For estate & letting agents · London & surrounding areas
Place the property.Keep the client.Keep the fee.
We take your landlord client’s property on a three to five year company let and pay a fixed rent every month, occupied or not. The let is written through your agency, your fees are unchanged, and you remain the main contact for your client. We do not approach your clients directly: not during the term, not at renewal, not afterwards.
Our commitment to your agency
- Your client relationship
- Stays yours
- Your agency fees
- Unchanged
- Main contact for the landlord
- You
- Direct approaches to your clients
- None
- Who signs as tenant
- We do
- If the property is empty
- Rent still paid
We put this in writing before you introduce anything. Ask for it on the first call and it will be with you the same day.
Your client stays your client
We do not go direct. It is in the agreement, not just on the website.
Every agent asks this first, and it is the right thing to ask. The answer is a written non-circumvention commitment signed before a single property changes hands: we will not approach, solicit or take on your landlord client directly. Not for the property you introduced, and not for anything else they own.
In practice it means you stay in the middle by design. Correspondence about the property comes through you if that is how you want it run. Renewal is raised with your office first. And when a landlord asks us something that belongs with their agent, we send them back to you.
Ask for the commitment before you send us anything. We would rather you had it in hand than take it on trust.
From introduction to first payment
Four steps, and your office runs two of them.
- 01
You introduce the property
Send the address, the number of bedrooms, the condition and what the landlord is hoping to achieve. A short email is enough. There is no portal, no registration form and no cost to put a property in front of us.
- 02
We assess it and make an offer
We check it against what our housing partners are looking for and come back with a monthly figure and a term, usually within a day or two. If it is not right for us we say so straight away rather than leave your client waiting.
- 03
The agency does the paperwork
The let is written through your office on a company let agreement, with us as the tenant. You charge your client your usual fees at your usual rates. References, compliance documents and the agreement itself run through you in the normal way.
- 04
We place and manage. You keep the relationship
Placement is usually within days of signature, because the demand is already there through our local authority partnerships. From that point the occupiers, the maintenance and the inspections are ours, and your client is still your client.
If you would rather talk a property through before sending it over, call 0330 133 1164. We answer the phone and we do not put agents through a sales process.
Where the line sits
What stays yours. What becomes ours.
Stays yours
The client, the fee, the contact
- The client relationship, for this property and for every other one they own
- Your usual fees, at your usual rates. We do not ask an agency for a discount
- Your position as the landlord’s main point of contact
- The instruction itself, if the landlord later decides to sell or to re-let
Becomes ours
The rent, the occupiers, the building
- The rent, paid on the same date every month, occupied or empty
- Every occupier: check-in, house rules, day-to-day issues and end of stay
- Maintenance and repairs, at our cost
- Quarterly inspections, photographed, condition-rated and written up
- Compliance and the local authority relationship
Where your liability ends
Worth being blunt about rather than leaving vague. Once the agreement is signed we are the tenant, and a tenant’s obligations are ours. Your agency is not our guarantor. You are not answerable for the occupiers, for the condition of the property during our term, or for anything we do under the lease.
What remains with you is only what your own terms of business already say you do for that landlord. If you collect the rent, you carry on collecting it. From us. If you manage the property, you carry on managing it and we deal with you rather than around you. If the instruction was to let and nothing more, our dealings with your office end at the paperwork and the client is still yours.
The stock this suits
The properties that have been on the board too long.
We are not after the flat that lets itself in a week. You do not need us for that one. We are useful on the ones that cost your office time and your client patience.
Slow to let
Repeat viewings, no offers, and a price the landlord has already dropped once. We price against a three to five year term rather than a single let, so a property that has stalled on the open market is still worth a firm monthly figure to us.
High churn
A property that turns over every twelve months, with a void, a clean and a re-let each time. We sign for three to five years, so the turnover stops and your client stops calling you about it.
Needs a long-term occupier
Landlords who have decided they would rather have certainty than the highest possible headline rent. That is precisely the trade our agreement makes, and it is easier to explain in one conversation than most people expect.
The landlord is talking about selling
Usually because managing it has become more work than it is worth. A guaranteed rent agreement takes the work away without taking the asset away, and the landlord stays on your books instead of the property going to a sale.
Vacant, probate or chain-stuck
Empty property earning nothing while an estate is settled or a sale stalls. Where the owner is in a position to grant a lease, we can usually move quickly, and the rent runs from the agreed date whether the property fills immediately or not.
Two bedrooms and above
Our range is 1–4 bedrooms: studios, flats, houses and HMOs. Two bedrooms and above suits us best, because most placements are small families. Send the smaller stock anyway; we will tell you honestly how often we can use it.
Evidence you can forward
A written report every quarter, in your client’s inbox or yours.
Inspections run quarterly, with at least twenty-four hours’ notice to the occupier. Every room is photographed and condition-rated in our inspection app, notes are recorded against anything unusual, and the visit is written up as a single report.
The report is yours to forward. Most agents send it straight on under their own cover. It is the simplest way to show a landlord that the property they handed over is being looked after, without either of you having to arrange a visit to prove it.
What the report contains
- Every room photographed: walls, ceilings, flooring, doors, windows and fixtures
- A condition rating recorded against each of them
- Notes on anything that needs attention, and what we are doing about it
- The date of the visit and the date of the next one
You and your client are welcome to attend any inspection. Tell us and we will arrange the visit around you.
Do you replace the managing agent?
No. We are the tenant, not an agent, and we do not take over an agency instruction. If your office manages the property for the landlord, it carries on managing it. The difference is that the tenant it deals with is a company that pays on time and fixes its own problems.
How quickly can you place a property?
Terms are usually agreed within a day or two of you sending the details. Once the property is submitted, our local authority contact normally confirms the same day or the next, and placement follows within days of the agreement being signed. Income for your client starts on the agreed date either way.
How is the rent paid?
A fixed sum per calendar month on a named date written into the agreement, rolling to the next business day if that date falls on a weekend or bank holiday. It is paid to whoever the landlord’s arrangement with your agency says it should be paid to. Nothing is deducted from the figure by us.
What if the landlord wants out early?
The agreement can be ended by the landlord from twelve months after it starts, on two months’ notice. Before that point, early release is by mutual written agreement on the terms set out in the lease. We would rather talk it through than hold anybody to a property that no longer suits them.
Will the rent still be paid if the property is empty?
Yes. That is the whole point of the arrangement. Under guaranteed rent we are the tenant, so occupancy is our risk and our cost. Your client is paid the same amount on the same date whether the property is full, half full or standing empty.
What happens at the end of the term?
The property comes back. We do not grant assured shorthold tenancies: families occupy as licensed occupiers under local authority temporary accommodation, so no tenancy rights attach to the property and there is no sitting tenant to inherit. We raise renewal with you, not with your client, and if it is not renewed the property returns to your agency to re-let.
For agency introductions
Send us one property and see how we handle it.
Give us the address, the size and the condition. We come back with a monthly figure and a term, usually within a day or two, and our non-circumvention commitment goes to you before anything is introduced. If the property is not right for us we will tell you plainly rather than keep your client waiting.
Or email the details to info@signature-staycation.com and we will come back the same way.