Lazy agents happy to let it be as landlords struggle for tenants

Published on Friday 5 June 2009 20:47

TAKE a moment, if you don't mind, to put yourself in the shoes of your typical letting agent. The housing market has forced homeowners to let out properties they cannot sell. Those properties are hitting the market at a time when demand for rental properties is subdued, a situation that has forced down rents.

So you have a long list of empty rental properties on your books – some of which have been vacant for months – and you have had to drop prices significantly. The landlords with properties on your books are losing patience, desperate as they are to generate much-needed income.

Supply hasn't totally dried up though, and some renters are seeking to take advantage of the lower prices, rather than continue to pay above the market rate. They contact you to ask if they can view some of the properties on your books, but they have requested out-of-hours viewings, given that they are busy with work in an environment where people are worried about losing their jobs.

So, in a stagnant property market, with your long list of empty properties, landlords getting increasingly agitated and some property firms going out of business, do you say:

A: "Of course, early evenings or Saturday mornings?"

B: "No chance, we only do viewings between 9:30am and 5pm – or 4:30 on Fridays – when you're in work."

Or C: "We normally do daytime viewings only, but we might be able to compromise."

You're thinking that any sane letting agent battling with the current market would welcome the interest and take the flexible approach. But no, that isn't what many of them are doing.

Instead, they disregard the complaints of their landlords, their plummeting prices and the ever-growing list of properties that need filling by refusing to compromise, insisting on interested parties taking time off work if they want to view anywhere.

Naturally, landlords are not happy with this state of affairs. David Kendall, the National Landlords Association's man in Scotland, expressed his amazement that agents are failing to improve their service at a time when rental prices are softening in many areas, particularly as under most landlord/agent contracts, the agent will not earn a penny until the property is let.

As Kendall pointed out, many letting agents offer outstanding service but, as in any industry, they are let down by the rogue element refusing to offer anything other than mediocrity.

So future and present landlords are advised to subject potential letting agents (and their number is being swelled by estate agents moving into letting) to some decent scrutiny before using their services.

This can be done by simple phone inquiries, conducting mystery shopper exercises, checking how professional and up-to-date their website and literature is, asking about fees and, of course, gauging their attitude towards viewings (how long potential tenants have to wait, out of hours viewings etc).

And as for tenants, well, they just have to shop around, too, and reward those agents with the professionalism to deliver the service that their customers – both landlords and tenants – fork out for.

BEING June, it's time for cold-weather payments. Sounds strange, but it's true and it means Age Concern Energy Services gas customers aged 60 or over are going to get a useful extra payment in the next month or so.

All customers on the group's gas tariff, run in conjunction with E.ON, already get a guaranteed cold-weather payment of 10 (20 for customers aged 80 or above) on top of the government's winter fuel payment.

The additional payment is based on the temperatures in the winter just gone, and after the coldest winter in years, Scottish customers are getting extra cold-weather payouts totalling more than 82,000, equating to an average of 22.88 each.

Energy bills have come down in recent months, but the falls are some way from compensating for the price hikes last year. So one-off payments such as these are genuinely helpful to a lot of pensioners in Scotland.

&#149 Jeff Salway is Regional Personal Finance Journalist of the Year