I’m a new landlord renting out my home while I travel. As I’ll be abroad I am planning to instruct a letting agent. Having been quoted £395 previously for the tenant find service, I thought I’d advertise and find tenants independently then enlist the agency just for managing the let. That has gone well and I have two young professionals ready to move in in a month. I have asked the agency to administrate referencing and contracts, and was under the impression this would be at a reduced fee. But despite cutting their workload in half, the agency won’t budge on their letting fee.
So I am looking at OpenRent to set up the tenancy with referencing and issuing contracts. Can anyone comment on their experience of OpenRent vs letting agents and whether the additional £250+ is justified for a traditional agent? I will likely instruct them later on as when I’m abroad I’ll need to do this for insurance purposes (and peace of mind).
Open rent works really well when you are able to manage the property yourself. If you’re out of the country I suggest you just use a traditional agent because there are so many things to do that you need somebody on the ground able to respond. For example, what happens if there is a leak Who is going to deal with it?
OpenRent can help with ad-hoc maintenance issues with our “issue reporting” tools. From a tenant perspective, they can report an issue like this:
Then as a landlord, we’ll quote on the cost of repair if you’d like us to. This is a free service that can be turned on/off for any OpenRent tenancy.
In reality, if there was a leak in the property, you would need some way to ensure access (eg. via the tenants) and a professional to resolve (I certainly wouldn’t be fixing most leaks myself!), so this can be managed remotely and many landlords wouldn’t attend a property in this situation even if local unless there was significant damage to assess.
For a general guide on landlord responsibilities in terms of repairs we have an article here:
@Andrea17 you should be aware that you may not be able to recover your home on demand at the end of your travels as it typically takes over 8 months to evict a reluctant tenant and thats if you get everything right first time, so you may need to plan alternative arrangements before you leave.