Welcome to H2L Expert Letting where, with our wealth of letting experience over the years, we can help you to navigate not only our own properties that we have to let, but where you can register your interest in renting and where our property experts are different. We will be more than happy to give our up-to -the-minute advice for renting, whether you’re a seasoned ‘renter’; or doing this for the first time.  We’re now into our twenty fourth year of business and we’ve seen everything there is to see.

Our experts have recently produced a really useful guide, ‘How to choose the right property’ and it may well be seen as your starting point. However, if you are already renting and need to find somewhere new, either because your landlord has decided to sell, put the right up to unaffordable limits or if you are moving into the area and need to find your feet, the very first thing we’d say is plan!

So often we see people in panic mode, perhaps two people in a couple, enquiring after every single property they see on every single property portal, without making a list of what they’ve enquired about, or even worse, both calling agents every day and duplicating enquiries. It’s not fun for them or us or any other letting agent for that matter.

If you’re in a couple and looking for somewhere, or in a house share, just nominate one person to do all the reaching out and enquiring.

Next, that person should decide whether they give out their mobile number to just take calls, or just SMS messages or just an E mail address or both!   If it’s phone calls, then answer, or tell us (or any other agent) when you can and can’t answer.   Don’t change the settings on your mobile to block all calls that are not in your contacts list, because when you finally work out that you’re not getting any calls off agents, the property could well have already been let! Also, if you’re setting up priority E mail addresses, then check your E mail accounts, including spam or junk mail boxes.

It’s heart-breaking trying to call a potential viewer on  Sunday morning when most agents are closed, only to find out they won’t talk, won’t answer, won’t read E mails and then blame agents, saying the market is brutal and landlords are not responsive to their needs. We really do see this all the time.

If you know you can’t answer your mobile ‘phone at work, then say this on your enquiry E mail rather answer then say that you can’t talk as one lady did recently.

Some agents just advertise available properties on their preferred sites, so it may well be worth asking each agent where they can see their available properties before doing anything.  It will cut down your time and their’ s

Next, think of your budget and dates. When do you want to be moving in. What date do you need to? Must do? Can do? Prefer to?  It’s not helpful to agents to simply say (and we do get it often) ‘I’m looking to rent anywhere, any type of property for any budget, next year’ as that’s not very helpful.

If your budget is £1,000 per calendar month, then look for those properties. Enquiring, viewing and applying for one that is £1,250 then pulling out if they don’t reduce is very risky business in the current rental market and one that we advise against. A lot of time goes into valuing properties and guiding landlords and it’s not always the agent’s decision what the rental price actually is. Sometimes our clients disagree with us and instruct us to market at very specific rental price points otherwise lose the business!

If you know that you’re looking to move in on a specific future date, do look at available dates on the websites.  There’s little point viewing a property ‘Available immediately’ if you haven’t given notice or can’t or won’t commit for another two months!   Similarly, if you need to move in next week, then don’t enquire about a property that’s not available for another two months!

This is the hardest time ever to secure somewhere to rent. Be prepared! Plan! Communicate! Be open and you won’t go far wrong.