If you’re new to the property investment game, or if you’re an old hand beginning to struggle and tire, then maybe a lettings agent is the way forward for you. The right lettings agent can work absolute wonders on your workload and overall stress. They could prove the best investment you make!
We chatted to Alex Clark Lettings in Gloucester about the main advantages of using a lettings agent as a landlord.
What’s A Lettings Agent?
Starting at the basics, a lettings agent essentially makes sure your property is occupied as much as possible, and handles the advertising, management, legal aspects, payments and other troublesome and stressful, but sadly necessary elements of letting. A great lettings agent allows you to just focus on practical elements of managing your property, and just watch your new income stream falling into your bank account, hassle free.
What Problems Can You Expect?
One of the biggest issues that potential property magnates must overcome is making sure that their new property is occupied as much as possible. Having an unoccupied investment property can be horrendously costly, and you’ll find yourself having to pay the mortgage and other amenities like council tax and rates from other income sources. This means that whenever you don’t have a tenant, your new investment is eating into your savings.
Finding, and keeping, the right tenants can be a hassle on its own. With so many people renting nowadays, it can be hard to find a long term, reliable and trustworthy tenant. Tenancy laws in this country (rightfully) protect the rights of tenants occupying a rented property, which while most definitely a great thing, is not so great if you find yourself stuck with unreliable, destructive or disruptive tenants. This can be a very long term nightmare to find yourself stuck in, as many horror stories of landlords with awful tenants will attest to.
Once you’ve found the perfect tenants, you’ve got to handle all the legal side of things, which includes letting contracts, billing or rent paying systems and all manner of other invaluable, but tedious and awkward mundanities, and if you get anything wrong, you can find yourself in heaps of hassle, debt and trouble, all with no one to blame but yourself.
Why Have You Invested In Property?
What it comes down to is why you’ve gotten involved in the property game to begin with. What were your initial aims? It’s always going to be one of two vague things; one, you wanted a steady, passive income source, that results in a ‘free’ property at the end of it, or two, you wanted to become a property magnate, learn the ropes of every element of property investment and letting, with the eventual goal of becoming disgustingly rich and knowledgeable! Either way, in the beginning, a lettings agent is the way to go.
A lettings agent can handle all the stress and hassle described above, keeping your investment project ticking along nicely with minimal involvement from you, and the passive income source you’ve always wanted, stress free. No one likes hassle regardless, and while a lettings agent will charge a nominal fee, this will be easily eclipsed by what they bring to the table.
If you’re in it for the long haul, wanting to build up a huge empire of rented properties, you need a lettings agent too. Lettings agents allow you to focus on other, less mundane elements of property investment, allowing you to take a step away from the nitty gritty, and focus on your next move or strategy. They will also enable you to see how a professional lettings agency operates, and how they function and succeed, all of which could prove to be highly valuable later on in your investment career.
The fact is, a great, reputable lettings agent can save you a lot of hassle, stress and money. You stand to benefit hugely from no longer having to worry about a host of traditionally irksome issues surrounding property letting, and you’ll find that in the long run, a solid lettings agent is a sound investment.
Landlords looking to find their letting agent can compare using Rentround. The platform allows landlords to compare letting agent fees, location & services for free.
