Letting agents offer more than just introductions

This week, in our property blog, Lea Beven defends the honour of letting agents everywhere and explains why what they do is so important:

Now I am the first to understand that most people hate letting agents because they feel either that they get poor customer service or that they pay high fees for nothing, so I thought I would break it down to explain exactly what a letting agent does to earn their fee.

This is the raw and uncut version (not a sales pitch, honest) so that you can see that it is not just a simple 'introduction' with no effort at all.

Here at Limecastle, we specialise in building databases of tenants and landlords and work hard to match the right people to the right properties.

First of all, for you as a landlord to have heard about us and tap into our tenant database, you must either have had a recommendation or seen some of our marketing like a board or listing.

This in itself is a big job keeping our brand visible and noticeable so that you know where to come when you have rooms to let.

Then for the tenant to have contacted us and be on our database - again they will have either seen your property specifically advertised (that will have taken a few hours to arrange) or be looking for something similar in or near the area of your property.

The letting agent pays to market both sides of the business so that all of you know how to contact us and these costs of marketing are the business overheads, as well as office rent, wages and petrol.

To cover the overheads and stay in business, the letting agent must make some money from their service and it does this by charging a fee to both parties.

This covers everything above and arranging the viewing, the skill in the matching and the petrol for viewings, negotiation techniques and many other bits you probably wouldn't think about.

Each property is unique and has its own feature points to point out and often we have to go the extra mile to take pictures - washing dishes, picking up rubbish outside the property and even making beds!

If there were no letting agents imagine the hassle - it's not as easy as it sounds. Most of us work very hard for our money, honest!