When you decide you wish to manage your properties yourself, think about the answers to the following questions:
Do I know the clauses of my lease agreement with the Freeholder?
Am I up to date with the lettings industry regulations and guidelines?
Do I know how to deal with problem tenants? Really know? As in it could go to court know?
Have I got enough knowledge of the Housing Act 1988?
These are some questions one of our new landlords didn’t think through, so when the time came for our management to end, he realised he couldn’t let go of our services.
He kept constantly calling and emailing on a daily basis with queries about tenancy agreements, Section 47/48 and 21 notices, deposit registration and checkouts, so on and so forth.
After a week of silence, I received a phone call, panic on the other line, ‘What are the terms around pets in properties? My tenant said he was only looking after a dog for a couple of days, turns out the dog is permanently at the property and has pee’d off the balcony hitting a member of the concierge!!’
Unfortunately, we could no longer offer him advice as our professional indemnity insurance only covers us for providing advice to our clients. I recommended he sought professional advice from a suitably qualified individual.
In an effort to save money by managing the property himself he has inadvertantly allowed the new tenant to keep a pet, worse it was in the Tenancy Agreement, and now the landlord faced extortionately high costs following legal action started by the freeholder due to the breach in the lease agreement – “No pets allowed in the development!”
Self-managing? or Self-destruction!
Get your property managed by qualified and trained professionals just give us a call at Ezytrac on +44 (0)1522 503 717
Yours in Effortless property Management,
Arlene Alegre-Wood
January 23