Letting and operating an interest

Before the advert: what is checked at the property

The advert is written at the property, not at the desk, because every fact in it has to be true of the rooms as they are that week. The room count is taken as the rooms are actually usable; the floor is given as the floor; the heating type is named rather than described; and what is included is listed item by item — white goods, flooring, curtains, garden maintenance, parking if a space comes with the title.

At the same visit the alarms are tested, the certificates are checked for their expiry month, the meters are read and photographed, and anything that would fail an inspection is put on the make-good list before a viewing is offered. A property that is advertised before that visit is a property whose advert will have to be corrected.

Viewings, references and the right-to-rent check

Viewings are grouped into one or two afternoons rather than spread across a fortnight, which keeps the void days down and means the property only has to be prepared once. Each viewing is attended, the questions asked are written down, and the answers given are the same for everyone who asks.

References follow a decision, not the other way round: identity, the right-to-rent check that the law requires before a tenancy is granted in England, employment or income evidence, and a previous landlord where there is one. The documents are seen and recorded as seen. Nothing is held that the check does not require, and the dates on which each one was taken are noted, because the retention clock starts from them.

The day the keys go: inventory, meters, alarms

Handover day is a list, worked through in one visit. The agreement is signed and dated; the deposit is taken and protected in a scheme, with the prescribed information served; the inventory and the schedule of condition are agreed and photographed room by room; the meters are read with the tenant present and the readings sent to the suppliers.

Then the practical half: the stopcock, the fuse board and the meters are shown and their positions written into the tenant's note; the alarms are tested in front of the tenant; the keys are issued against their tag numbers and the number issued is recorded; and the bin day for the street and the collection arrangement are explained, because that is the thing most often got wrong in the first fortnight.

Six stages and a return. The dashed leg is the only part of the cycle with no income in it and no certainty about its length, which is why it is the part that gets counted in days on the board.

While it is let: the ledger, the arrears steps, the statements

The ledger is kept per tenancy and reconciled against the bank, not against memory. A standing order is set up for the payment day in the agreement, and a payment that arrives on a different day or from a different name is matched and annotated rather than left to be worked out later.

Where a payment is missed the steps are the same every time and in writing: a note on the day it was due, a letter at seven days asking what has happened and offering to discuss it, a further letter at fourteen days setting out the position under the agreement, and a review of the account at twenty-eight days. The purpose of a fixed sequence is that nobody has to guess what happens next, and that the file shows what was actually done.

Operating the building: communal parts, bins, gardens, access

Operating is the half of the activity that nobody writes an advert about. The communal lighting is checked on a round; the stair and entrance are cleaned to a stated frequency; the bin store is checked against the collection day for the street; the garden is cut and the hedges are kept off the footway. Where a managing agent is responsible for any of it, the line for that interest says so, and the agent's reference goes with it.

Access for a contractor is arranged with the tenant and confirmed in writing, with the trade, the reason and the window. Keys issued to a contractor are signed out and signed back in the same day, by tag number. A visit nobody told the tenant about is a visit that will be refused, and rightly.

Ending: notice, check-out, deposit statement

An ending is counted backwards from the end date in the agreement, which is what the planner on the board is for. Once notice is settled, the check-out is booked for a day that leaves room for the make-good work before the next handover. The check-out report is written against the schedule of condition, with the same rooms in the same order and the photographs attached.

The deposit statement is then prepared from that report and nothing else: each item, the condition it was in at the start, the condition it is in now, and whether fair wear accounts for the difference. Where there is a disagreement it goes to the scheme's own resolution process, and the file goes with it unedited.