It’s all about multiple Agents!!!!

For some time it’s all been about getting as many letting agents and estate agents on board in competition to rent your property.

We at The Landlords Letting Company have avoided this business with a barge pole.

The reason for this is generally the majority of our landlords are with us on a full management basis. The last thing needed when you are committing to looking after a landlords property is a bad tenant.

A study of over 200 of our properties has shown that tenant find only tenants found on a joint agency basis very rarely stay longer than the 6 month AST. This is down to many reasons but the main three are:-

38% due to rent arrears
24% due to other issues with tenants
19% were only looking for a short tenancy

The main point to note is that all three of the above issues can be minimised just by not selecting the first tenant that passes the basic criteria. When you are in a joint agency agreement your are basically in a race to tenant the property prior to the other agent. Difficulty arises here as if you reject a certain tenant for any reason they will 100% of the time attempt to rent the same property again through the other agent marketing the property.

Generally joint agency is a nightmare for the agents, generally joint agency is bad news for landlords, so why do we continue to run business like this?

While we continue to attempt to educate landlords on the benefit of single agency we have decided to offer joint agency on “tenant find only” we will NOT offer joint agency on managed properties and have no intention of changing that in the future. We are also now maintaining a head to head league table.

The only explanation can be that landlords are so concerned about voids that desperation kicks in. This is the worst move a landlord can make.

I will end with one simple question what would your choice be?

A) Three month void while a single agent searches for a suitable long term tenant is found resulting in a longer tenancy with less probability of arrears or any other issues.
B) 3 Week void as three agents fight to tenant your property, nearly 4 out of 10 of these tenants will have arrears, 2 will cause other issues and nearly two will only have wanted the property for 6 months and had no intention of extending past that.