A week in the life as a Property Manager - Tuesday

Tuesdays in Property Management are mainly dedicated to rent chasing.

These conversations can really vary and some of the responses are pretty amazing! Below is a very small selection of some of the things we deal with :-

• There are some tenants where we have to call every single month, and have the same conversation about rent arrears – they must like the sound of our voice!
• Quite a few tenants don't understand that they pay in advance or believe they can’t be in arrears. We need to be able to read the transactions and help the tenant understand how the arrears came about.
• We have to regularly explain the difference between a standing order and direct debit. Do you know the difference?
• We have to manage a tenant's expectation when they believe that we have access to their bank account and can change the rent amount or change the date the payment is made!
• Handling difficult calls from tenants around June/July/August who can’t afford to pay the rent because the they have a summer holiday to pay for, and around November/December as the children need Christmas presents – is something our Property Managers are prepared for!
• We also get some tenants who try to negotiate on paying the rent because they have re-decorated, or their boiler broke down and they were without heating for 24 hours!

We chase for rent via telephone, text messages, email and post. We have a standard template for rent chasing and this is our official audit trail when chasing. We are able to amend this template as needed as each case is difference and each tenant responds differently.

In cases of rent arrears we always keep the Landlord up to date, and when needed, work with the tenant to agree a repayment plan. We have had to do quite a few of these plans during Lockdown; and slowly seeing the end of these plans come to an end with normal payments now being resumed.

There are some situations that a tenant can find themselves in which can be heart-breaking/devastating - in these cases we take the needed information sensitively so we can help the Landlord make an informed decision on what to do.

Dawn Clarke

Lettings Director

07967 209011