Becoming a Letting Agent

No qualifications or experience are required to become a letting agent

The well-proven Southcourt Business Package has been carefully designed and developed by ourselves, based on our own experience of founding and building our own successful letting agency in the lettings capital of London. It is in fact a blueprint of our own successful business model.

Our well-proven Business Package has been carefully designed and developed based on our long experience in building our own successful agency in the UK property capital of London. It’s a modern, up to date and detailed plan of how to start a letting agency from scratch, and contains our own successful business model with which we grew a sizable London agency.

Over 1000 UK agents have benefited from the knowledge and expertise we provide, and have found and marketed over 1 million properties using resources and techniques that we pioneered.

However, if you’re contemplating becoming a letting agent, we’ve found that initial research is vital if you wish to start with a solid foundation.

For letting agents, below we summarise the easiest way to familiarise yourself with one of the most important aspects – local rental levels.

It will be part of your service as a letting agent to provide a rental appraisal (approximate rental valuation) of a property to be let for your landlord client, and to agree a marketing rental with him. The landlord will generally respect your opinion of the rental his property is likely to attract, and this will often be one of the first questions on his mind.

And of course, offering the property at a realistic market rental rather than overpricing it will make all the difference between letting it speedily, or having it hanging around for weeks – a situation which benefits no-one.

Don't worry, you won't need to be precise with your valuations. In fact there is no such thing as a precise valuation, as various local agents will have slightly different ideas on the same property.

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Sourcing the information

The speediest method of gaining an overview of local rental levels is to search on zoopla.co.uk or a local property website for properties to let in your town. Take a copy of the Research Sheet – Average Local Rental Levels and starting with studio flats, enter the advertised rentals, following the instructions on the research sheet.

Then do the same with 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 bedroom flats and houses. We suggest that you complete at least 3 sheets, so that you are comparing about 45 properties of each size, totalling them all onto the last sheet.

When you have completed the research sheets, and used a calculator or spreadsheet to work out the average rental as we explain, you will arrive at 6 figures: the average rentals of each size of property according to number of bedrooms, i.e studio flats through to 5 bedroom properties. These 6 figures really are the only ones you need to commit to memory before starting a letting agency business in your area.

When you value a property, you'll use these figures as a basis from which to work, and make a small adjustment (say between 5% and 10%) either up or down, depending on whether or not the property is furnished, its general condition, location in a nice/not so nice road, and proximity to transport, shops and other local amenities which tenants favour.

Although this research may seem somewhat laborious for anyone considering becoming a letting agent, it is nevertheless a vital process in the preparation stage, and will make all the difference between basic mistakes, or getting things right from the word go.

The average figures arrived at on your research sheet, combined with the adjustments, will enable you to give quite accurate valuations right from the start. And remember, there is no such thing as a precise valuation, as different agents will have slightly varying opinions. You can read more about rental valuations in Section 5 of the Letting Agent Training, which comes with the Business Package.