This is the term we use for new business – signing up new landlords, uploading all their documents and certificates onto our system, ensuring that both they and their properties are compliant, dealing with the documentation and compliance surrounding any existing tenancies and signing and agreeing our terms and our agency contract. It sounds simple – just a few signatures, what can be complicated about that? However, it’s an important process and forms the basis upon which both sides understand each other. It can all happen very quickly, where everyone is motivated towards speed, but it’s significance should not be overlooked or understated. We will be looking at two things here, when we are onboarding landlords– compliance and business plan. In terms of compliance, we like to break this down into 3 areas (i) Compliant landlord (ICO, Insurances, Mortgage type etc.) (ii) Property Compliance (certification, HHSRS, any licensing requirements, risk assessments etc.) (iii) Tenant and Tenancy compliance. In terms of business plan, it’s here that we look at any overarching concepts, projects, desires, or plans, which affect your property or portfolio. Two great and recent examples of this are of two individual landlords, who are lovely landlord clients of ours.
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The first is a property investor who had an absolute HMO nightmare. He is a portfolio landlord, who had stopped investing in HMOs because “they just aren’t worth the hassle…when you equate the time, stress, and extra maintenance, they just don’t make sense.” He passed the management of his remaining HMOs over to us, from another agent and we were able to make some adjustments for him. We re-modelled some of the rooms; filled his empty rooms, thereby correcting his void situation; found the problem tenants and served the correct eviction notices and replaced them with good quality tenants; hired a cleaner; set up effective working relationships with the tenants and managed the properties correctly. It wasn’t an easy or “painless” process, but it turned a nightmare situation around, into a positive (both in terms of stress, anxiety and cashflow) situation. Just recently, the investor in question has come back to us, to discuss other HMOs that he is looking to develop, as he now has confidence in the model again. The second example is of a landlord, with a flat in the centre of Bristol, who wants to use it for himself and his family for part of the year. We were able to discuss his plans and look at different tenant types and how this might work for him.