Call of the month: What to do before marketing a property

This month, one of our members phoned up, looking for advice about the best way to go about setting up a tenancy. This is a common topic we see regularly on the advice line, and we are able to help with this.

In this instance, our member, who had a rental property in London, was looking for greater understanding about the processes required to enter into tenancies whilst making sure that the numerous obligations that landlords have placed upon them are all met.

They are new to being a landlord, and they wanted to make sure they had all their ducks in a row before marketing their property for let.

Our advice

Our advisor confirmed that there are several things our landlord must have in place or consider, before they market their property and start hosting viewings.

This includes ensuring the energy performance certificate and gas safety certificate and a current EICR report have all been completed, and also checking to see if the property requires a licence.

Our advisor recommended that our landlord take a look at the NRLA's interactive starting a tenancy checklist. An exclusive resource for members, the checklist covers all the steps landlords should take at each point in the letting process. The checklist is split up into various sections, such as before you market the tenancy, viewing stage, prior to and signing the tenancy, tenancy start date etc.

The checklist can be followed as a guide, but also can be ticked off on the page at each step and printed out and saved in physical copy to be used as evidence or proof later down the line if necessary, so saves our member duplicating this information later on.

We recommended utilising our checklist to assist in deciding on a process that suits our member.

All the steps on our checklist are either legal obligations or are considered essential to the lettings process that we would nearly always recommend where applicable. We advised our member that they don’t have to follow it in the exact order listed in each step, but completing each step in every section in a way that suits you and recording it in some fashion such as using the checklist is a sensible way to come up with a process.