Once you’ve decided let your property the next decision is how you’re going to do it, do you want to self-manage or fully manage your rental property? So, first things first, what’s the difference?
Self-managing your property means that you’re not only the landlord but are fully responsible for the running of the property. This includes drawing up the legal contract, administrating all repairs and maintenance, and dealing with any tenant issues. Whereas, when a property is managed by an agency, these responsibilities are effectively outsourced.
Self Management
When self-managing your property, you, the landlord, firstly need to source the tenants; this includes advertising the property through social media or platforms such as Gumtree in the aim of, hopefully, finding tenants. However, if you self-manage using Bunk’s platform, we can get you onto all the major property portals such as Rightmove and Zoopla – over 95% of tenants begin their search here.
The next steps can be where it gets a bit complicated. A tenancy agreement needs to be created and agreed upon by both parties alongside insurance and deposits. This means self-managing landlords must ensure they are completely up to date on all tenancy rights and legislations to avoid getting into any sticky situations.
Throughout the tenancy, the landlord has to directly communicate with the tenants over issues such as repairs or if there are any problems with rental payments. This means you must be contactable almost 24/7! So, although going solo and self-managing a rental property can save agency fees, it often creates a lot of additional work, complications and costs for landlords. As a result, many landlords opt to enter into management agreements to outsource some, or all, of these responsibilities.
Full Management
By engaging a letting agency to manage your property, landlords can be relieved of stress. Leaving your agent to be completely on top and aware of everything that’s happening with property all the time. Letting agents take the lead on key aspects of the rental property; they can advertise your property, find appropriate tenants, and then manage the relationship with these tenants throughout the tenancy agreement. The agency will deal with all the legal jargon to ensure both parties rights are upheld throughout the contract.
On top of the admin side, the biggest benefit of having your property fully managed comes in-terms of the practical aspect. No more 3 A.M. broken boiler calls or locked out tenants; all of these responsibilities fall to the letting agency as they take care of tenant enquiries and property maintenance. Not only does this relieve landlords of such responsibilities, but it can also often ensure a maintenance job is completed quicker to a high standard. Letting agents have built up relationships with maintenance companies who prioritise the work on their properties. These jobs can then be done quickly by someone trusted – which can take years to build up. Problems solved means happy tenants and happy tenants equal happy landlords!
What can Bunk do for you?
So, having your property managed sounds like a win-win situation, right? Well, there’s a catch. Letting agencies don’t come for free and often this is the main deterrent for landlords. However, here at Bunk, we have pricing options to best suit you and your property.
For those landlords who want everything taken care of, we can Fully Manage all your properties; you won’t have to lift a finger! Or are you a landlord who enjoys the maintenance work but would rather leave finding and managing tenants to someone else? Perhaps our Let & Manage Subscription would suit you. Even if you just want help finding tenants, we can do that too with our Tenant Find Only service. We can help create a stress-free rental process that works for you.
