This week I wanted to talk about the process of hiring a London-based property management agency to manage your apartment or house in the UK. Now that the UK economy is starting to open up and we're getting more and more requests, we are almost fully booked for June and July. We are starting to get more requests from landlords who are asking lots of questions about the management process. This video blog session is exactly about, if you decide to become a short and medium-term rental landlord in London.
Get Your Earnings Potential Evaluation
First of all we will ask you to send us some photographs so that we can establish what your expectation is in terms of revenue. We will prepare a forecast so that you can see how much revenue and how much cost you can expect from your property when renting it on a short and medium-term basis. We set that expectation and we sign the management contract. The first stage is listing the property and creating a description on all the channels (that’s Airbnb, booking.com etc.) For example we've had some landlords who already have a profile on Airbnb. That's actually fine, we can just connect that to our software and we're good to go! We’ll list on a number of channels – for example Airbnb.co.uk, Booking.com, HomeAway/Expedia, we also have contracts with medium term channels – thehomelike.com, spotahome.com, situ.co.uk and some others, so your property will actually have maximum exposure online and will be easy to find for potential guests.
So what the software also does it just makes sure that we don't have any double bookings, it connects all of these channels into a central database where we can make sure that the pricing is correct and that we don't get double bookings. Once we do receive a booking the property management agency will also do the communication part – we’ll let the guests know about arrival details, where to collect the keys and will answer any questions they might have about the property, we even include location-specific recommendations like where to eat out and other kinds of very useful information.
How We Manage Your Bookings & Guest Stays
Most of the time we will try and meet the guests at the property to show them around and hand over the keys, however in instances when it's not possible will leave the keys in a lock box. Where that's not possible we have I'm a contract with a company called keynest and they have multiple locations across London where we can leave the keys and then guests can pick them up security from those locations. Next stage is communication with the guests during the stay, if they have any questions, if there's any maintenance issues or they don't know how to use the heating system so again we will take care of that and since you know we're a small management company we know all of the properties by heart. My team know exactly where everything is in each property, we’ll also have documentation and descriptions of all the appliances, if you compare it to large corporate rental agencies sometimes their customer service team don't know the properties very well and cannot always answer all the specific questions.
Next step is after guest have left the property we will order cleaning and linen, we use a third-party who will collect dirty linen and towels and will drop off fresh ones. We get asked how much the cleaning costs so one thing to remember here is that cleaning is paid by the guest and it can vary depending on the size of the property – let’s say anywhere from £40 to let's say £100 and that's not just the cleaning part, it's also the linen and towel charge.
Once the property is cleaned some of our owners will request to send some pictures or a short video and that's what we can always do. We will also always check everything is fine at the property after guests have checked out, if nothing's been broken or damaged. If there is any damage we’ll communicate with the guests and inform the insurance company, we’ll also withhold funds from the deposit to cover that damage so there is no cost to the owner.
Full Booking Management & Revenue Analysis
We also use software that lets the owner see all of the upcoming bookings and booking requests, also the revenue from each booking that they will receive at the end of the month so that's very useful, it's very transparent so they can block their own dates, it also lets them feel confident about the revenue they will be getting, gives them confidence about exactly what's happening at the property, who's staying and for how long. If you have any other specific questions about the process or how we can start working with you please get in touch with us!
