Hey
Looking to rent out a property, a house south of the river in Perth.
Wondering if anyone got any good tips on finding an agent to go with? Rather go agent then do myself as i dont have the free time to handle it.
Spoke to a few and there a lot of incidental fees on top of the ongoing management fees which range from 8% upto 13%.
What is the standard fees these days?
In my experience over the last few years they are all crap. We had 4 of the world's best tenants as selected by different Real Estate Property Managers and each one of them left without paying the complete rent and damage to the property. The Bond never covered the lost rent and the damage.(We also had 2 good Tenants). The whole process is just a matter of Luck.
We managed a house ourselves for a while, it's time consuming and once the tenant gets to know you it starts "Mate, no money this week, I'll pay 2 weeks rent next week" and not much we could do about it, the tribunal takes a few weeks before you can turn up.
Also make sure You keep an eye on your property as we've experienced 1 such real estate company that didn't do house inspections or check tennants past. We had all types of things go wrong etc $1700.00 power bill $800.00 excess water bill broken windows and the yard was a bloody mess. That's why I Hate people renting my homes.
Always every 3 months keep asking your estate agency to send you a complete report signed by them and the tennant that way if something does go wrong you have documents to support your case if it happens. All the best.
Is your property in a reasonable area? We manage our properties ourselves after having management issues (eg non payment of rent for over 1 month with no communication until we got the monthly statement saying nil credits but still with the agents fees). One of our properties was in a pretty shocking area and that was a pain to manage as my husband would have to go pick up the rent and would often get pulled over by the cops as they thought he was buying drugs from the house next door. We had issues and had to go to the tribunal which was a real eye opener about how unprepared the agents were. It's no great loss to them 10% compared to your 90% . We won and got the tenants out before we lost too much -about $400 down. Thank god we took the profit we made on that place and ran.
Our others are in nicer areas and we find it easy to get good tenants. We use TICA which the agents use and find the mention of this scares off most dead beat tenants. We also try to rent to sole parents. I work in welfare and know most sole parents would go without food themselves to keep a roof over their kids heads and they are usually great at budgeting from living on so little. We rarely see our tenants and the only time spent managing is checking net banking to make sure the rents have gone in on Friday night. That being said two of them know I drive past every day to drop my kids at school.
Maximum, how do you get TICA, we are considering another self managing adventure.
We just got it through the website. www.tica.com.au . Casual membership - we paid a bit less as they have just introduced a $22 annual fee we got a block of ten. As we manage our properties and also manage one for my parent in law it was worthwhile for us.
TICA Casual Tenant Screening Membership fee's. All prices include GST.
$44.00 one off joining fee.
$22.00 annual subscription fee.
$143.00 for 10 searches (Discounts are available for pre-paid blocks of 100 or more).
With this membership we get leases to printout, checklists for tenants but most importantly it really does stop some people applying so I guess it works.
Thankyou for your input. Have a great day.
I'm not sure there's a standard. In my experience, the lower the rent the higher the percentage the agents charge. A Brisbane agent a few years ago charged me 12% plus about $5 per month for postage on a weekly rent of around $160, plus fees for organising repairs etc. A Sydney agent charges me 7% plus $5 per month for sundries on a weekly rent above $600, with a schedule of extras for things like a yearly statement, appearance at tribunals etc.
My advice would be to try to get a personal recommendation. I've heard of some really bad/incompetent agents, and frankly you're entrusting them with the care of one of your largest assets. If they're slack at vetting tenants, or inspecting the property, you'll end up paying for a lot more than just their charges.