Landlords and rental properties.
If you have clicked onto this page you may be a landlord considering hiring Marts Handyman Services to carry out works at the property you rent out. This was initially supposed to be a page with a few bullet points on it, however it has turned into quite a lengthy read due to my views on the current situation with the housing market, particularly rental properties, as well as the attitudes of many landlords I have encountered. If you are a landlord I would advise you to read through the page prior to making an enquiry...
I have been working in this industry for many years and in that time I have worked in thousands of properties, many of which were rented. In all of that time I can honestly state that the amount of rented properties I have worked in where I have genuinely thought ‘this is nice’ can be counted on one hand. The amount of rented properties I have worked in where I have thought ‘Oh good Lord’ are far to many to mention. Let me get things clear here... I am not somebody that thinks a rental property has to be akin to a five start retreat, fitted out with ten thousand pound kitchens, real wooden floors throughout and so on, however everybody... absolutely everybody, that is paying their money to live in a rented property, supplied by you, are entitled by law but in my mind and more importantly by the very fact that they are human beings paying you for somewhere to live, deserve to have a clean, safe, and... yes, nice....place to call home, and it is their home if they are paying you rent, its not ‘your home’ its the tenants home, you are simply the freeholder.
Many Landlords state that they are ‘running a business’ my reply to that would be ‘if you are running a business then why are you not attending to your business in a professional manner..?’ If you ran a take away business and the environmental health said the hygiene was not up to standard would you not address the problem straight away and with diligence..? Of course you would. Why then do landlords see fit to leave tenants with dirty, and sometimes dangerous properties to live in..? I think that really we all know the answer to that question..? MONEY.. In the example of the take away, the business would be temporarily closed down.. closed down equals 'no money'... and as everybody knows landlords in general are 'obsessed' with money. With rental properties, the money (read 'gravy train') just keeps rolling in regardless of defects, tenant complaints and so on. Being a Landlord takes no business skill or acumen whatsoever, it is not a profession, and Landlords are not business people.
As an analogy, lets suggest I wanted to set up a car hire business, I would commit both time and effort to find and source a fleet of say ten vehicles to hire out to customers. These vehicles would upon purchase be in a good condition and when in my ownership they would be well maintained, comfortable, legal, and safe.
What I wouldn’t do, is find ten clapped out twenty year old Ford Fiesta’s (nothing wrong with Fiesta’s, in fact they are brilliant cars... just using as an example).. throw a bucket of dirty old soapy water over them, literally scrape them through the MOT by the skin of their teeth, and then have the audacity to hire (rent) them out to people for extortionate rates. What would that make me..? If we are honest it would make me as near to a crook as you can legally get, as well as making me morally lacking and putting profits before anything else, including human safety and rights. Why then do landlords think it is perfectly acceptable to operate this way in ‘running their business’ when it comes to property..? Again, and rather predictably, the answer is MONEY.
Land lording is the only example that I can think of where the individual (the landlord) putting up the initial capital for the purchase of the asset, expects somebody else to fully pay the price of the asset for them. In the example of the car hire business, yes, I would have to have the initial deposit for the purchase of the vehicles, and yes, when the vehicles were hired out then that income would in part cover the cost of whatever finance I may have taken to purchase the vehicles.... BUT... it would not cover the entire cost, I simply would not be able to hire out the vehicles for such elevated rates for me to be able to do that, nor would I want to, nor would anybody in their right mind be willing to pay such ridiculous hire costs. In short I would still be paying a large part of the cost of financing my business out of my own pocket, and quite rightly so. Landlords however have a different view, landlords seem to think that if they have taken out a buy to let mortgage then the entirety of the loan, plus insurance, plus contingency funds, and a little on top so they 'feel' as though they are running a viable business and ‘turning a profit’ should be completely covered by the tenant, which is both ludicrous and unfair. Even if the monthly cost to the landlord was for example six hundred pounds, and the landlord charged just four hundred and fifty pounds per month, the typical landlord would see that as making a loss and think 'why bother'..? well actually, no, your not making a loss, you are still having the majority of the cost of the investment payed for by somebody else, the tenant, and at the end they will have nothing, and you as the landlord will own a ridiculously overpriced house that you have paid maybe ten per cent of the price for..? There is only one word that befits it... greed. The other ‘age old adage’ is to claim that the rental property owned and rented out is ‘acting as a pension’... again I say, well surely you would personally pay into both a private or company pension from your own personal finances... you wouldn’t expect your employer or pension provider to pay ALL of the contributions would you..? or am I missing something..?
Rent should never be more than a mortgage... never. Unfortunately this is the world we seem to live in today driven by both greed and fear, and I for one think it is wrong.
Okay, so having said all of the above, I have my own set of standards regarding working in rental properties, where in my own way I feel I am helping or at least trying to stand up for the millions of people struggling with extortionate rents and/or indifferent landlords.
