One of the biggest challenges for people renting a property is finding a good place. In most places, and Eastbourne is no exception, good properties are hard to find and go quickly once marketed. Living in a less than the ideal property can be incredibly depressing. If you want to secure a great rental property then follow these tips.
Tips for looking for a rental property in Eastbourne
Don’t start looking for a property too early. Landlords generally want to see a property tenanted within a month to six weeks. Ask agents to place you on their database – at a letting agency, they always check their database prior to marketing a property and will contact the customers if their requirements match an available property.
You should also make sure that you put time aside to view properties promptly. The very best, and best value, properties are often taken by one of the first few people who see it. Great properties won’t stay on the rental market for long, and of course our job is to secure a tenant for our landlords as quickly as possible. If you delay viewing, you could miss out.
You should have finances in place when you view a property. This allows you to instantly put down a fee to reserve the property and pay the agency fees. The payment of the fees will halt further viewings by other potential tenants and secure the property for you, subject to reference checks.
Letting Agency Costs and Checks
When the letting agency let a property, they require significant reference checks. These make sure that the landlord’s properties are being rented out to the right tenants. You won’t have to jump through any unusual hoops though. All we require is a reference from your previous landlord, a reference from your employer, documents proving your ID such as your passport, and a document proving your current address such as a utility bill.
You should make sure that you have all of these documents ready before you start looking for a property. Spending a huge amount of time chasing references from your employer and your current landlord could cause you to lose the property that you have your heart set on.
There is a small fee for the reference check to take place. This fee is charged because the checking is done by an outside reference checking agency, who have their own thorough practices for making sure that all references are above board. This process also involves a credit check, to ensure that you don’t currently have any defaults or other black marks on your credit history. Your credit doesn’t need to be absolutely perfect to pass, but we do require a reasonable amount of creditworthiness for our tenants. We’re one of the most flexible letting agents in Seaford, but we have to put our landlords first.
Some tenants may need a guarantor. This is a person who agrees to be held liable for unpaid rent. This is usually done so that people who aren’t in full time employment, or on a low income, can still rent a property. If you think you may need a guarantor you should make sure to arrange this in plenty of time. You should also advise your circumstances to make sure that the landlord of the property is happy to accept this arrangement before you pay any fees. We’ll be happy to let you know.
The letting agency will do everything they can to help you find the property of your dreams. This includes alerting you when new properties come on the rental market and arranging viewings at a time that suit you.
