It’s a claim I’ve heard so many times in recent years. And it’s a claim which is undoubtedly easy to believe if you’re a letting agent sat in a quiet office, waiting for landlords to call and ask you to manage their properties.
Yet it’s not a claim that’s backed up by fact – yes, there are peaks and troughs in the private rental market (and there will always be). But in the last 20 years, the proportion of rental properties has doubled.
In the 1990s, when I started my career as a letting agent, less than 10% of properties were privately rented. In recent years, that figure has sat around 21% for England and 20% for the UK as a whole.
We’re talking about more than 4.5 million properties here – and at last count 2.7 million landlords.
So, tell me again that there are no landlords out there…
Limiting the scope
The struggle to find landlords that many agents are reporting comes down to two main factors, in my experience.
Firstly, the overwhelming majority of agents concentrate on ‘standard lets.’ They’re all fighting for the business of landlords renting single occupancy properties to self-funded UK residents.
What about the half a million Homes of Multiple Occupation (HMOs)? What about the 75% of migrants who are housed within the private rental sector? And what about half of all private renters, who receive housing benefit or universal credit to partially or fully fund their outgoings?
If 95% of agents are choosing to eradicate half of their potential customer base by overlooking landlords with these portfolios, then is it any wonder their view of the sector is skewed?
Managing ‘standard let’ properties might be simpler than looking after landlords with migrant renters, renters claiming benefits, or HMOs. But isn’t that what agents are there for – to deal with the more complex situations so that landlords themselves don’t need to get to grips with, and ensure they’re compliant with, the 170 pieces of legislation which govern our industry.
Show your worth
Which brings me to my next point – we’ve established there are plenty of landlords out there. This means rather than ‘there aren’t any landlords’ what those agents are actually saying is ‘fewer landlords are choosing to use us.’
In fact, half of all landlords are going it alone – and while DIY tenancy may have its appeal (mostly when it comes to budgeting), every single letting agent knows why it’s not a good idea.
All of us know what’s at stake if landlords fail to comply with new, updated and long-standing legislation. All of us have heard of the fines, prosecution, reputational problems – and ultimately the career-ending mistakes that landlords have made because they didn’t rely on an expert to do it for them.
But that message isn’t reaching the ears of landlords. Sure, there will always be those who sadly prioritise income generation over protecting themselves (and their tenants) from the pitfalls of the rental sector. Yet there are also a sizeable proportion who would be more open to using a letting agent if understood exactly how agents could manage their portfolio, improve the experience of their renters, and mitigate the risks they took on when they began renting a property.
We must showcase our true worth, and begin to communicate with our potential customers about not just the cost of our services – but the worth of everything we do.
And a crucial part of that is showcasing our specialism when it comes to housing law. I’ve led landlord seminars for years, if not decades, now – and at every single one I ask the attendees to name as many of the 170 pieces of legislation as they can.
No landlord has ever known more than 7.
And that’s why they (and the renters who are their customers) need educating about the value of a letting agent. Because they only need to fall foul of one of the other 163 regulations that they can’t name, let alone quote the content of, and that’s their career as a landlord over.
