Updating post from Reddit.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately - the whole “fully managed” lettings model seems broken.
You pay 7–15% for peace of mind… but what you often get is:
At that point, you’re basically still managing - just with extra steps and less control.
Curious how others see it. Has anyone actually had a truly hands-off experience with a letting agent? Or have you ended up building your own workaround (spreadsheets, WhatsApp groups, private trades)?
What’s the one thing you wish “fully managed” actually did well?
They collect the rent for me
Take their cut
Do inspections every 3 months and provide me with a report that needs sorting
Tenants call them up with an issue
They email me ask if they can send out contractors
I tell them to give me 3 quotes
Then I make a decision to go ahead
If they go ahead they organise the repairs
They take care of EPC, gas cert and electrical certificate
They find the tenants and negotiate rent increase.
That's how it should go - the agency I was renting from had their on inhouse tradesman who did the mainteance on all the propeties, this probbably worked out cheaper for landlord and agencies. Operating like a housing association. I can imagine when the agent is using third party firm there is a lot of marking up at every desk. Agent takes 20% mannagement fee. the building firm takes their profit on the labour, the labourer is probably an indeepandant contractor to their firm and marks up job nice to get them through quiet periods. etc.
A lot of private rentals seem to have huuuuuge issues with repairs, when I was living in my mums council house many years ago, we'd go by many years without needing any repairs at all. I think a lot of the time private tenants just feel that they are in a revolving door tenancy where aftewr a year their rent would shoot up so they will need to look elsewhere. Because they're not expecting to be around long, They just put up with niggling problems.
I remember in one place (house share) we had issues with no hot water, really old combi, needed a divertor valve. We raised the issue - no resolutions. We found a work around - put the central heating on the boiler, but turn all the rads off in the rooms to get hot water. We ddi this for months and then eventiall the entire boiler was toast and needed a completely new boiler. The landlord will blame the tenants, but the tenants did their bit - they reported it and were ignored.
In many cases, the agent does their bit, the tenants do their bit, but landlord isn't happy with the cost estimate and just procastinate.
They take care of the EPC? Thats once every 10 years lol
Exactly how it should be.
yikes which city do you live in?
I'm currently having to get lawyers involved after my agent has mismanaged my place so much that it's put me at risk of legal action from the tenants as well as a dispute about the deposit because they promised the tenant one thing without even consulting me.
“ They collect the rent for me”
lol why? Direct debit straight to your account.
Phone call for the rest
you’ve just got a bad agent
They are mostly useless with even tenant finding and general admin that I refuse to let them rip me off for just being a middleman.
Especially when you, the Landlord are still legally responsible for the tenancy.
If you have one or two properties, do it yourself. If you're large enough to have multiple properties, you should be doing this as a profession, and if bigger still, then even dedicated staff.
this needs to become a bigger issue nationally, because I swear it is the actions of awful agents that are contributing to this 'war' between tenants and landlords. Which is a very real issue because it leads to punitive legislation against landlords, who then are even pickier and distrustful of tenants. Vicious cycle.
Good point. The agents benefit from the turmoil because they offer the solutions supposedly, at a generous cut for themselves.
> it is the actions of awful agents that are contributing to this 'war' between tenants and landlords.
Completely agree. Just take a look at how deposits are sorted out, it's a huge conflict of interest as letting agents stand to actually make cash by claiming as much of the deposit as possible.
You need better agents. Not once has a tenant ever contacted me directly I’m not sure they would know how. Everything goes through the agent. Likewise repairs, EPC, gas safety all done by them with money taken from the rent even if that means someone is waiting weeks for payment. Check ins check outs, S21 etc… they do everything.
And this is why I self-manage
Your agent isn't doing their job properly.
We have e-mail/call/message received, landlord is contacted to approve repairs/budget (we will always state a maximum around 25% higher than the invoice generally is), contractor comes in, LL pays contractor, tenant is happy.
Just checked our works spreadsheet, 97% of work was completed same or next day, 100% within 4 days last month. One of those had a remedial work finished within 9 days due to availability of a plasterer, with the actual issue (a water leak) completed within 7 hours of first contact, which was at 6:23am.
We never mark up or receive commission and have all of our contractors on an hourly rate plus original costs basis. Our list of charges, most of which are agreed in August/September for the following year, are fully available for landlords.
> We never mark up or receive commission and have all of our contractors on an hourly rate plus original costs basis.
