Letting property for landlords, from one flat to a whole building.
One month of rent as the fee, payable when a tenancy starts and not before. Nothing to pay if we do not let it.
The work starts with a rent we can defend. We will tell you what your flat should let for and show you the three or four comparable lettings we are basing it on, in the same ward, at a similar floor, with the same answer on the lift. Landlords occasionally ask us to list a flat two thousand above that figure, and we will, but we say plainly what it costs: a flat priced above the market sits empty for two months, which is more money than the extra rent collects in a year.
Then photographs taken in daylight with the lights on, a written description that carries the floor, the metering and the furniture, and a listing that goes out to our own waiting list before it goes anywhere public. About a third of our lettings never reach the internet at all.
We take the viewings, which is the part most landlords are actually buying. We check who we are putting in: employment or business, how long they have been in it, and a word with the previous landlord where there is one. We do not pretend this is a credit check, because there is no such thing to be had here. It is a conversation, done properly, and it is better than nothing by a long way.
At the handover we sign an inventory with photographs, read the meters with the tenant present, and issue receipts for the advance and the deposit in your name. You get the agreement, the inventory and the readings as one file.
For a whole building we stagger the tenancies deliberately so that six leases do not all end in the same month, which is a mistake that takes two years to undo.