Ricky Purdy, Director of Residential Lettings at Wales-based agency Dawsons, shares his insights on getting landlords up to speed on new legislation and compliance requirements, fast.
The rental market in Wales has gone through a period of change in the past few months, with the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 coming into force. Over that time, I've learned how to manage that pressure - and how to ensure that all of our customers are compliant, and ready to meet each of the upcoming legislation and compliance deadlines on time. Here are some of my top tips for other agencies facing the same challenges.
1. Ready your team to make sure everyone's workload will allow for the changes
Despite having a huge amount to change in the past few months, our team hasn't needed to grow. We re-allocated workloads to free up some aspects of their day-to-day working lives.
This was partly helped due to the supply and demand imbalance leading to lower lettings activity levels in general.
We therefore used the time well and changed some of our team members' roles and tasks - some on a permanent basis, and others to service the administration needs of the changes.
2. Understand where your team's strengths lie to make sure they work in the most efficient way
We played to the strength of our team members to help us prepare. Those who were very administratively minded and clerical worked directly on the administrative updates.
Those that had a good understanding and confidence in the changes communicated them to clients by telephone, email, Zoom, WhatsApp, and office visits.
We adapted to what we felt our clients - landlords and tenants or "contract-holders" - would need, as well as how we could best manage our team during that time to keep everyone happy.
3. Prepare as much as possible at the start of an extended transition period
The Renting Homes (Wales) Act includes multiple deadlines, such as providing all contract-holders with occupation contracts by June 2023, and then ensuring compliance with EICRs and mains smoke alarms by December 2023.
We took it upon ourselves to put more time and effort into the changes in December 2022 from an administrative and communication perspective.
We knew that we'd then reap the rewards of a complete, accurate database and not needing to put as much time and effort into it for later milestones.
You also learn a lot over a transition like this, with deadlines in six-month blocks. I'd like to think we're getting better having learned from the previous six months - as a company and as an industry as well.
4. Don't over communicate with your customers
Communication is key. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be in touch with your customers throughout - you should.
But you can make sure that they know the right information at the right time, so they don't get overwhelmed with the changes to come.
We communicated as we thought necessary. We didn't do too much, we didn't do too little. We had feedback that it meant our customers felt reassured over what they were receiving rather than needing to get clarity over it all, which was nice for us.
5. Understand how best to approach your different customer bases
Lots of long-standing landlords look at these new obligations as another cost. Getting them on board is a tough exercise, understandably. We tried to communicate the positives about the new requirements, and how it will help their capital investment.
New landlords just need to be filled in on what's required from day one, before welcoming any contract-holders. They can get set up in readiness. That starts the five-year clock ticking for the EICR checks, and 12-month clock for other inspections and checks.
Understanding and categorising each of your agency's landlords - and there are many more ways than this one example - will help you get them up to speed as quickly as possible.
6. Use technology to support the process
We knew that we wanted to spend time with our landlords. We wanted to give them the safety net and the reassurance of a familiar name and voice.
Goodlord helped us with the structure of the new occupation contracts, how we could populate and deal with those through its RentTech platform. That left us free to deal with the communication.
A rapport with applicable third parties and technology partners can only help make any transition to new legislation easier with the time you save.
7. Build a strong database of contractors and tradespeople
We've increased our contractor panel and the number of quality and qualified contractors we work with. We're happy to build up a relationship with them, to then put them out to our clients.
Demand for those contractors is only going to increase, so it's worth ensuring you have a good supply for when even more services are required.
We need to become accustomed to the volumes. If we can really trust the companies that we interact with, and our contractors, that will stand us in good stead to make sure all our customers stay compliant, now and in the future.
