LANDLORDS!!!

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WHICH AGENT WOULD YOU CHOOSE?

No two days are ever the same in an Estate Agents office and yesterday was certainly one of the more interesting ones! We have recently been instructed to take over the management of five rental properties all owned by the same Landlord, as his former Letting Agent had closed down. Unfortunately, getting all of the information that we need from that Agent to be able to take over the management has been challenging and three weeks on we are still waiting for basic information.

At lunchtime yesterday I took a call from the former Agent to advise me that there was a situation with one of the properties that I needed to attend to. Apparently, and completely unbeknown to me, a third Agent had been instructed by the Landlords to let one of the properties and they had moved tenants into the apartment yesterday morning. Somehow these two girls had stepped out onto the tiny front balcony to admire the stunning see view and had shut the door behind them only to later discover that the door had somehow locked itself and worse still, on trying desperately to jiggle the door handle it actually came off in their hands!

Two floors up, and without any means of getting back inside or phoning for help, they had no choice but to wait until they could get the attention of a passer-by and beg them for assistance. And having only been in the apartment for a matter of hours, the only number they could think to ask them to call was the Letting Agent who had just moved them in. Now you would think that the Agent, on being told that two young girls were stuck on a balcony two floors up and freezing cold, would be sufficiently concerned to pop over with keys to let themselves in and open the patio door from the inside to release them?

Wrong. They actually refused to help them on the basis that they were instructed by the Landlord to act in a ‘let-only’ capacity, not a managed capacity! And despite the fact that we knew nothing about it until that moment (and had not been paid a penny, unlike the other Agent) it fell to us to visit them and sort the situation out. But even that wasn’t without its problems. Sadly, our keys didn’t work and so the Fire Brigade very kindly attended and used their ladder to reach up to the balcony and bring them down in their basket. The whole scary experience lasted more than two hours for the poor girls’ and could easily have been avoided if the Agent who had moved them in only a matter of hours earlier had put kindness and compassion above financial matters and gone along as soon as they were called.

On to the moral of the story. Which Agent would you choose to manage your property AND look after your tenants? So, what are you waiting for? Give us a call on 01934 512537 and we can discuss our services with you in more detail – and tell you who the other Agent was, in confidence (of course!).

Thank you for reading.

Sue Iles

Director