I think this probably makes you the needle in the haystack. That and being able to communicate well must set you apart from the competition.
I think you should name drop your company here, sounds awesome, and the best form of advertising.
I'm here to try to make the industry a little better, not to advertise.
We do our best and feel that a lot more transparency is necessary in what is a very opaque industry.
You're on a landlord sub with what sounds like a great business. I for one am interested in what you've got to offer. If you've got capacity, please do a name drop.
Thank you.
I'll PM you now, for reasons that will probably become obvious when you pair the website with my posting history.
Exactly this! I’ve now separated the management from the rental and it works much better. I use www.LandlordLab.co.uk as they just do management. They’ve been really good looking after my tenants and when something goes wrong either deal with it or come with a solution and ask for my approval. I used Foxtons before and they just passed on the problem to me! Then when I asked them to sort out a tradesman they were rip off prices. Did my head in! Lucky I was able to give 3 months notice on the manage side without affecting the tenancy they found. I think it’s a separate skill set and estate agents just see it as easy money without doing the job. So I much prefer separating it out.
Foxtons gave me a quote for 18% management fees.
Lol
Winkworth asked the same! 😂
They pass on the money from the tenants, and any messages from problems/requests. Thats all in my experience.
Yeah, it’s largely some dipshit just passing complaints along for a solid % for Jack shit. But there’s some value with the urgent stuff.
It’s a scam. I’ve yet to pin an EA down on the point but they never seem to protest too much when I say it’s a scam designed to fool those who have to use fully managed (out of area/ inexperienced) or those who don’t know of all the horror stories.
It’s just a great product EA can advertise well to appeal to LL but in reality allows EA to get their grubby little hands on as much of the rent as they can justify.
I sacked my property management company Haart Guildford because basically they were inept at dealing with anything other than finding tenants.
I could go on for days about how bad they were when managing rentals so I now self manage and I'm 70 miles away from my rentals.
Can't tell you how stressed I was dealing with Haart and ripped off by their trades that never successfully fixed anything but were excellent at billing and inflating prices three fold.
My advice is self manage it's far less stressful although rent collection can have it's uses.
Spicer Haart?
Same. Total waste of my time, energy and money.
It depends on a lot of things as to if it works for you, but it doesn’t work for me.
My properties are close to where I live. The tenants WhatsApp me direct if there is an issue and I can resolve most things myself quicker than I could get someone out to do it.
I understand if you are managing at a distance… if you are higher rate tax or other factors then it might work for some people but I just feel like you get a nicer person to deal with on the phone when there are issues but I have a good relationship with my tenants so they are nice in the phone anyway.
Sounds like you have a shit letting agent.
Mine does everything for me. Makes sure we are legal and fully compliant.
They pay us the rent minus their fee every month like clockwork.
Very happy.
From personal experience, a total con.
I got rid of them eventually. I wanted them to be available to react to emergencies for peace of mind, but seeing as I'd renovated the houses with all new wiring/plumbing, boiler (with 7 year warranty) AAA windows etc nothing ever went wrong. So I was giving up 12% for a "what if" event and to perform 2 inspections per year.
When I got rid of them, I had good connections with a local electricians and gas engineer/plumber, so I made arrangements with those guys that the tenant can call them directly in an emergency. So in the tenant welcome pack I included the emergency numbers.
I think the only time a letting company might be good is if you need to evict someone, but luckily that never happened to me before I sold everything.
Not worth it as they still contact you to approve work. It's not completely hands free.
Once you've got a sparky, plumber, general handyman, it's pretty easy.
WhatsApp group with tenants for each property. The above trades guy arrange visits with tenants and just invoice you.
The more properties you have, the easier it is to manage.
Rent unfurnished and replace white goods/cookers immediately. Repairs are pointless, curry's deliver and install and take old one away.
Also don't increase rents. Gives buy in from tenants as everything else is increasing and means they contact you less and only when something really needs doing. Again, in an unfurnished house there's not much that can go wrong.
I've had major problems with fully mismanaged lets and now I use an agent to find and vet the tenants and then manage things myself.
Properties have been horrifically damaged, either wilfully or due to lack of repairs, when managed by an agent and I've only found out when things had already gone badly wrong.
I feel you, I am regularly chasing my agent because of the poor communication between us.
It’s the biggest ‘scam’ in the rental space.
Absolutely no need for slime agents in renting.
Yup except it’s more like 20% in London after all the junk fees.
Openrent is the way.