A survey of tenants renting fully managed properties indicates that almost half of them (49.7%) report repairs to their property manager by telephone.
With 8% of lettings issues investigated by the Property Ombudsman last year relating to repairs and maintenance, and 13% relating to poor communication, the need for clear records is paramount in resolving disputes.
The Property Ombudsman, Christopher Hamer said: TPO's Lettings Code of Practice requires member agents to keep full written records of all communications with tenants and landlords for at least six years and to be able to produce those records upon demand. As a matter of best practice, I also consider it prudent for agents to ask for tenant repair requests to be submitted in writing so that there is a clear trail of exactly what was reported and when that report was received.
Repairs are likely to remain in the industry spotlight over the coming months in light of ARLA's recent approval as an accreditation provider for the London Rental Standard.
The London Rental Standard sets out expected timeframes for repairs by accredited letting agents. These range from emergency repairs being carried out on the day of notification to urgent repairs being carried out within three working days of notification.
Rajeev Nayyar, managing director of property repairs software company Fixflo said: "Although the survey indicates that a high proportion of tenants still report repairs by telephone we have seen strong growth this year. Well over a thousand tenants a week are now reporting repairs online through the Fixflo system meaning that both they and their property manager have the added protection of time and date stamped repair requests."
Lyndon Bent, commercial director at Bradleys Estate Agents said: Although we do not operate in London we view the London Rental Standard as indicative of the future direction of the industry. Standard practice across our agency is to require tenants to report repairs in writing as it helps to speed up our response time while reducing the scope for misunderstanding. To support this we have invested in systems to make online repair reporting quick and easy for our tenants.
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Comments
James - thank you for taking the time to comment on the above article.
So far this month over 2300 tenants have used the Fixflo system to report repairs. We ask each tenant who uses the system to give us feedback and over the same period 81.43% of tenants reported that they preferred using Fixflo to reporting a repair by phone or email.
It's great to hear that you take repair requests in writing as records can be critical in resolving disputes.
The key benefits of the Fixflo system over a comment box/email are:
- it's available to tenants in over 40 languages
- it helps tenants to give you the information you need to carry out repairs quickly (i.e. complete structured data with photos)
- it includes guidance for tenants
It may be that Fixflo would not add to your current works process but if it is please do get in contact.
A decent letting agent should not need Fixflo or other such companies. Tenants in my experience sometimes prefer telephone contact as we can provide reassurance. We have facilities on our web-site to report maintenance and a whole host of other things should they chose the on-line approach.
As far as keeping records goes, whenever a Tenant or Landlord calls with an issue it should always be logged as it is at our agency - therefore maintaining a time-line.
LAT is rapidly becoming less of a news site and more an advertorial site. Rather than paying for Fixflo - agents who do not have an on-line reporting facility for Tenant maintenance can either put a link on their web-site for Tenants to e-mail maintenance or put a form on as we did.