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retube

Here's why a landlord will pay a reputable estate agent a 10% fee. They will:

- market the property on places like rightmove, findaproperty etc

- show prospective tenants around (so you don't have to take time off work)

- take pictures, measurements and construct floor plans

- do credit, CRB and reference checks

- provide a boilerplate tenancy agreement (which you can amend as you like)

- sort out posting of deposits to the Tenancy Deposit Scheme

- collect the rent

The amount of time and hassle all this saves is a lot... Of course there are crummy agents so do your research.

Incidently - your "no risk" claim is a worrying one and suggests you don't know much about the lettings business.

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Here's what OpenRent offers (take a look here: http://www.openrent.co.uk/landlords):

- We'll market the property on places like rightmove, findaproperty etc

- We'll do credit, CRB and reference checks

- We'll provide a boilerplate tenancy agreement (which you can amend as you like), AND we'll provide a digital agreement for online signatures.

- We'll sort out posting of deposits to the Tenancy Deposit Scheme

- We'll tell tenants where and when to pay the rent. ie. A standing order into the landlord's bank account, but we don't collect it as such.

What we don't do:

- The viewings. Obviously this is a huge cost saving that we can pass onto the tenants and landlords, but also, tenants like meeting the landlord, and landlords like meeting their prospective tenants. Who better to show you round?

Super good looking site! From my understanding you are an agent that does everything except the showing. I think your last point is kind of key and may need to be fleshed out more. I agree that tenants like meeting the landlord, however, landlord may like meeting tenants but they usually are unable to. Landlords are in the business of owning property. They use a service provider like brokers to make their life more convenient, so they can focus on the core of their business. The first few points are administrative tasks the real burden is to schedule appointments and show up for appointments that are usually a waste of time (that's why brokers are bitter!)Perhaps facilitating the different aspect of these appointments for landlords can help disrupt the status quo.

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