PROFILE
Set to let?
If not, Sheila Manchester knows who can help.
T
here’s an awful lot more to running a lettings business than showing a tenant a couple of flats and banking the rent. As all established letting
agents know, the raft of documents, data and dramas involved in this business is, at times, enough to challenge the most experienced and organised professional. But lettings, especially at the moment,
is also where the beleaguered sales agent sees a healthy income. How hard can it be, he thinks? Well, harder than he could possibly
conceive, if he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Enticing landlords is not so hard, frustrated sellers needing to move for work reasons, for instance, may be willing to let and low fees will encourage some landlords to move to you. Demand for homes is high, so tenants will come, so letting is simple – to start with. It’s the management that’s the difficult bit. A new breed of service provider has
come to the fore; as reported in PROPERTYdrum’s October issue, outsourcing all manner of tasks is now possible, but just how does it work in practice, for the new letting agent? We met Anosuka Fosse, Director at
EPM, to find out more about the detail – and where the devil lies. EPM can provide the full ‘behind the
scenes’ management of an agent’s portfolio, says Anouska. “The overall objective is so that agents don’t have to deal with the not quite so attractive parts of managing a let, be it rent arrears, deposit disputes, landlord tax issues, leaky taps and boilers that have broken down in the middle of the night. “We look after the Let from the moment the tenant has taken possession of the property and EPM is their main point of contact. “As soon as the tenant gives notice, we
inform the agent so that they can get back in touch with their client landlord to talk about reletting the property and to perhaps use the opportunity to talk about other possible considerations, (to sell it instead or relet it, or perhaps even release equity to buy further properties), generating them more business either way.”
58 NOVEMBER 2011 PROPERTYdrum
Industry Interview
Q What about the bit before they move in – isn’t that complicated too, for the novice letting agent? “For those agents who do not have the correctly trained staff within their agency to co-ordinate the move-ins, we can also offer a Pre Tenancy Administration service, which means that once the agent has listed and let the property, they inform us of the details in a pre agreed format and we look after the move in. This is working really well for agents that have always been estate agents and know that they do not have the time or the legal expertise to put together a let correctly. They’re also keen not to take their sales negs away from their main role.”
Q Shouldn’t they have some idea of what they should be doing though? “During the two day implementation of EPM, we also perform a ‘health check’ of the agents current working practices and paperwork they are using, to ensure it’s the best it can possibly be, and to ensure that all potential income streams related to a let are being explored. This means that if the agent wishes us to do so, we’ll have a look at their terms of business, initial paperwork to the parties, checklists, etc, and flag up anything that needs including or rewriting. We have standard template Terms of Business and paperwork that the agent can use, if that’s required.”
Q Speaking of income streams, do you supply the insurances they need? “A new service, just being finalised, is a referral service for landlord and tenant insurances. If we are looking after the Pre Tenancy Administration service we will make sure that your landlord is informed of the range of products available to him (contents insurance, rent guarantee policies etc) and EPM can arrange those insurances on the agents behalf. The full commission available is sent to the agent, less a £10 pound admin fee. If the agent does not have financial services within their company, this ensures that a very important element to the let is covered every single time.”
Q Do you collect the tenants’ rents? “Yes. Each day we run an arrears list and begin work on any rents due but not paid. We work on the basis that if the tenant does not pay their rent, then the agent obviously doesn’t get their commission, so we do not charge our unit price for that property. So in effect, if the tenant does not pay, then no-one gets paid! Although EPM would be doing more work than usual as the landlord has to be informed and we’ll have to chase the tenant, we find that agents respond quite well to the fact that if they are not earning out of that property that month, nor are we.”
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