Long Term Rentals:
What You Should Look for when Choosing a Real Esate / Management Agency
Rental Process:
All Real Estate Agents offer a tenant finding service for what is usually the cost of one month´s rental (unless negotiated otherwise).
Many agents will see this as their only duty. A good agent will do much more. For example:
- Providing a fully legal Spanish contract
- Providing a full inventory of the items within that property
- Providing a condition report of that property (marks, dents, broken items).
- Ensuring that the clients are referenced, employer reference, previous landlord, accountant, solicitor etc. Not only this, but to actually confirm these are the parties in question.
Damage deposit
- It is advisable to ask for a 2 months damage deposit.
- Why. Let me give you an example. You rent a property to Mr Smith. He pays one month deposit. One month before he is due to leave, he say´s to me, “I´m not paying the rent this month”, you can use the deposit money as rent”. One week after he leaves, you get a 150 euro electricity bill and you have no funds to pay for this.
- With two months damage deposit, even if you get the above example, you still have one month left over at the end, to pay for any outstanding bills or damage
Management
- A good agent will also offer a Complete Rental Management Service for the rental tenancy (at an extra cost,)
- The agent will collect the rent every month, ensure the bills are paid every month, complete regular property checks and also react to any problems that occur with the property. For example a boiler breaks, electricity goes down, satellite stops working, they get locked out.
- If you have a good agent, you get the agency management fee back in the savings that they make for you. This can be by reducing the cost of the electricity they receive, working with the local town hall, providing better third party companies etc..
- The best thing about the management service is that the rental tenancy is managed. Simple I know, but very effective. They can monitor and manage the property to ensure the tenant knows they are helping.
A good management agent will work hard to achieve a trouble free rental tenancy for both the owner and the tenant.
Ensure the agent you use is a fully registered real estate agent, fiscally registered and resident in Spain.
Be careful of agents operating only on mobile phone numbers and only using gmail/hotmail accounts …
If you are renting property in Spain, looking for a good rental agent
or have any questions, feel free to Contact Us.
