Tenant & Landlord Stories - We've made this blog to give an in sight into our business. Hopefully it will help tenants to be successful when applying and Landlords get an idea of our thorough letting process.
Filling out forms
Not Just Another Form to Fill In?
Looking for and applying to rent a home can feel like navigating a maze of forms and questions. We ask our potential tenants to complete an application form, which is really just a checklist to make sure the property fits your budget.
It’s super important to fill it out carefully because later on, we’ll need to see documents to confirm your affordability. Often, tenants don’t have the right paperwork to verify their income, so we have to move on to the next applicant.
Cleared Garage
Not just a letting agent…
When renting out your properties, it’s really important to have everything ready and welcoming for the next tenant. The rental market is pretty competitive, so your home, garden, and any outdoor buildings should look as inviting as a show home.
At MPI Lettings, we totally get that this is a key part of the letting process. Helping our landlords get their properties cleared and in great shape for potential tenants is all part of what we do. This week, we cleared out a garage, and it’s now all set and ready to rent!
Push payment Scams - Take Care
I just came across a story about a family in Scotland who got scammed out of £172,000. They thought they were paying their solicitor’s deposit for a house, but the solicitor’s email had been hacked, and the money ended up going to a fake scammers account.
Whenever you’re sending money to a new account, it’s smart to send just £1 first and then double-check with the recipient—using a trusted way to reach them—that they got it before you send the full amount.
Landlords reduce your tax…
The Chancellor announced in her autumn budget an increase of 2% in income tax for landlords, effective from 2027. While this change is beyond our control, at MPI Lettings we can help you save on VAT applied to management fees.
Most larger letting agents, due to their higher turnover, are required to register for VAT and consequently add 20% VAT to their fees. This amount is paid directly to the Treasury and does not provide any benefit to you as a landlord.
At MPI Lettings Ltd, we maintain a turnover below the VAT registration threshold, allowing us to avoid charging VAT on our fees. Therefore, the price you see is the exact amount you will pay.
Tenants - What do Landlords what to hear?
Tenants, when you're applying for a property, try to see things from the landlord's perspective. Often, there are multiple applicants for the same home, and the landlord has to pick just one.
Put yourself in their shoes and consider what you'd want to hear from a potential tenant. Focus on the strengths of your application and be sure to highlight them.
VAT- Landlords Save £360 tax on average per year per property
We had landlords say, ‘You need to be registered for VAT, it makes your company look bigger and more professional’.
The current threshold in the UK for registering for VAT is £90,000 turnover per annum. Turnover is the total amount of money a business takes before expenses are taken out.
Let’s say the average house rental in our area is £1500 per month, and we charge 10% commission on managing those properties, that’s £150 turnover we get per month per house (£1800 per annum). So we need to manage 50 houses in a year before we get to the threshold.
We can register for VAT before £90,000 but all it means is our Landlords will pay £180 per month (£150 + 20% VAT) instead of £150. The extra £30 will go straight to the government as a tax. That is £360 per year per house our Landlords will save by switching to us.
There is no additional benefit to the landlord in paying VAT, in fact by us not being VAT registered, it means we are a small independent Letting Agency with our Landlords best interests at heart.
For further details on VAT please visit https://www.gov.uk/how-vat-works
£1bn set aside by Government for Letting Agents to Help Landlords with Rent Arrears
Labour have just set aside £1bn in Government Grants that Letting Agents can use to help their landlords.
How it works:
If you as a landlord have a tenant in rent arrears.
or If you as landlord has a tenant who can't afford the rent
Please get in touch with us apply for funding to cover the arrears or shortfall.
Doing your sums
We had a really nice lady and her 3 year old son wanting to rent a house. Their reason for moving was she would like a bigger house. They were moving from a 2 bedroom semi-detached house and wanted a 3 bedroom house.
She had completed her application form really well, and all her finances were checking out. We did a few sums with the figures she gave us, and yes she could afford the larger house, but we had worked out that the house would cost approximately £500 more per month than her current house.
The lady hadn’t taken into consideration that her housing benefit she received would actually go down moving from a 2 bedroom house to a 3 bedroom one. Housing benefit is calculated on how many bedrooms is needed, and as it was just her and her son, the benefit office would see a 3rd bedroom as excessive and would reduce the payment.
She decided not to rent the house in the end.
Doing your sums is so important, the last thing we want our tenants to feel is over stretched, and to have to go through the stress of moving again just a few months later.
Cash Deposits
Unfortunately cash deposits are a thing of the past. Due to anti-money laundering laws we need to verify the source of funds. This is very hard to do with cash. Someone not so long ago offered us a £5000 deposit for a property, apparently obtaining it from their landscape gardening business.
No matter how attractive is it (Mr Bond) having a suitcase full of cash, there is no way of verifying the source, and so the application stopped there.
