{"id":13835,"date":"2018-03-26T10:15:49","date_gmt":"2018-03-26T09:15:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.buyassociation.co.uk\/?p=13835"},"modified":"2023-10-09T11:35:44","modified_gmt":"2023-10-09T10:35:44","slug":"landlords-save-money-self-managing-online-agents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/news\/landlords-save-money-self-managing-online-agents\/","title":{"rendered":"How landlords can save money by self-managing or using online agents"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The buy-to-let market continues to shift across the UK and it seems that landlords are adapting along with the changes, with more planning to ditch high-street letting agents in favour of cheaper alternatives.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>There are around five million households across the UK living in private rented accommodation at the moment, a figure that is expected to rise to around 5.8 million by 2021 &#8211; which is almost a quarter of all households in the UK. As a result, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/2018\/02\/21\/less-homeowners-more-opportunities-landlords\/\">landlords and property investors<\/a> are becoming increasingly prominent in the housing market, despite the government&#8217;s attempts to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/2018\/03\/20\/traditional-landlords-ditching-vanilla-investments-in-favour-of-off-plan\/\">cool the sector<\/a>\u00a0and encourage home ownership, and those with existing rental properties are looking at ways to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/2018\/01\/11\/heres-why-the-futures-looking-brighter-for-buy-to-let\/\">adapt for the future<\/a>.<br \/>\n[crb_image link=&#8221;https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/advice\/property-investment-starter-course\/&#8221; image=&#8221;https:\/\/cdn2.hubspot.net\/hubfs\/1717782\/Asset_Store\/WebCTA\/cta.jpg&#8221; align=&#8221;left&#8221;]<br \/>\nA recent survey conducted by online letting agent Upad, which harvested results from more than 3,000 landlords, revealed that although 21% had used the services of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/2018\/03\/01\/london-property-market-shift-65-estate-agent-foxtons\/\">high-street letting agents<\/a> recently, only 5% planned on doing so in the future.<\/p>\n<p>The reasons behind this change were varied, with 32% saying they planned to move away from traditional letting agents in order to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/2018\/02\/16\/most-landlords-agents-prefer-cut-out-middle-man\/\">save money<\/a>, 31% stating that they wanted to use a different approach to finding tenants, and 29% who were more interested in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/2018\/01\/23\/self-managed-vs-letting-agent-landlords-decide-fees-ban\/\">self-managing<\/a> their properties.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, 83% of respondents said they planned on using an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/2018\/04\/10\/new-trends-online-agents-silver-spenders-growing-rental-market\/\">online agent<\/a> instead in 2018, up from the 62% who currently use one &#8211; an indication that the use of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/2018\/03\/21\/government-grants-100k-to-six-proptech-firms-helping-tenants-buy-homes\/\">proptech<\/a> for both efficiency and value for money is becoming more prevalent.<\/p>\n<h4>A new approach for buy-to-let landlords<\/h4>\n<p>James Davis, founder of Upad, said: &#8220;When I set Upad up almost 10 years ago, I did so confident that landlords would become increasingly more interested in approaching their buy-to-let portfolios in new and different ways.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;The data that we\u2019re releasing today not only corroborates that decision, but highlights just how significantly management of the rental sector is evolving.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Aside from the advent of online agents, self-management has become a more popular option for those landlords who have the time and resources to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/2018\/03\/21\/tenant-and-landlord-money-will-soon-be-protected-by-new-scheme\/\">deal with tenants<\/a> and lettings. Upad&#8217;s website registered a 60% rise in enquiries from landlords around how and when to conduct property inspections while the tenants are living there, and a 155% leap in the number of landlords looking into how to renew <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/2018\/01\/08\/new-three-year-tenancy-policy-supports-landlords-and-tenants\/\">tenancies<\/a> &#8211; from 130 in the first quarter of 2017 to 330 in Q1 this year.<\/p>\n<p>With letting fees set to be banned by the government, many have speculated that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/2018\/05\/09\/landlords-tenants-money-protected-by-law\/\">letting agents<\/a> will make up their shortfalls by charging a higher percentage to landlords, which in turn may be passed onto tenants in the form of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/2018\/03\/06\/rent-control-debate-caps-help-hinder-uk-tenants\/\">rent rises<\/a>. This could also prove another incentive for landlords to look at alternatives to using an agent &#8211; although they will need to ensure they have the knowledge and expertise, as well as the\u00a0time to commit to fully managing a property and its tenants.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The buy-to-let market continues to shift across the UK and it seems that landlords are adapting along with the changes, with more planning to ditch high-street letting agents in favour of cheaper alternatives. There are around five million households across the UK living in private rented accommodation at the moment, a figure that is expected<a class=\"excerpt-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/news\/landlords-save-money-self-managing-online-agents\/\" title=\"ReadHow landlords can save money by self-managing or using online agents\">&#8230; Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":13848,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4,6],"tags":[15,30,341],"class_list":["post-13835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buy-to-let-landlords","category-investment","category-uk-housing-market","tag-landlords","tag-letting-agent","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13835"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6097188,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13835\/revisions\/6097188"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}