Professional Standards – How efficient is your Letting Agent?

There’s been a lot of discussion recently about the need for professional standards in the lettings industry and in fact, RICS, The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, recently called for the compulsory regulation of lettings agents. This move is, of course, long overdue and at the moment the only way for landlords and tenants to protect themselves is to make sure they use an ARLA member letting agent.

Efficiency Enhancements for Landlords and Tenants

As a founder member of ARLA, we take professional standards very seriously. Whether you’re a landlord or a tenant, life is much simpler if your letting agent responds to your queries and requests quickly and efficiently. That’s why we are introducing new document management software to handle the high volumes of data that we store on behalf of landlords and tenants.

The software has been custom designed for us and is integrated into our current property management system so clients will find we can now respond even more quickly to requests for information. We now have a single, collective storage point for all correspondence and can search easily to find information relating to anything from maintenance and repair issues to payments from tenants.

Secure Access to Information – from our International Offices

Information can be accessed securely from all our 10 London offices, including our international offices in Dubai, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore, so overseas clients will notice that we can respond even more quickly. Landlords and tenants can also access information using their own secure, log-in area. It’s all about making life easier and believe our landlords and tenants will really value this service.

On a more general note concerning professional standards, consumer group Which? recently discovered that two thirds of tenants and nearly half of landlords they spoke to didn’t know whether if their letting agent belonged to a professional body. It’s really simple to find out by going to www.arla.co.uk and clicking on their Letting Agent Directory.