1) If you own more than one rental property, and particularly if you use the word ‘portfolio,’ then in my opinion you are a career landlord and I dont agree with it. If you own more than one rental property please find alternative sources to complete the works you require as I dont want your business and I don't want any part in helping you ‘build your empire.’
2) If you can ‘hand on heart’ say that the property you are renting out, in the exact condition it is in right now is ‘good enough’ for you, your wife/husband, your children/grandchildren or your own parents to live in, then great.. please do contact me. If however you were being absolutely honest, and really, deep down in your heart you know that you would think the property that you are accepting money for from somebody else to live in, would not really and truthfully be up to your or your families standards should you be living there, then as above, please don't contact me as I dont want your business. Also please sit down and rethink your reasons as to why the property you are renting out is 'good enough' for the tenant's, but you and yours apparently 'deserve' better..?
3) If I have agreed to work for you at the rental property and I feel that it is ‘not great’ but 'not appalling' then okay...I'm not totally unreasonable, and I am realistic. If however the property is in a terrible condition I will have no hesitation in contacting the appropriate authorities to report you and the property in question.
4) If I have agreed to work for you at the rental property and I find that it is illegal, dangerous electrical, no hot water, eight beds squeezed into a three bed house, illegal partition walls etc, again I will have no hesitation in reporting you to the appropriate authorities.
5) When I work for private customers (homeowners) I don't charge for standard wall plugs and wood screws unless I use many of them in the course of completing the job in question, then I have to as I am running a business after all. For landlords however I will charge for every single item used in the process of the works being carried out. As pointed out earlier on this page, if landlords lay claim to ‘running a business’ then I will treat any work’s in a one hundred percent business like fashion and not give any grace with regard to materials used as I would for low cost items when working for private customers.
6) If I have agreed to work for you at the rental property, then please do not give me the contact details of the tenants and expect myself and/or the tenant to do ALL the calling and arranging regarding carrying out the work. If you as a landlord are running a business then treat it as such and have both the interest and the enthusiasm to deal with your business in a professional manner, by liaising with myself and the tenants accordingly. This is after all part of the service the tenants are paying you for.
7) Finally, If we have agreed to work together, then please do not ask me to do ‘the cheapest job possible’ or ‘just supply and install the cheapest units/items/materials I can find’ There is a difference between ‘working to an acceptable budget' and being an 'unethical miser’ It is this attitude that has made landlords into one of the most vilified people in the country. This attitude is disgusting and needless to say I will not work for you should this be your approach.
Thank you for taking the time to read this page and please dont take it as a 'personal' attack, although I acknowledge it may seem that way. My hope is that it may simply encourage you to at least contemplate the points I set out, and if necessary to make any possible changes should any of the above apply.
I have been working in this industry for many years and in that time I have worked in thousands of properties, many of which were rented. In all of that time I can honestly state that the amount of rented properties I have worked in where I have genuinely thought ‘this is nice’ can be counted on one hand. The amount of rented properties I have worked in where I have thought ‘Oh good Lord’ are far to many to mention. Let me get things clear here... I am not somebody that thinks a rental property has to be akin to a five start retreat, fitted out with ten thousand pound kitchens, real wooden floors throughout and so on, however everybody... absolutely everybody, that is paying their money to live in a rented property, supplied by you, are entitled by law but in my mind and more importantly by the very fact that they are human beings paying you for somewhere to live, deserve to have a clean, safe, and... yes, nice....place to call home, and it is their home if they are paying you rent, its not ‘your home’ its the tenants home, you are simply the freeholder.
Many Landlords state that they are ‘running a business’ my reply to that would be ‘if you are running a business then why are you not attending to your business in a professional manner..?’ If you ran a take away business and the environmental health said the hygiene was not up to standard would you not address the problem straight away and with diligence..? Of course you would. Why then do landlords see fit to leave tenants with dirty, and sometimes dangerous properties to live in..? I think that really we all know the answer to that question..? MONEY.. In the example of the take away, the business would be temporarily closed down.. closed down equals 'no money'... and as everybody knows landlords in general are 'obsessed' with money. With rental properties, the money (read 'gravy train') just keeps rolling in regardless of defects, tenant complaints and so on. Being a Landlord takes no business skill or acumen whatsoever, it is not a profession, and Landlords are not business people.
As an analogy, lets suggest I wanted to set up a car hire business, I would commit both time and effort to find and source a fleet of say ten vehicles to hire out to customers. These vehicles would upon purchase be in a good condition and when in my ownership they would be well maintained, comfortable, legal, and safe.
What I wouldn’t do, is find ten clapped out twenty year old Ford Fiesta’s (nothing wrong with Fiesta’s, in fact they are brilliant cars... just using as an example).. throw a bucket of dirty old soapy water over them, literally scrape them through the MOT by the skin of their teeth, and then have the audacity to hire (rent) them out to people for extortionate rates. What would that make me..? If we are honest it would make me as near to a crook as you can legally get, as well as making me morally lacking and putting profits before anything else, including human safety and rights. Why then do landlords think it is perfectly acceptable to operate this way in ‘running their business’ when it comes to property..? Again, and rather predictably, the answer is MONEY.
