Looking for Landlords

[RachaelDraper]

Hi

I work for a letting agency in the north east and we are currently trying to expand, however we do not know where to find potential landlords to come on board. We offer a good service, but its really difficult to find landlords to offer this to. At the moment we have properties all over the north east and would love to have more. We have been running for a while now and the landlords we manage properties for at the moment are happy with us we would just love to know where to find more.

If someone knows where all these landlords are hiding please could you let us know.

Rachael

J Jackson Properties

[Mortitia]

Hello Rachael,

I don't think this is the right site for you somehow as it is aimed at the DIY landlord to a large extent who is well fed up with letting agents!

Let me tease a few answers out of you.

Why is your service sooo good (no bull++++ please) and just how long have you been running?

How many properties is your office handling?

What is your rate for 1. managing and 2. tenant finding.

How much do you charge for a tenancy agreement?

Do you know what a section 21 is and when would you use it? - no looking it up now.

How many tenants have you got more than 8 weeks in arrears with rent?

And finally, for continuing AST's how much do you charge?

These are all the things I might ask of a Letting Agent so let all us hardened landlords have some answers. You never know you might get some business from someone.

Getting new business in any field means getting out there - it doesn't usually come to you. Think about that one.

Mortitia

[RachaelDraper]

Hello Rachael,

I don't think this is the right site for you somehow as it is aimed at the DIY landlord to a large extent who is well fed up with letting agents!

Let me tease a few answers out of you.

Why is your service sooo good (no bull++++ please) and just how long have you been running?

How many properties is your office handling?

What is your rate for 1. managing and 2. tenant finding.

How much do you charge for a tenancy agreement?

Do you know what a section 21 is and when would you use it? - no looking it up now.

How many tenants have you got more than 8 weeks in arrears with rent?

And finally, for continuing AST's how much do you charge?

These are all the things I might ask of a Letting Agent so let all us hardened landlords have some answers. You never know you might get some business from someone.

Getting new business in any field means getting out there - it doesn't usually come to you. Think about that one.

Mortitia

Hey thanks for the reply Mortitia, I hope I can answer all your questions.

I think our service is good because we are the most affordable letting agent in town which means we have a big data base of tenants

that when a property becomes available we can let it nearly all the time straight away. And out of 100 properties 2 are empty.

We have been running for 2 years and we manage 100 properties 80 are owned by the business.

We manage for 8% and charge £100 for a tenant finders fee

We don't charge for tenancy agreements

A section 21 is a 2 month notice and is usually the quickest way to evict a tenant

Well we have a couple maybe 4 off the top of my head that are 8 week in arrears I am sure that these are products of LHA the bain of landlords exsistance,

And finally I don't think we charge for AST's Please excuse my ignorance about this I am just the administrator here.

My boss does not know I have been on this site I have just found it really difficult to find landlords. I thought there might have been a website or something where landlords were looking for agents, but I was obviously wrong.

I use this site for problems that we come up against so please don't think that I am a newbie here.

Thanks again, Rachael

[Mortitia]

Hi again,

I don't think there is a site where landlords hang out looking for agents. One or two on this site ask if anyone knows an good agent in wherever but this can be such an individual thing.

My local agent says Rightmove provides 90% of their business here in the south followed by other websites like Globrix - I think she must mean tenants. They also advertise in all the local press and local 'lifestyle' mags for landlords, sponsor local events and even have signs on roundabouts (do you do that up there?). Getting your company name/logo out there has to be paramount. I often get 'drop cards' advertising estate and letting agents through the doors of my properties but I don't know how successful that is at getting business in. What about getting an ad on local radio - rates are cheap right now?

All the best,

Mortitia

[RachaelDraper]

Hi again,

I don't think there is a site where landlords hang out looking for agents. One or two on this site ask if anyone knows an good agent in wherever but this can be such an individual thing.

My local agent says Rightmove provides 90% of their business here in the south followed by other websites like Globrix - I think she must mean tenants. They also advertise in all the local press and local 'lifestyle' mags for landlords, sponsor local events and even have signs on roundabouts (do you do that up there?). Getting your company name/logo out there has to be paramount. I often get 'drop cards' advertising estate and letting agents through the doors of my properties but I don't know how successful that is at getting business in. What about getting an ad on local radio - rates are cheap right now?

All the best,

Mortitia

Thanks again I have tried a few advertising solutions we have been in the local paper and we invested £350 in getting some to let signs made, I created a website just last week www.jjacksonproperties.com to try and traffic a few people to our business I mean sites like rightmove will charge £100 a month quite expensive for our small business. Our properties were once managed by an agent and he was quite bad so my boss made our business and some other landlords came with us to let their properties out for them. So we know how bad letting agents can be, we learnt from their mistakes.

Anyway I really appreciate your feedback, it is really difficult to compete with the big estate agents out there, but we will try.

Thanks for the reply and the radio may be a possibilty for us.

Greatest Regards

Rachael.

[mad_maz]

Hi Rachel

Please don't be offended but I have just taken a look at your website, and I just wanted to point out that there are several spelling mistakes.

I am not being 'picky' but I think you should revisit and make changes as it would put me off using a company due to appearing amateurish.

Good luck with getting more landlords on board.

[RachaelDraper]

yikes your right mind you i'm no member of mensa, thanks for spotting that i've amended all mistakes. There isn't a spell checker on this website thingy.

Regards

Rachael

[Simon Dewsberry]

Being a LL or LA means you are very much in the "poeple " business ...if you are doing a good job, both T & LL will recomend you to others ..word will get about quickly and biz will follow ...if you are doing nothing exceptional then you will not prosper....

