View all articles
There’s a lot to juggle as a landlord, particularly if you’re managing a portfolio of properties. From tenant management to compliance, financial management to property maintenance, being organised is key to running a successful rental business.
When there’s so much to keep track of, the risk of errors increases. Take your eye off the ball for a second, and you risk running into issues that could seriously damage your business. Some potential risks when running a property rental business include non-payment of rent, tenant complaints, property damage, penalties from HMRC, or even criminal prosecution for non-compliance with the law.
Most landlords agree that they need all the help they can get to keep everything running smoothly. That’s where landlord software like Landlord Vision comes in. Landlord software offers an affordable, all-in-one solution for efficient property management.
In this article, we’ll explore the key risks faced by landlords and the tools Landlord Vision offers to help protect against them.
What is Risk Management?
Risk management is a proactive strategy for identifying potential risks and taking steps to reduce or manage them. Effective risk management can help landlords protect their assets, ensure a steady rental income, and maintain a positive relationship with tenants.
How Can Landlord Software Help With Risk Management?
Landlord software can play a key role in your risk management strategy by helping to automate and streamline many important risk management tasks.
When developing Landlord Vision, we carefully analysed the most common risks that landlords face and designed tools to help them manage and reduce these risks. Our software aims to streamline risk management for landlords by providing all the tools needed to mitigate risk in one convenient, central platform.
Technology plays an important role in minimising risk for businesses across all industries. By automating tasks, increasing accuracy, and reducing the risk of human error, landlord software helps to ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. While you may forget a deadline or appointment, Landlord Vision won’t.
What Risks do Landlords Face, and How Can Landlord Vision Help Mitigate Them?
Without the right tools in place, keeping on top of your many responsibilities as a landlord can be time-consuming, stressful, and prone to human error. From legal compliance to document management, there’s a lot to do and remember if you want to avoid running into legal disputes or financial difficulties. By using landlord software like Landlord Vision, landlords can proactively manage risk by automating key processes and storing documentation in one secure and central location.
Let’s learn more about the risks landlords face day-to-day and the tools Landlord Vision offers to help landlords manage these risks.
Non-compliance with laws
The laws surrounding landlords and rental properties in the UK are complex and extensive. However, as a landlord, it is your responsibility to make sure that you understand and comply with all relevant laws, or you risk facing potential prosecution or penalties. From tenant rights to property standards and health and safety regulations, staying informed and ensuring compliance is the foundation of a successful rental business.
How can Landlord Vision help with legal compliance?
- Automated reminders for safety checks: Landlord Vision features can integrated calendar and early warning system. Together, these tools can be used to automatically track safety certificate due dates and send reminders when you need to book a new safety inspection.
- Legal document templates: The Landlord Vision Legal Document Centre is available to customers on both the Standard and Premium plans. This features provides access to a wide range of legal document templates, including assured shorthold tenancy agreements, a rent increase letter, a Section 8 notice, and a tenancy amendment letter. Using a pre-vetted legal document template provides peace of mind that the document is legally sound.
- GDPR-compliant tenant data and document storage: UK GDPR laws impose strict rules on how landlords store and process sensitive tenant data and documents. Landlord Vision is a GDPR-compliant software. Data stored with us is encrypted and held on a secure server in a state-of-the-art data facility.
Soon, you will also be able to use Landlord Vision to submit your tax return to HMRC digitally and comply with Making Tax Digital.
Tenant complaints
Unhappy or problematic tenants can cause landlords a headache and even damage their reputation in the local community. A thorough tenant screening process can help to minimise the risk of running into problem tenants in the first place. Then, once you’ve onboarded your tenants, taking care to provide a high level of service, being organised with tenant management tasks, and responding promptly to tenant communications can help maintain a positive tenant/landlord relationship.
Using specialist landlord software can help landlords deliver a more professional, streamlined, and compliant property rental service, improving tenant trust, satisfaction, and retention.
- Tenant portal: Last year, Landlord Vision introduced a new tenant portal and tenant service desk to help landlords manage tenants and their issues more effectively. The tenant portal gives tenants access to key documents, statements, and invoices, while the tenant service desk helps them raise tickets for maintenance issues and other queries. These tools can be used to enhance your rental business’s professionalism and efficiency, leading to better tenant/landlord relationships and more satisfied tenants.
