What would your advice be to somebody who is looking to self -manage a property?

Regulations and red tape have gone through the roof for landlords over the last 2 to 3 years. 

The first initial advice from a solicitor is to give the property to a letting agent to deal with it.  

 

An instruction from a letting agent is completely different from an instruction indirectly from the landlord.  

 

The amount of paperwork that a letting agent will need to prepare in order to make sure the tenancy is legal and above board and has everything that is needed in order for the solicitors to do their job at the end of the tenancy.  

 

There is a lot of paperwork to be submitted to the court and this has to be submitted in a particular way. 

When landlord law and tenant law started to change and started to adapt and move very quickly initially it was about deposits. Deposits are a big problem with landlords keeping the deposit and not returning it back to the tenants, so the government stepped in and made people put them into one of the government proofs schemes which was great. That’s been going for a long time. 

 

A lot of landlords haven’t done it, so solicitors have to advise what to do now because there is a marked difference of what they are now allowed to do and what not to do. If you didn’t get it right in the first place you have to take some additional steps, like giving back the deposit, for you then to be able to do something and serve a section 21 notice. So, the landlord loses the money you’ve got, and you had it there in the first place for a reason. 

 

Next came along the changes that was brought in to do with gas safety certificates, EPC, EICR, How to Rent Guide which came in 2015 for all new tenancies but it applied retrospectively from 2018. So, every tenancy had to have these documents served in the first place. Landlords were still getting their heads around the deposit scheme protection along with all the information, to then be told you need to do this as well. In addition to that, that’s been around for a good few years now. EICR has been brought in and the court haven’t yet adapted the claim form to include that into, but you see a lot of landlords now having those reports, so they are trying to keep up with things. 

 

It can fall upon solicitors to then try to unravel a piece of string that has got mashed up over the years and to try to smooth it out and try to make sure the tenancy is then running in a proper fashioned order that you can then try to get possession from the tenant that’s in the property at the moment. 

Whether you’re self-managing or giving it to a letting agent like the solicitors advise it is important to put the tenant in correctly with all the right paperwork so that you can get them out correctly if you need to. 

 

It’s front loaded, there’s so much work to do initially and if you didn’t get it right to begin with then the problems only really become apparent at the end of the line. When you’re trying to get the tenant out, it will only be then you realise what you should’ve done at the start. Which is why a solicitor’s advice is to go with a letting agent because they can get it right. They know what the rules and regulations are initially, and it leaves out a lot of the guess work. 

 

 

If you have any more questions, or would like to talk with a member of our team, please don't hesitate to contact us, we are here to help! 

 

lettings@thepropertyfox.co.uk 

 

0116 3409989