Top 10 Reasons Landlords Choose Harry Albert Lettings & Estates

We understand the challenges you face going into 2019 with all the upcoming changes including the deposit cap forcing you to shoulder more risk without an increase in rewards, the reduction of mortgage interest rate relief and the introduction of the Fitness for Human Habitation bill, all of which is designed to make your life as a landlord or property investor just a little bit more difficult.

We're looking at ten of the many reasons why new and well-experienced Landlords who invest in properties in Leicester choose Harry Albert Lettings & Estates.

At Harry Albert Lettings & Estates, we help you to maximise your revenue and keep on top of legislative changes

As a Leicester letting agent, we understand your need to generate maximum revenues whilst also keeping your property in a well-maintained standard, which is more important than ever with the increased rights tenants are being given with respect to the condition of their home and your obligations to them.

Harry Albert Lettings & Estates offer full property management services to landlords with properties in Leicester which allows you to relax knowing your property is being taken care of, that you're remaining legally compliant and that your tenancies are being managed without emotions getting in the way; we show compassion towards our tenants and work with them whenever they need our help or our intervention but your property will remain our priority and, in the event of continued failings on the tenants' behalf, we will take any remedial action necessary, including assisting you to evict your tenants. There are two options open to us when evicting tenants which is the Section 21 route (also increasingly called Form 6A) and Section 8.

As local property managers in Leicester, we have built a solid reputation in the Leicester property market for the services we deliver to landlords which is why more and more landlords are turning to Harry Albert Lettings & Estates to manage their property and to find suitable and reliable tenants.

Why are we a better option when choosing a letting agent or property manager in Leicester?

Below we have listed ten other reasons as to why you should instruct us to manage your property.

1. Continuous Market Review

Like any good letting agents in Leicester, we understand the importance of making sure your rent is competitive with the rest of the market and this is going to be even more important in 2019 as costs rise and your properties become higher maintenance with the introduction of the Housing Health and Safety Rating System used by local authorities to define whether your property meets the Fitness for Human Habitation Bill. That's why we're always on top of what's going on in the local property market.

Our invaluable advice on how to maximise your rental income will be second to none as we continually review the market and make recommendations as to when to increase rents and by how much to both maximise your return on investment without alienating your tenants to the extent they feel they can no longer afford to live in their home.

2. Regular Communication

After running countless polls throughout 2018, we learned a huge amount from our landlord and tenant clients about how they want to be treated and at the top of the list of everyone's priority was strong, effective communication; you want to be kept in the loop with what's happening. We keep our clients fully informed using a range of contact methods including email and social media. To date, we have only ever used snail mail on very few occasions such as to serve notice on a tenant or where it has been selected as the most appropriate contact method. Otherwise, we'd much rather pick up the phone, send a text or email or use Facebook Messenger, LinkedIn or WhatsApp! This informal method of communication is especially effective with maintaining tenant relationships as it removes the authoritative aspect of communicating with tenants and brings us down to their level in most cases, promoting tenant happiness by ensuring they're always comfortable talking to us.

Our deviation from traditional communication methods used by Leicester letting agents means we can keep you fully informed about your property, the property market and other vital information about your property, including emergency repair requests and gas safety certificate reminders. We've found sending a letter means there is an opportunity for it to go missing in the Royal Mail system or to end up on a pile and forgotten about, so by calling our clients to remind them about upcoming insurance renewals or expiry of the Gas Safety certificate means we can get authority to have these renewed on time without taking the risk of them expiring.

3. Experience & Expertise

We've been working in the property market for long enough to know what we're doing and to get an edge over the local competition. We can identify high yielding properties and specialise in maximising your return on investment. We can help you to convert a family home into flats to maximise yields and can advise on converting your properties into an HMO (Houses in Multiple Occupation). Harry Albert Lettings & Estates has quickly become a leading letting agency in Leicester and a perfect choice for any landlord who is looking for a reliable property management specialist.

We've also won multiple awards for our efforts within the Leicester private rented sector, from being shortlisted as the best New Agent of the Year 2018 by the Negotiator Magazine to being awarded a Gold Certificate of Excellence by Bark! for being the Best Property Management Company in Leicester 2019.

4. Tenant Relationships

We've focused mostly on what we can do for you so far but we're not just the best choice for landlords. We're also the best choice for tenants who are looking for properties in Leicester, too! Tenants flock to us for our low tenant fees and fair treatment; we aren't judgemental and weight tenants up on their own merits whilst taking into consideration any negative aspects of their tenant application. The average application fee tenants have to pay to larger, more established letting agents will often amount to more than ￡600 for a couple of professional tenants to move into a one bedroom flat. These rip-off tactics push tenants away meaning your property is left vacant for longer, costing you money whilst the agent collects their application fees from tenants they know will be unsuitable.

