Evaluating Letting Agents

The quality of your letting agent or property manager can have a significant impact on the success of your investment property. Never evaluate potential letting agents based on the fee alone. Like any other business there are good agents and bad agents so it pays to ask some questions:

· How much is the fee, what does it include?

· Do they manage other properties similar to yours?

· Who will actually handle your property?

· How many other properties do they manage?

· How is the fee collected and when? Will you be billed, or will it be deducted from the rent and with what frequency?

· How do they attract tenants? What marketing do they do? Is this included in the fee?

· What repairs need owner approval? What euro amount needs your authorisation, and is this negotiable?

· Do they have in-house maintenance service or do they use out side contractors? If so how are costs controlled?

· What are their business hours? do they provide 24 hour on-call service?

· Accounting? What reports do they send? How often? How are accounts set up?

Tip: If you have a number of properties don’t be afraid to negotiate on the fee.