Land lording is the only example that I can think of where the individual (the landlord) putting up the initial capital for the purchase of the asset, expects somebody else to fully pay the price of the asset for them. In the example of the car hire business, yes, I would have to have the initial deposit for the purchase of the vehicles, and yes, when the vehicles were hired out then that income would in part cover the cost of whatever finance I may have taken to purchase the vehicles.... BUT... it would not cover the entire cost, I simply would not be able to hire out the vehicles for such elevated rates for me to be able to do that, nor would I want to, nor would anybody in their right mind be willing to pay such ridiculous hire costs. In short I would still be paying a large part of the cost of financing my business out of my own pocket, and quite rightly so. Landlords however have a different view, landlords seem to think that if they have taken out a buy to let mortgage then the entirety of the loan, plus insurance, plus contingency funds, and a little on top so they 'feel' as though they are running a viable business and ‘turning a profit’ should be completely covered by the tenant, which is both ludicrous and unfair. Even if the monthly cost to the landlord was for example six hundred pounds, and the landlord charged just four hundred and fifty pounds per month, the typical landlord would see that as making a loss and think 'why bother'..? well actually, no, your not making a loss, you are still having the majority of the cost of the investment payed for by somebody else, the tenant, and at the end they will have nothing, and you as the landlord will own a ridiculously overpriced house that you have paid maybe ten per cent of the price for..? There is only one word that befits it... greed. The other ‘age old adage’ is to claim that the rental property owned and rented out is ‘acting as a pension’... again I say, well surely you would personally pay into both a private or company pension from your own personal finances... you wouldn’t expect your employer or pension provider to pay ALL of the contributions would you..? or am I missing something..?
Rent should never be more than a mortgage... never. Unfortunately this is the world we seem to live in today driven by both greed and fear, and I for one think it is wrong.
Okay, so having said all of the above, I have my own set of standards regarding working in rental properties, where in my own way I feel I am helping or at least trying to stand up for the millions of people struggling with extortionate rents and/or indifferent landlords.
1) If you own more than one rental property, and particularly if you use the word ‘portfolio,’ then in my opinion you are a career landlord and I dont agree with it. If you own more than one rental property please find alternative sources to complete the works you require as I dont want your business and I don't want any part in helping you ‘build your empire.’
2) If you can ‘hand on heart’ say that the property you are renting out, in the exact condition it is in right now is ‘good enough’ for you, your wife/husband, your children/grandchildren or your own parents to live in, then great.. please do contact me. If however you were being absolutely honest, and really, deep down in your heart you know that you would think the property that you are accepting money for from somebody else to live in, would not really and truthfully be up to your or your families standards should you be living there, then as above, please don't contact me as I dont want your business. Also please sit down and rethink your reasons as to why the property you are renting out is 'good enough' for the tenant's, but you and yours apparently 'deserve' better..?
3) If I have agreed to work for you at the rental property and I feel that it is ‘not great’ but 'not appalling' then okay...I'm not totally unreasonable, and I am realistic. If however the property is in a terrible condition I will have no hesitation in contacting the appropriate authorities to report you and the property in question.
4) If I have agreed to work for you at the rental property and I find that it is illegal, dangerous electrical, no hot water, eight beds squeezed into a three bed house, illegal partition walls etc, again I will have no hesitation in reporting you to the appropriate authorities.
5) When I work for private customers (homeowners) I don't charge for standard wall plugs and wood screws unless I use many of them in the course of completing the job in question, then I have to as I am running a business after all. For landlords however I will charge for every single item used in the process of the works being carried out. As pointed out earlier on this page, if landlords lay claim to ‘running a business’ then I will treat any work’s in a one hundred percent business like fashion and not give any grace with regard to materials used as I would for low cost items when working for private customers.
6) If I have agreed to work for you at the rental property, then please do not give me the contact details of the tenants and expect myself and/or the tenant to do ALL the calling and arranging regarding carrying out the work. If you as a landlord are running a business then treat it as such and have both the interest and the enthusiasm to deal with your business in a professional manner, by liaising with myself and the tenants accordingly. This is after all part of the service the tenants are paying you for.
7) Finally, If we have agreed to work together, then please do not ask me to do ‘the cheapest job possible’ or ‘just supply and install the cheapest units/items/materials I can find’ There is a difference between ‘working to an acceptable budget' and being an 'unethical miser’ It is this attitude that has made landlords into one of the most vilified people in the country. This attitude is disgusting and needless to say I will not work for you should this be your approach.
Thank you for taking the time to read this page and please dont take it as a 'personal' attack, although I acknowledge it may seem that way. My hope is that it may simply encourage you to at least contemplate the points I set out, and if necessary to make any possible changes should any of the above apply.
