by Steve Hatch
Last week we saved a new Landlord over £3000 as a well known ‘Gas’ supply company who happen to be ‘British’ had quoted him to install a replacement boiler… When I saw the boiler I was horrified, it was a ‘high quality’ boiler that didn’t look that old. I immediately made a phone call to our ‘Gas Safe’ qualified heating engineer, told him the make and model and he agreed there was no way it would need replacing. He called in the next day and after a £100 chemical power flush it was as good as new! A great feeling and another very happy long term client.
Today we saved another of our highly respected landlords about £350. It felt good, it always does when you know you have done your job well. There’s no magic to it and no showing off, it’s just professional property management as it should be and we happen to be pretty good at it. Being a North London managing agent is more about a conscientious approach, common sense and experience over anything else.
It’s all about building trust
The rules are fairly simple, we will only represent a landlord that we can trust to do what we reasonably need and ask them to do, in return we make a solemn promise to manage their property as if we owned it! The result is usually a long term relationship built on trust. It doesn’t stop there, our targeted marketing purposely attracts the best tenants that have already watched our ’60 second Video Tour’ featured on the major websites. They know and trust that they are coming to see a decent property, this is why we arrange a photo shoot for every property we take on.
Anyway back to the £350 quid! The tenants called in to let us know that the washing machine had packed up. The landlord was all set to buy a new washing machine without questioning it… we suggested that we organise our professional appliance contractor to go and assess, yes, there is a reasonable call out charge of £40 but, he calls within hours (not days) and if it turns out to be a problem that could have been avoided with more care from the tenants, then they agree to cover the call out and repair. If the appliance does need replacing, then the £40 call out charge is balanced out as our contractor passes on his trade discount, only charging to install! Curry’s and Comet now charge to install, so it works out fair all round.
As it turned out the drum was being obstructed with a ‘Parker pen’ and the underwire from an old ‘Bra’. Once the contractor showed the tenants this they agreed to pay the £40 and were glad to have a working washing machine aga
in, there was no fuss and no drama, they know how we work and it was clearly explained beforehand.
It’s all about communication, common sense and the relationship. I seriously believe that a professional agent will generally pay for themselves throughout the course of the tenancy. In fact when a landlord is reluctant to pay our full management fee we very politely say we understand and genuinely wish them the best. Some landlords save a few pounds and some end up losing thousands, it’s just the way it is.
For us though, it can indicate that certain landlords (not all) may be reluctant to maintain the property, a situation we avoid at all costs as it not only impacts on a tenants quality of life, but also our hard earned reputation. It simply isn’t worth it.
At the end of the day management fees are a 100% tax deductable expense, we also offer a few other tax related tips that generally save landlords even more money. It is also worth bearing in mind that management fees are spread into monthly payments over the term of the tenancy.
In order to provide our landlords and tenants with the best service we can and maintain our standards, we never take on more properties than we can handle. We have a ceiling level of managed properties that we will not go above.
Covering Hornsey N8, Harringay N4 and N8, Wood Green N22, South Tottenham N15
We are more than happy to answer any individual property questions… just click here, or go the the ‘Ask us a Question’ tab above.
