UKC

Must I pay an agent 15% + VAT in order to rent out a small house?

I have found the Government's rather helpful model contract (and advice for tenants). Do I just bung it on Rightmove and hope for the best? I'm pretty thorough on references and such.

In reply to JJL:

as long as you are happy to do the referencing etc. as an awkward insurance policy might not pay out if there are future problems. Plus, do you want to be the sole point of contact, depending on the tenant, it could be easy or quite tedious.

15% is a little high, 10% including vat sounds more normal and what we are paying.

In reply to JJL:
I used these guys to sort the advertising and references for me http://www.theonlinelettingagents.co.uk/

They were really reasonable for both me and the tenant. I used the Gold Service £59 plus VAT

In reply to JJL:
I've rented to a friend of a friend (professional guy, climber, into the same kind of music as me = instant trust) with no agent, no hiccups/hassle - this is the ideal scenario if you can get it. The taste in music part might not be achievable in all cases.

My mum rented her house through an agent and they were useless. The situation was full of hassle. Then she rented it out herself and while not everything was 100% perfect she had much less hassle and much more control.

In conclusion: agents are useless, greedy crooks who will do as little as possible for you for the maximum they can get.

In reply to JJL:

The main reason to use one that I can see is if any work needs doing they can arrange it and let the tradesmen in.

In reply to Rich K:


I set limits and gave them a list of approved contractors of different trades, just to make sure I didn't get any over priced cowboys in.

Some agents do need managing a little at first, once you've got them trained they are ok though.

In reply to JJL:

Letting agents are nothing but a parasite for both sides of the transaction - landlord and tenant. They are invariably staffed by incompetents who are solely interested in extorting ludicrous fees from tenants for "drawing up paperwork" each year and offer an incredibly poor service to landlords.

If you do choose to part with your hard-earned rent to these worthless individuals, make sure you get them signed-up to a stringent service charter with penalties attached. For example, advising you by 10am on the day that rent is due that payment has been received or is outstanding, or responding to tenant's communications within two working hours of receipt. They have nothing better or more important to do with their time.

It may have become clear that I am not a fan...

In reply to Uluru:

Thanks everyone.

The link looks pretty good. Is 3 months advertising on Rightmove enough?

In reply to JJL:

3 months sounds a ridiculously long time to be advertising a house for rent.... unless you think it will be difficult to let due to undesirable area, poor condition or whatever.
If you can`t be bothered doing it yourself I would take the minimum period allowed for advertising and keep renewing your ad as necessary.
If you live reasonably close to the house you will be letting it is easy to do yourself, and you will probably do a better job than some random letting agent that your tenant will detest and you will wonder what they do for your money.

I find agents useless and overprices as well. Plus many are trying to scam both landlords and tenants on any given occasion.

Only reason I see to hire one is to live overseas and have someone to manage property on the island.

In reply to Jon Stewart:

I rented from a friend of a friend.. fairly famous climber who was a f*cking nightmare... no bills turned out to be lots of bills, but just changed to my name retrospectively and I ended up with court summons 6 months after I moved out.. That I never even received a bill for because it was all changed retrospectively.. even if theyd have sent me a text I'd have paid the bills, albeit begrudgingly.. but to contact people behind my back and never inform me was f*cking atrocious..

As much as I hate agents they have more accountability that private lettings.

In reply to JJL:

As a side note, we found our current tenant through a friend and agreed with the agency to only pay the referencing fees for the new tenant. Finding a semi decent agent is harder than finding a good tenant.

In reply to JJL:

No. I rented a house to a mate without any problems. Contracts from legal pack from WHSmith. All you need to do is set up the deposit holding scheme and sort the insurance, gas/electric certificates and get references.

That's after getting quotes from a couple of local letting agents - money grabbing cowboys! They had a price on everything from keys service to inventory and would have cost me the better part of 2 months rent in up-front fees, plus monthly fees for ongoing management and I'd still end up paying extra fees for them arranging repairs plus the cost of the repairs.

Unless you're renting something miles and miles away, do it yourself.

In reply to LastBoyScout:
sounds like cowboys where ever you are. I pay one month rent arrangement fee, which covers everything. I found the next tenants so this was halved. I pay 10% of rent including vat and anything they arrange in the between tenants, like repairs and a 3 monthly physical visit to the property is including in the 10%.

In reply to LastBoyScout:


Not to mention the extortion they exert on prospective tenants. Paid the best part of £1000 in fees to Reeds Rains for 5 months of renting a house and they still managed to screw everything up!

In reply to JJL:


Is that every month?

We've used a local agent as a finder (1 off fee) and reference checker. That was worth it.

I wouldn't do the monthly charge for them to manage it, I've heard more bad tales than good.If you tell them to just go ahead and sort out problems then you've written a blank check, and if you vet everything then you might as well cut out the middle man and talk to the tenant direct.

In reply to JJL:

My biggest issue with them is that they charge you to draw up the contracts again after one year, another months rent from the one we used. The only legal way around it was to kick out the tenant or move to a one month rolling statutory contract - which we did.

Incompetent villains the lot of them.

In reply to JJL:

I used www.openrent.co.uk.
They are not agents but they will advertise (via rightmove and others) for you and you can get them to organise contracts, do gas safety checks things like that. They used to do the advertising for free the first time you put your place up.
I found them really useful, everything is done online and is really convenient and you just pay for the stuff you want.
It really minimised the hassle of everything for me.


Make sure you get a good tenant, that's the most important thing!

In reply to ByEek:


I think ours must be the exception to the rule. They charge the prospective tenant £100 for referencing and after the initial 6mths or the annual point there are no renewal contracts or fees. We've had 3 change overs in 5 years, although the 3rd one, was part of the 1st coming back. Paid £650 in total for all 3 changeovers and £50 month.

We invited a few to come and look around, but had binned them mentally within 10 minutes as the vibe was not good, you could sense they were chasing pound signs.

In reply to JJL:

Utter twunts. Recent experience in London. Paid out a load of money for reference checks, yadda yadda plus whatever fees they fancied adding to be told after signing, oh no we're not managing the property the landlord is. Turned out to be a sweetheart but I nearly hit the smug tw*t in the office along with my flatmate. Money for nothing. Think its more like 20-30% in the capital which explains somewhat the prices.

D

In reply to summo:

Yep - you must have done ok. I think it was £350 for securing the house and credit checking and then £450 early release fee because we ended the contract early. They also signed us up with their preferred energy provider (see page 24 of the 52 page tenancy agreement) without telling us which meant we paid through the nose for energy - and it all got screwed up. Nightmare I tell you!

In reply to JJL:

I rented for 10 years before buying. Avoided agencies like the plague, absolutely awful on the whole. Gumtree is your friend, found nearly everything from there or the local paper

In reply to JJL:

Hi,

It all depends on how confident you are in your judgement and how much work you want to do. Personally I wouldn't touch an agent with a barge pole as I want to choose who is living in one of my houses as I will be living with the consequences of a bad choice. Also maintainence costs are lower if you get to have a look first yourself. And you are saving 10-15%.
You can download tenancy agreements free and there is loads of stuff to read about protecting deposits.
To find tenants Gumtree has never let us down.

Andy