Letting Agents, any advice?

oscas

Hi,

My friend is heading away for between 6mths - 1 year+ and wants to rent out her apartment.

To save hassle and getting family and friends from home involved she is looking at getting a letting agent to take care of the whole thing.

I know there have been posts re tenants dealing with letting agents, but does anyone have any experience dealing with them from a landlords perspective?

Any advice is appreciated:)

kersti

A friend of mine did that - it was a nightmare. The vetted tennants came in and started using mail of his to open accounts at places like movie rental services etc and hen racked up huge debts in his name. Furniture broken etc and the only thing he could get was the deposit. Next time he'll leave the place empty and pay someone to check the mail and give it a clean occassionally - he reckons he'll save heaps.

curadh

Possibly bad judgement on the part of the agent. What those tenants did was illegal and could face criminal prosecution, definitely depending on the amount the bills came to and the cost of the repairs to the furniture, the owner should have brought them to court. Of course they would have had to be able to back this up.

Emerald Lass

my advice - dont do it! get a family member to help - pay them what you would pay the agent if need be. See this if not convinced

http://www.irishlandlord.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46

Doop

Well from the other side... I used to work as a letting agent, needless to say you will get some good, some not so good.

The short answer is its up to your friend, can they keep tight control over a tenant, using a family member?

Agents are usually good judge of characters but are no perfect either. I have to admit ive been wrong before, worst case..
let a house to a nice young irish couple, they broke up, she moved out, (didnt tell us) he lost his job, fell behind on the rent, trashed the place and left.

The biggest piece of advice I could give is not to be a push over, keep looking untill you find someone you are 100% happy with. For a short term like 6 months
its a bit easier because there will be an understanding that your firend is coming back to live there, and they wont be styaying on.

If it was my place and i was going abroad for 6 months I would defo rent it out... but remember there is always a risk attached..

Oh, and agree monthly inspection from the outset.

Forgot to mention one more thing Re: curadh's post.. it is almost imossible to bring charges against a tenant for trashing a place or to bring them to court, for one, if they wreck the place they wont leave a forwarding address. names, pps numbers all useless. Even when you do know where they moved to its just not worth it plus the cost associated with it.

curadh

Hi Doop, just to clarify, they would face criminal proceedings over using false identification etc, not with trashing the place. If they trashed the place then they could face losing their deposit to the amount of damage, or if beyond well then being directly answerable for the repair work /replacements with the help of the PRTB in court. Of course it wouldnt be worth it for anything say more than 5-6 grand. Most people who get to renting a place and have given all their credentials, passport photos, pps etc., wouldnt be stupid enough to bring that sort of trouble into their lives(the first part). You'ld like to think anyway.

oscas

Emerald Lass wrote: »

my advice - dont do it! get a family member to help - pay them what you would pay the agent if need be. See this if not convinced

http://www.irishlandlord.com/forum/showthread.php?t=46

Thanks for that, I'm probably gonna be renting out my own place now as well and that posting sends shivers down the spine.
I really don't want to have a family member take care of the whole thing but I definitely think that handing over full control blindly to an agent might not be the best thing either.

I'm going to investigate further and see if I can find a balance between the 2.

oscas

Doop wrote: »

Agents are usually good judge of characters but are no perfect either.

The biggest piece of advice I could give is not to be a push over, keep looking untill you find someone you are 100% happy with.

Oh, and agree monthly inspection from the outset.

Thanks for the advice, I think I should be involved with the picking of tenants, I think I'm a pretty good judge of character, though you never know what people will do, I think you can at least weed out the ones with a bad vibes easily enough.

And I will definitely be organising a monthly inspection, if I get it written into the lease then hopefully it can be short notice so that a cover-up can't be done.

Also, I'm gonna try and organise a friend to have as backup should anything need to be done at short notice.

I'm also gonna register with the PRTB.

Can anyone recommend a letting agent?

athtrasna

Where is the apartment?

We have had two polar opposite experiences with letting agents. One, big name, was a nightmare, not a million miles off the one posted above.

Currently we use a guy who went out on his own a couple of years ago and he's been a dream. Great tenants and he keeps an eye on the place too. And charges us half of what the big company did.

oscas

athtrasna wrote: »

Where is the apartment?

We have had two polar opposite experiences with letting agents. One, big name, was a nightmare, not a million miles off the one posted above.

Currently we use a guy who went out on his own a couple of years ago and he's been a dream. Great tenants and he keeps an eye on the place too. And charges us half of what the big company did.

It's in Kilmainham, could you PM me a contact for him please? Cheers

kersti

athtrasna wrote: »

And charges us half of what the big company did.

I'm curious as to how much you pay - could you PM me? Just looking at what would be ballpark percentage of the rent paid out as fees to an agent

eth0_

I would say stay away from letting agents in general, get a family member to look after the rent.

In particular stay away from Wyse and DEFINITELY don't go near Lowe, absolute nightmares to deal with, even the top managers in these places don't give two hoots if their agents are messing tenants around!