Hello All
So now we are drawing closer to my existing / long-term tenants leaving the property.
We have already served termination notice to my Managing Agents
They should be under contract to assist in pieces of admin to avoid less friction in the handover and return of keys etc.
After which, we will be looking to list on OpenRent and take management of the property ourselves. (we only have this one rental).
Does anyone have a recommended template of to-do steps for this?
Anything I should watch out for?
TIA for any advice / feedback
@Alpha1
Openrent provide step by step guidance on how to market your property. Assuming it is your first time self managing the riskiest part will be choosing good tenants. There’s lots of guidance online, just Google choosing good tenants. I would recommend referencing any prospective tenant and using Rent Now tenancy creation service to ensure everything is set up correctly.
Good luck!
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There’s a lot more to it than just the initial steps and its about to get more complicated and risky. If you’re not experienced at self managing, I would suggest you join a landlord association and do some intensive training.
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Bear in mind that if you wish to use OR to create the tenancy agreement it is quite vague in places and you may want to add more specific ‘custom clauses or use your own AST (various templates available) if you aren’t using OR to collect the rent - don’t try writing legal docs from scratch..
Google ‘new tenancy checklist’ you will find various
OR services aren’t necessarily the best - you may find it best to find your own plumber/gas safe engineer, epc assessor, electrician, inventory clerk, landlord insurance for contents , rent gtee insurance, malicious damage insurance, legal costs insurance (in case need to evict)
OR don’t give you any choice of which deposit scheme to use and unless you choose to turn it off they will give tenant option of an insurance based scheme.
During void period you need to set up accounts to cover the utilities (take meter readings day your tenants exit and photograph the meters, tell LA for council tax). For water if unfurnished and no works going on some companies won’t require an account/won’t charge if you tell them.
Good luck
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