Linking sales progression to letting your buy-to-let property

While some investors buy property with the strategy of flipping and making a quick capital gain, the majority of property investors play the long game. Like most property investors, you’re probably aspiring to create a stream of rental income as well as profit from long-term capital growth.

In this article, we explain how Ezytrac’s Property Management services dovetail with the Sales Progression Team on new build and off-plan investments. You’ll also read about the work we do leading up to signing rental agreements with the perfect tenant.

An early start on property letting

We like to get a head start when it comes to letting your property. The Progression Team will keep us informed of how your property purchase is progressing, and then we’ll get in touch with you perhaps three or four months before completion is due.

This first contact will introduce the full range of our services – lettings and property management – and the benefits of effortless property management. We’ll send the ‘authority to manage’ forms, which allow us to begin the marketing process (more about this below). To do our job and get the best tenants for your property, we’ll need to carry out a building inspection. Before we do so, we’ll talk you through our building inspections service, which is integral to the snagging process.

What about white goods and furniture?

With new build properties, our experience is that clients need to be flexible about letting as a furnished property. Including furniture in the buy-to-let property won’t necessarily increase its rental potential. But what it does do is give you an advantage over landlords who aren’t willing to include any furniture or white goods. It could also make it a little easier to let. Depending on your target tenant and the competition in the local area, we’ll advise whether furniture is needed.

Kicking off the letting game

Up to this point, even though we’ve already become pretty involved with your property, we’ve simply been warming up for the main event. We’ll now get the ball rolling in earnest with our preparations to market your property. That means taking photos, measuring rooms, and writing descriptions. We’ll collate all of this and prepare for marketing efforts of portals such as Zoopla and Rightmove – though we may not need to use them.

Rent appraisal

• With all the property details to hand, we can now conduct a full rental appraisal.
• We’ll search what’s currently available on the market, paying particular attention to these factors:
• Property rental numbers in close proximity to your property
• The dimensions, specification, and finish of your property
• Where it is on the development (properties on the same development often let at different numbers)

Now armed with a complete appraisal of your property, we can move on to marketing it for you.

Low-key marketing

This is where the advantage of working with Ezytrac as your property manager and letting agent really starts to pay dividends. We’ve got local market knowledge with a national reach. We begin with soft (or low-key) marketing. We search our databases of current tenants – those who may be most interested in renting your property.

As you get closer to completion, we’ll ramp up our efforts to find suitable tenants. The majority of new build properties that we take on our books are tenanted within two weeks of completion.

Getting the right client paying the right rent

We always try to achieve the highest rental number in line with all the rental research we’ve conducted for you. There’s a caveat here, though, and that is that void periods cost you. Holding out for a few extra quid could cost you a whole lot more. Here’s a quick example:

If you refuse to take a tenant who offers £50 below your asking price per month, and the property remains empty for six weeks longer, it will take 21 months to recoup the rent that you could have been collecting for those six weeks. That’s longer than the average tenancy length of 18 months, according to a recent survey by Direct Line and reported on Landlord News.

Throughout the process of finding you the perfect tenant, we’ll monitor all enquiries and interest, and take note of any feedback we receive. This further informs our marketing efforts, and we’ll report back to you bi-weekly throughout the process.

All offers that we receive will be passed to you, and when you accept an offer we take the next step in the process.

Vetting the tenant and moving them in

Our comprehensive tenant vetting process includes:

• Checking current and previous tenancies and contacting landlords for references
• Confirming the applicant’s employment status and salary
• Checking the applicant’s credit rating
• We’ll also check the applicant’s right to rent status.

If we can tick all the boxes from this vetting process, we’ll draw up the tenancy agreement and conduct an inventory check to take place on the agreed move-in date.

If you have question or want to learn more about this why not chat with the team 01522503717 or email me.