Whilst tenants make your property their home, we keep in regular contact and make sure they're settling in well. It's important to ensure your tenants understand that they can call on us for support.

5. We Only Get Paid When You Do

We only collect our fees from incoming rent, when the tenant we find fails to pay rent, we fail to collect our fees which means we have a vested interest in ensuring the rent is paid on time, every time. Whilst the management fees will still be owed to us, we won't collect payment of these fees until we receive rent from the tenant or you ask us to stop managing your property.

The typical Leicester Letting Agent will make a profit from your empty home whilst we do not. After viewings, we'll be lucky if we're breaking even with the fees paid by the successful tenant applicant because when your return on investment suffers, so does our revenue because we're in this together. We don't believe we should not reap rewards when you're not receiving any rewards yourself.

6. Tenant Background Checks

Finding the right tenant the first time, every time is very important to both of us, taking into consideration our previous point where we only get paid if you do, we have a duty to ensure your tenants are actually going to pay their rent. We do our best to ensure this through credit and reference checks, as well as other vetting processes which include:

• Affordability checks
• Right to Rent checks
• Income verification
• Rent Arrears checks and more...

7. Effective Advertising

When it comes to advertising your property to let in Leicester, we know you're expecting more than a few online listings and waiting for tenants to find your properties. Instead, we use tried and tested marketing techniques which do include online listings but we go one step ahead. Because we're so popular with tenants, we run out of stock very quickly and as a result, we have a large database of tenants waiting for properties like your in the city (you can see areas of highest tenant demand on our homepage) and we will match your property to potential tenants before it even goes live on the property portals like Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket.

We actively search for tenants in the areas where they're looking for properties; for student lets, we will visit local universities to canvas students on Open Days, this has had great amounts of success for student lets near the University of Leicester and De Montfort University. For professional lets, we will liaise with employers to find any staff who may be looking for somewhere new to live; we have strong relationships with Leicester City Council, the local colleges in Leicester, Leicester hospitals and many other employers around the city.

Our comprehensive property descriptions are optimised for internet search results which means when people search for "Properties to Let in Leicester" on Google or Bing, they'll typically find ours first. We also use a range of online portals to really maximise your property's exposure reaching as wide an audience of potential tenants as possible.

8. Viewings

Because we carry out all viewings (except where you don't want us to), we provide you with any feedback received and advice on how to improve the prospects of letting your property. As we mentioned, minimising void periods is in our best interest and we work closely with you to get the job done so we can both start generating revenue.

9. Third-Party Set Up

When tenants move into our properties, we will usually notify Leicester City Council, the energy supplier, Severn Trent Water and any other relevant organisations to ensure your liability for any bills stops when your tenants move in. But on top of this, we can arrange for relevant insurance products, including specialist insurance such as cover for accidental tenant pet damage which is usually excluded from most comprehensive landlord insurance policies.

We also manage all maintenance aspects of your property, working with the best tradesmen available who are qualified and complete work to a high standard ensuring your property is looked after and your tenants are happy; happy tenants lead to long-term tenants.

10. Around The Clock Customer Service

Our office hours are 10 AM to 7 PM, 7 days a week and we're open on bank holidays, Christmas day and new years day because you don't stop being a landlord on these days. Whilst we do have set office hours, we are available around the clock via email and social media (though we are human and do need to sleep from time to time) and through our online repairs reporting tool, emergency repairs can be picked up and remedied immediately. This means we can provide fantastic customer service that regularly exceeds your expectations. When we say your property is our priority, we mean it.

When you instruct us to manage your rented properties in Leicester, you and your tenants will benefit from our fair fee guarantee which means you'll never be expected to pay any hidden fees or excessive fees that haven't been agreed ahead of time. We don't charge for tenancy renewals as we understand the importance of fixed-term contracts with regard to protecting our client's interests; tenants don't want to risk being homeless in two months time and you don't want your property to be abandoned this time next month because the tenant has simply found somewhere better. With the changes to mortgage interest rate relief (Section 24) and the tenant fee ban, including the tenant deposit being capped at 5 weeks, we're in a position to maintain your yields, even with your increased costs from 1st June 2019.

If you are a landlord with properties in Leicester and would like us to manage your property, please call Harry Albert Lettings & Estates today on 0116 321 4970 or email [email protected].