Be execptional ..................

The Rodent

[J4L]

Hi Rachel,

I'm an agent in South Wales and I believe that we are great at what we do.

Couple of pointers from your answers above :-

Section 21 is NOT always the quickest route and you need to look at each individual case to decide which way forward is the best for you.

You say you've invested £350 in getting TO LET signs made? I'm getting the impression that you've only JUST done this?? Would that be correct? 70% of my lets come from boards so you should have done this 2 years ago. Boards are the cheapest way of getting exposure in your area. Subliminal advertising is a great tool. Erect boards and leave them up as long as you can get away with it (14 days is usually the norm after you've let a property)

As Rodent suggests, word of mouth is the best and quickest way to increase business. We let out our 1st property in August 2007 and currently manage just short of 200 properties. We don't advertise in the local rag as that has died a death, we pulled the plug on the Yellow Pages after the first year as we only had ONE call from that. Rightmove is too expensive in my opinion and I've never done that. We don't have a shop front (although the new Just4Let shop will be opening up in about a fortnight) the overheads were too much for a start up business at the time but now we are in a much better position to afford this.

Just been looking at your site and if I may could I give you a few pointers?

You state on your site that MOST of your tenants are on Housing Benefit? Why would you put this on your site? Landlords know that of course some tenants are on benefits but there are many out there that won't accept this so they are not going to come to you are they? Take a look at my site! You won't see ONE advert that says "No DSS, No Pets, No Smokers etc" I refuse to put that on even though Landlords do ask me to. This is discriminating to people and each case is individual and this cuts both ways.

I have had LL's who say they don't want anyone on benefits who change their mind once I've spoken to them, but likewise we can screen out anyone on benefits at the time of an enquiry if a LL is insistent that he doesn't.

My point is that you don't get that luxury because you are telling these LL's that most of your Tenants are on benefits anyway.

You also state that most of your properties are 2-3 bedrooms!!! Again same as above, people may think you are only experienced in that area. What about that LL that has a portfolio of flats / apartments?? You've just lost him!!!

Can I ask, if you manage 100 properties and in 2008 you found over 3000 tenants how does that work out??

I'd be looking at that and asking myself why is the tenant turnover so much in a year? Are they 30 bed HMO's with just students in? No they can't be because "most" are on benefits. So that means that you must do a lot of find tenant only for LL's. So NOW i'm thinking that if you have 100 properties in 2 years, that's 50 a year with on average 2-3 people in a let, then that's 2-300 people you've found in 2 years, meaning 1-150 a year, meaning 2850 find tenant only contracts. That's not a bad little income if you charge 50% of the 1st month's rent but it doesn't show that you're good at managing does it so I wouldn't advertise that!

I've just spotted that 80 of the 100 properties are owned by the business, which means that you've only managed to secure 20 properties from new Landlords!!

With respect here, my worry, if I were a LL in your area is that you're spending too much time on expanding YOUR portfolio and managing that rather than looking after MY property. That growth doesn't show that you are very proactive in getting new clients in.

To give you some figures from our business, I aim to get on average 2 new properties a week on. Yesterday I took on 2 with one LL, and 7 from another, both of these were WORD OF MOUTH referrals. I get out there and network, I speak with people, I go to functions, seminars, council forums etc etc. If people don't know you're there they CAN'T come to you can they?

Those 9 'just walked in' really without me trying and that's because we have a good reputation building and people recommend us. If I don't get any in I go looking for them.

Here's a few ideas.

There has to be more than one agent in your area and they have to advertise somewhere, I regularly check out all the other agents 'stock' via the papers and their sites. EVERY house they all have on gets a letter directed at the owner of the property TO the property PLUS we do a Land registry search to find out the details of the owner and we send the same letter to them at their home address if that shows on the search. Of course there's a cost attached to this but you'll be surprised how many calls you'll get back.

Leaflet drops in hand picked areas can also be quite fruitful. I say hand picked because let's say there's a street in your area that most of the properties are rented out! No point targetting that area trying to find Landlords is there. Most Landlords live in the better areas and buy in these other areas so if you've got a very nice estate that you've never seen a house up for let, target THAT area and see what happens. If you don't get anything, don't worry you've planted the seed. Repeat this every 3 months or so.

One of the things I would say, to finish this off, is, spend some money! I know we're in a so called recession and we're all trying to cut back a bit but now is the time small businesses should be INCREASING their advertising not cutting it back.

Make people think you're a bigger company than you are if you like. Your boards should be 1st class and stand out, your stationary should be great and your website, even better!! Employ a graphic designer, and I mean an experienced one, not one that's just come out of university. This won't be cheap but his insight into what people are doing to increase business will benefit you greatly. Get a make over, rebrand your business, make it stand out from the others. With the help of a designer and a new 'brand' those unsuspecting LL's won't tell the difference between you and the Larger agents you mentioned.

Main thing is, once you get them in, KEEP THEM, be good at what you do and ALWAYS do what you say you're going to!

[RachaelDraper]

hey thanks to everyone who has replied i wasn't expecting all this advice but it is all constructive critisism and I think the website has been our most slated but to be honest I created the website from scratch me an administrator who is only 18 so if its crap im still a little proud of it and i didnt go to university to learn that.

We possible might be taking on another 170 properties so thats in discussion at the moment so more work for me but thats good.

Thanks for everyones opinion it's nice to see that other people care and are willing to take time out to reply.

Regards

Rachael