Call me biased on this subject if you like – I’m one of the owners of a property management agency! But I’m also a property investor. My partners and I built our business around an important principle; we don’t advise anyone to do anything we wouldn’t do ourselves. We’d never suggest you buy a property that we wouldn’t buy with our own money.

I don’t manage my own properties. The team does that for me because I don’t advocate for myself as well as I advocate for other landlords. I’ve been known to put my tenants’ interests ahead of my own because I want to be the nice guy! That’s the first reason you should consider having your properties managed by an agent. It’s good for your mental health, and your investment, to keep yourself emotionally unattached.

168 pieces of property management legislation

Then there’s the law. When I bought my first property, you could fill a place with Ikea furniture, find yourself a tenant and call yourself a landlord (or “property guru”). Today, however, there are a lot of ways a landlord can get sued, fined, or otherwise punished. Making sure your property meets safety requirements is the minimum you need to do, and it’s a lot.

Staying competitive

There isn’t the same housing shortage in Liverpool as elsewhere. If you’re letting a property, you’re competing against other landlords. You need to sell an attractive prospect, to attract quality tenants.

Managing relationships

Property investment is successful when everybody wins – a win for the landlord, a win for the tenant and a win for the community. If one of those loses, your investment loses. Provide a rubbish house, to a rubbish tenant and you end up with a rubbish investment. Simples! Unless you have lots of time, energy and expertise to pour into the project, find yourself an independent property agent, who cares about all three pieces of the puzzle. If your property investment is a good one, it will more than pay the costs, and that’s before you factor in the mental headspace you’ll get back.

Leaving your portfolio to family

If your loved ones already have busy lives, they probably don’t want to (or aren’t equipped to) start managing properties themselves. For the reasons listed above, they’ll run into pitfalls, which means your well-intentioned gift could become a curse. Leave them a well-managed portfolio, on the other hand, and that’s a valuable asset they’ll thank you for.

Switching to a professional property management agent

Let us take the headache out of being a landlord. With Switch by Homesure, you can transfer management of your property portfolio to us, in one easy step. Call 0151 722 2222, or email lettings@homesureproperty.co.uk to have an introductory conversation with our lettings team.