- Digital document storage and correspondence log: Being organised is very important when managing rental properties, especially if issues arise with a tenant. Landlord Vision provides secure and GDPR-compliant document storage, allowing you to store and easily retrieve important documents like tenancy agreements and tenant communications. So, should a dispute occur, you have all the necessary evidence at your fingertips, helping you to resolve issues quickly and efficiently.
Late or missed payments
Non-payment of rent is a problem that all landlords encounter at some point. While common, it can have serious financial implications for the landlord, particularly if they’re relying on rental income to cover mortgage repayments. Missed rent payments negatively impact cash flow, and chasing them up can be stressful and time-consuming. Landlord software helps landlords create a more structured financial management system, helping them keep on top of their income and expenses more effectively and identify potential issues early.
Landlord Vision provides landlords with the tools they need to track payments efficiently, ensuring nothing slips through the cracks.
- Tenant rent reminders: Landlord Vision automatically emails rental invoices and reminders to tenants when their rent is due to help reduce the likelihood of missed payments.
- Landlord overdue rent alerts: It also automatically flags overdue payments, alerts the landlord, and provides a dashboard view of outstanding balances and payment histories across their whole portfolio. This allows landlords to quickly chase up and manage late payments as soon as they become outstanding to minimise the impact on their cash flow.
Property damage
Property damage or deterioration is a major concern for landlords, as repairs can be expensive and disruptive for tenants. Landlords can minimise the risk of unexpected property issues and repair bills by carrying out preventative maintenance and encouraging tenants to report issues as soon as they notice them.
Landlord Vision offers landlords powerful organisation tools to help them keep track of property inspections and maintenance tasks. It also enables landlords to offer tenants a simple and hassle-free way to report maintenance issues.
- Integrated calendar: Landlord Vision’s integrated calendar enables landlords to schedule and receive reminders about property inspections and preventative maintenance tasks to help keep properties in good condition and avoid extensive repairs later down the line.
- Early warning system: Landlords can use Landlord Vision to track expiring safety certificates and insurance policies to make sure that they never miss a renewal deadline.
- Tenant service desk: Landlord Vision’s tenant service desk makes it easy and convenient for tenants to raise tickets for maintenance issues. By streamlining the reporting process, small issues can be flagged early before they turn into expensive structural problems or emergency repairs.
Void periods
If a tenant leaves unexpectedly or the landlord struggles to fill a vacancy, the loss of rental income can significantly impact the landlord’s cash flow. The landlord must still find a way to fulfil their financial obligations, like mortgage repayments and maintenance costs, even without any rental income coming in.
Landlord Vision provides tools that can be used to help manage tenancy renewals effectively to help reduce the risk of encountering void periods.
- Alerts for upcoming lease renewals: Landlord Vision tracks when tenant leases are due to end, sending the landlord an alert when the renewal date is approaching to prompt them to discuss renewal options with their tenants well in advance of the date.
- Automatic rolling tenancies: Using automatic rolling tenancies helps to ensure legal compliance and consistent rental income.
Legal disputes
If a legal dispute arises between you and a tenant, you may be asked to provide documentation to prove legal compliance. Maintaining accurate records and being organised makes it simple to retrieve the information you need and provide solid evidence in the event of a legal dispute, helping to save you time, money, and stress.
Landlord Vision provides landlords with all the tools they need to keep documentation secure and organised.
- Digital log of tenant communications: Landlord Vision’s Tenant Diary tool logs all tenant/landlord correspondence in one central place, helping landlords demonstrate compliance and resolve issues quickly.
- Legal document templates: Landlord Vision also offers a variety of pre-vetted and legally compliant document templates that comply with UK laws. By using these templates, landlords reduce the risk of making errors that could render their notices invalid in court.
- Secure document storage: When you store your important legal documents with Landlord Vision, you have peace of mind that they are secured in one central GDPR-compliant location. A comprehensive and well-organised paper trail can help to strengthen your position in the event of a dispute.
Ready to learn more about how Landlord Vision can streamline property management? Request a free demo today to explore its powerful tools and find out more about how it can help you mitigate risk and run a more organised, efficient, and profitable rental business.
