Day to Day Management

Once your tenant has moved in we can take care of your property, tenancy arrangements and your landlord duties throughout the tenancy and beyond.

Collecting rent

Pilgrims offers a rent collection service on its own or as part of its Fully Managed Letting Service for busy landlords. We collect rent monthly unless the Tenancy Agreement specifies otherwise. Occasionally, tenants may experience financial difficulties and our rent collection service includes chasing any late payments. We will notify you at the earliest opportunity of any rent arrears. You can protect against loss of rental income with an insurance policy: we can suggest one if you wish.

We pay the rent to landlords monthly by BACS (net of our fees and any disbursements, bills and income tax if appropriate) and provide monthly income and expenditure records.

Rental income and Taxation

As a landlord, you are responsible for assessing your own tax for rent received. Below is some basic guidance on taxation matters relevant to landlords: however we would always recommend you seek independent financial advice from an accountant on tax matters.

Income Tax

Rental income is liable to tax, although a number of expenditure items can be offset against rental profit. You would also need to pay Class 2 National Insurance if the work you do counts as running a property business.

Overseas Landlords

Under the Non-resident Landlord (NRL) Scheme, your lettings agent will need to deduct tax from the rental income and pay the tax directly to HM Revenue & Customs. If you choose not to use a lettings agent to collect rent, then you will be legally responsible for collecting and paying the tax to HM RC. Alternatively, landlords living overseas can apply for approval to receive rental income with no tax deducted. Full details of the NRL Scheme are available from HMRC.

Inspections, maintenance and repairs

The practicalities of being a landlord can be very timeconsuming. With our Fully Managed Letting Service we take care of all the day to day management and upkeep of your rental property so you don’t need to worry about it. We will carry out regular routine inspections - usually quarterly at a mutually convenient time agreed with the tenant. This will involve visual inspections, assessing any wear and tear, and organising maintenance and compliance checks. If we identify any problems we will advise you and, depending on our agreement with you we can arrange for repairs and any work to be done on the property and pay for this out of the rent received. We have a network of reliable and trustworthy contractors we can call on to deal with routine repairs or emergencies at very competitive rates.

Tenancy renewals, reviews and notices

We will handle all tenancy renewals, including rental reviews for you. If you decide to increase the rent we will issue the relevant notice informing your tenants. If you wish to end a tenancy, we will serve notice to your tenants in line with all legal process and timing requirements and manage all the end of tenancy administration.

End of tenancy checks and deposit returns

At the end of a tenancy the landlord’s agent should ensure the tenant leaves the property in a good, clean condition before the tenant checks out, take back the keys and formally take possession of the property. Assuming there are no issues and all paperwork is completed, utility companies notified and you have a forwarding address for the tenant, the landlord should return the tenant’s deposit. This is all included as part of our Fully Managed Letting Service.

Remarketing

No landlord wants a vacant property. If a tenancy is not renewed, we offer landlords who take our Fully Managed Letting Service an automatic property appraisal, rental valuation and remarketing service until we find a new tenant.