Making sure our tenants don’t get into arrears

There are some scary statistics being bandied around at the moment. The most worrying for landlords is that nearly 100,000 tenants are now in arrears by at least two months.

Worse still, the latest figures show that the number of tenants in arrears by over two months is the highest it’s been since 2008, and that tenants in severe arrears make up 2.5% of all tenancies in England and Wales. Clearly, rent arrears are a growing and significant problem.

Walton & Allen have strict procedures to ensure that our tenants don’t fall into arrears. This gives reassurance to our landlords and is obviously, a benefit to tenants. We don’t want them to get into financial difficulties, and are here to help stop this happening.

We have a dedicated credit control team who collect an average of 98.8% of the total rent due to us each month. That figure is much higher than the local or national industry average, and means that landlords can rely on the level of income they expect to receive from their rental property.

What’s more, the computer program we use to manage rental collection now includes a text messaging facility. This sends a text message to a tenant when they don’t pay their rent on time.

This is good for credit control and a help to tenants who may just have forgotten to make a payment.