken into two areas SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and Pay Per Click advertising. This is one of the number one ways to market your agencies website as your targeted audiences are heading to Google every day to search for the services they need such as rented accomadation and letting or management services

Many of you will be aware of the Google Adwords platform as it is the main money making facility for Google so its marketed heavily to everyone and anyone on the internet. It is what really kicked off the online marketing buzz but in my opinion its benefits are slowly stagnating as more and more companies use its service. Why is it losing its appeal? Well you have to pick ‘keywords’ related to your industry for where you want your ads to appear, for example your doing a campaign targeted to Landlords you may choose ‘property management Dublin’ , ‘letting services in Cork’ etc , the more specific the better. However since the influx in companies using the services the costs of using such popular keywords are rising as companies bid against one another for the most common searched terms.

In reality there is only so many words that are relevant for an agent so it may get to the point where you are bidding more then you should or choosing ineffective search terms. What this means is you need to focus on natural search marketing known or as i referred to above SEO , search engine optimisation, Avril Fagan the head of Digital marketing at Sage Ireland describes this as the holy grail of search. It involves creating content relevant to your industry, website optimisation of key-words, meta-tags and much more that I will cover in the next blog.

by Rentview

July 17, 2012

Property Infographic: Landlords and Property Management

Rentview are always busy looking to provide some useful information to the rental market and our latest Infographic looks at some of the key trends/issues landlords are facing with their rental properties today. Take a look at our findings.

Now some quick notes on the data and areas for discussion :

Bank transfer is the most common payment method with over half of the landlords surveyed collecting the rent this way. Just under 30% are using a standing order to deduct the amount each month while 14% still physically collect the rent from their tenants. Which is easiest in your opinion?

Our next question we quizzed the landlords on was their experience in collecting the rental payments. Almost half (43%) of landlords have experienced some sort of difficulty in collecting rent. Definitely a worrying statistic which raises the question of quality of referencing tenants?

Following on from my point on the quality of referencing we questioned our landlord database on the various formats they use for issuing a reference to a tenant. Not surprisingly e-mail has taken over from some of the previously popular formats like phone and written.

A big area we wanted to analyse was how the landlord communicates with their tenants for management of the property. This is a big area in which Rentview help agencies save time and reduce the no of hours they have that phone held to their ear! Coming out on top was landlords who call their tenants and those who have hired an agent on their behalf to manage the tenant and the property. I have always been a conscious of using the phone when dealing with important tenant/landlord issues as it is in no way traceable if there was ever to be a disagreement.

And finally the stuff most of us don’t want to hear, how many landlords have had to issue legal notices to their tenants on rents unpaid. Unfortunately one fourth of the landlords have issued a rent arrears or eviction notice.

For more information on Rentview you can click here , and connect with Rentview on Facebook and twitter @Rentview_ .

by Andreas Riha

July 10, 2012

Infographic: The Dublin Rental market

With the rental market in Dublin approaching its busiest time of the year we take a look at the market and what is available.

Once again, a few quick notes on what we can take from this.

There is a huge supply of rental property in Dublin at the moment meaning the market is highly competitive for the agencies while tenants benefit from such a large supply with less demand. Interestingly enough I just checked Daft.ie to compare our figure as we created this early last week and they are identical, so not much movement for now.

Secondly, as expected Apartments are the dominant property type throughout the city, this is was obviously going to be the case in such a highly congested city with most house’s outside for the city having homeowners. Thankfully there is only 227 flats as I have a hatred towards them after my year long stay in Rathmines during college 🙂

Out of the 4756 properties currently on the market the majority (A total of 77.3%) are two and three beds, interestingly the number of 3 bed apartments available is just over three hundred less than two beds.

Lastly we breakdown the amounts of properties available at the various and most comment rental prices, starting with the bargain hunter @ 0-€500 they have a limited selection of 146 rental properties. From there the number of properties gradually rises through the next two rent brackets and peaking during the €800-€1,100 bracket with over two thousand properties on the market in that price range.

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

Other property infographics –

The NPSRA & Licensed property services providers

Landlords and tenants infographic

by Andreas Riha