Should I use a letting agent or manage the property myself?

This is the question we are asked most often, and the honest answer is that plenty of landlords should self-manage. We would rather tell you that than sign you up to a service you do not need.

The decision comes down to three things: proximity, availability and appetite for the legal side.

Managing a property you can reach in fifteen minutes is a different proposition from managing one an hour away, or one you visit twice a year.

Tenants judge a landlord almost entirely on responsiveness. A leak dealt with the same day is a story about a good landlord; the same leak dealt with in four days is the story that ends the tenancy early and costs you a void.

Most of the work happens between nine and five. Contractors quote in working hours, referencing providers call in working hours, and a tenant with a problem calls when it happens rather than when it is convenient.

If your own job makes you hard to reach during the day, self-management does not become impossible. It becomes slow, and slow is what causes most landlord–tenant relationships to break down.

This is where self-managing landlords most often come unstuck, and it is rarely through carelessness. The obligations change, and they change without anyone writing to tell you.

You are responsible for gas safety, electrical safety, energy performance, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, protecting the deposit within the statutory window and serving the prescribed information, checking right to rent, and serving any notice correctly and on the right form. Get the deposit protection wrong and you can face a penalty of up to three times the deposit, and lose the ability to serve certain notices at all.

Landlords often assume the choice is all or nothing. It is not.

Tenant Find gets a properly referenced tenant into the property on a proper agreement, and hands you the running of it. Rent Collection adds the monthly money, which is the part most landlords least enjoy and the part that most damages the relationship when they have to chase it themselves. Full Management takes the rest.

Most landlords who move up a level do so after the first thing goes wrong, not before. There is no penalty for changing your mind.

When comparing the fee against doing it yourself, count the void. On a property at £1,200 a month, one empty month costs £1,200: roughly the same as a full year of management at 8% + VAT.

An agent who lets your property two weeks faster, or keeps a good tenant one year longer, has already paid for themselves. That is the comparison worth making, rather than the percentage in isolation.