Tenancy Deposit Protection

April 20th, 2012

Deposit Protection

The Localism Act that came into force on the 6th April set out new laws in relation to protecting a tenants deposit with tougher penalties for those who do not comply.

Landlords and Letting Agents now have up to 30 days to protect a deposit rather than 14 days which “removes any excuse of ‘administrative delay’ from a defence.” (Property118)  Tenants must now also be given the required Prescribed Information and Deposit protection Certificate as proof it is protected.  Failure to protect a tenants deposit will result in a fine that will now be at the discretion of the court, rather than the fixed three times the deposit. Continue reading »


The New Energy Performance Certificates

April 13th, 2012

New EPC

On the 6th April the new rules concerning Energy Performance Certificates came into effect, meaning that for any rental property – commercial or residential – an EPC must be commissioned before marketing to let, failure to do so could result in a £200 fine.

This tightening of the law means that letting agents and landlords now face more scrutiny from trading standards officers who are able to demand sight of documents held to ensure an EPC is available for the property or has been ordered.   Tenants now also have the right to a copy of the EPC before signing any tenancy agreement or lease. Continue reading »


Property management software that fits your needs

March 2nd, 2012

If you Google “property management software” you get a plethora of results, and it very soon can become overwhelming as to which option would be the best for your business.

When you start looking for software it is generally to assist you with the management of your lettings, so as to free up time so you can concentrate on not only winning new business but maintaining good customer service to both your landlords and tenants.

To narrow your search down for the most suitable property management software for your business it is essential that you know what to look for.  Continue reading »


Save time recording rent receipts with Bulk Transactions

February 3rd, 2012

directdebit

Letting agents may receive rental payments in a variety of manners, either over the counter in cash or by cheque or, preferably, paid automatically into the bank account each rental period by direct debit or funds transfer. You don’t want to have to go through each tenancy in turn marking the payment as received – this could take a long time. Wouldn’t it be much better if you could see a list of all expected tenancy rental payments in one place, and tick them off to indicate they have been received, much like a bank reconciliation exercise.

The Bank > Bulk Transactions functionality within RentPro can massively reduce the amount of time taken to record these rent receipts into the system. On each tenancy there are flags to facilitate Auto-Tenant Collection and Auto-Benefit Collection which relate to the collection of rent and benefit components respectively, and these can be ticked where these payments are automatically received so that the payment due doesn’t have to be entered manually against the tenancy each time. Each rental period an entry is created in the bulk transactions screen along with all other expected payments and these can be reconciled quickly. Read all about how to use Bulk Transactions for rent receipts in our user manual.

Just another example of how RentPro property management software can help your letting agency operate much more efficiently, saving time and money, and helping you grow revenue.

 


Custom reporting using data exports

January 27th, 2012

custom-reports

A key part of running your letting agency, or any business for that matter, is having visibility of all your data and all activity at a glance. It may be summarising all rents received over a particular period, listing all transactions occurring on a bank account or browsing all correspondence with a landlord or tenant. RentPro has a full suite of property management reports which let you see just that, along with more high level management reports which focus on revenue generating with your lettings business. But no matter how comprehensive these pre-built commonly used reports are, agency managers may have more specific reporting requirements, or may wish to use property management data from within RentPro for other purposes, or within other systems within the organisation. This is where data exports come in. Continue reading »


Uploading properties to property portals

January 20th, 2012

portals

Last week’s blog post outlined our plans for developing RentPro over the course of the next year, but the survey in October also highlighted that there are existing features with our management software which many landlords and letting agents are not aware of, or are not using to their full extent. To this end, we’ll be focussing on some of these software features in our blog posts, explaining the benefits you can enjoy from using them, as well as offering practical advice on how to get the most from them. Starting this week with the ability to upload to property portals, which improves the marketing of vacant properties, and helps reduce rental voids… Continue reading »


New RentPro blog launched

January 6th, 2012

rentpro-rss

As we promised back before Christmas, one of our main aims for the incoming year is to improve aspects of our interaction with our customers. From the results of our survey in October 2011, it was obvious that we could keep our RentPro subscribers more informed with regard to upcoming development plans, and this will be the subject of our first proper blog post next week. Continue reading »