Edinburgh Letting Agents – which one to choose?!
For landlords searching through Edinburgh letting agents it can be overwhelming knowing which agent to choose and what to do next. Carrying out a Google search on ‘Edinburgh Letting Agents’, landlords are inundated with options; each one claiming to be ‘the best’, ‘the no 1 choice’ or ‘the leading’ – they can’t all be this so landlords should dig a bit deeper before choosing!
Credentials
Landlords will want to know that a letting agent has the experience, knowledge, qualifications and accreditations to take care of their property. Make sure they have the ARLA Propertymark stamp on their website and check how long they’ve been in business. It’s also worth looking out for Edinburgh letting agents who have industry awards listed on their website, however beware; awards only carry any weight if they’re based on customer service scores or a rigorous screening and judging process.
Customer feedback
Many Edinburgh letting agents will claim to be ‘transparent’, deliver ‘outstanding customer service’ or offer ‘fantastic communication’ but do they?. It’s best to look at customers’ experience of a letting agent to find out if this is the truth. Reading through a couple of pages of Google reviews will give you a pretty clear idea of whether they live up to their accolades and how good they are at communicating, showing transparency and just how ‘outstanding’ their customer service actually is.
Fees
We understand that fees play their part. While it could be tempting to choose a letting agent which offers the cheapest deal, more often than not this can turn out to be a false economy; considering the stress and frustration that a bad choice can put on a landlord (just think of the pain we’ve all experienced from certain budget airlines we would prefer not to use which show us minimal care and attention!). Edinburgh letting agents have a bad habit of telling landlords their management fee and marketing/set up fee but neglect to share a long list of other charges hidden away in their terms and conditions. Landlords choosing an Edinburgh letting agent, should push to know all fees (ask to see their terms and conditions) and, even if a landlord is told that there are ‘no hidden fees’, check!
Umega Lettings: Edinburgh Letting Agents
At Umega Lettings we keep things super-simple so landlords can trust that we’ve got things covered so that they can continue to live their busy lives without worrying about their property. We’ve won Residential Lettings team of the year at Scotland’s main property awards for the past 2 years and we have the best customer service scores in the UK. We’ve been in business since 2007, we’re ARLA Propertymark accredited and we’re working very hard to push standards much higher as we believe that landlords and tenants deserve much, much better than they have to date. Our fees are straightforward and 96% of our customers are happy with our charges (we have over 1,000 landlords so that’s pretty good!).
Next Steps
We find the best place for new landlords looking for Edinburgh letting agents to start is to complete our free online valuation tool. Once they have an approximate valuation (takes less than a minute) we follow up with more information on the rent valuation and information our services. No pressure at all, however we can then have a chat on the phone, email conversation or meeting at a property to discuss things further. Once a landlord decides to go ahead with Umega, it’s as simple as giving us the nod and we kick off our simple on-boarding process then take things from there. We’ve got this!
