Whether you have purchased a buy-to-let property or found yourself in a position where you have a property that you are considering renting out, becoming a landlord is not a responsibility that anyone should take lightly. You’d be wrong to assume that the job involves little more than providing a home for someone to live in. Whilst that’s the crux of it, a lot goes into doing this successfully.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the weight of responsibility, here are some simple tips for first-time landlords to put you on the road to success.

Do your research

Whilst being a landlord provides passive income, you can’t simply sit back and wait for the pennies to roll in. If you are to be a successful landlord, you should fully research all the legislation and regulations that a landlord must follow. Treat it as another job or an academic project. You need to go into it armed with all the knowledge and tools to avoid falling into any expensive pit holes.

From safety standards, tenancy deposit schemes and the ever-more complex world of landlord tax, put together a comprehensive folder full of all the information you could ever need and study it in your spare time. If you’re going to get anything right when being a landlord, make sure it’s the legal side of the job.

Screen your tenants

Aside from sticking to the right side of the law, one of the other more important parts of being a landlord is finding the right tenants to live in your property. This is where the screening process comes in. Screening allows you to ensure that you can trust the person you choose to rent your property.

At least for your first few tenancies, it may be wise to avoid potential tenants with poor credit scores. Sure, this doesn’t necessarily mean that they won’t be a good tenant, however, it may be considered a risky move for a first-time landlord. Poor credit scores could indicate that the tenant finds making payments on time and budgeting difficult.

Ultimately, you can choose whoever you like to rent your property to. However, it’s really important to understand the reasons you can’t use to reject a prospective tenant. There are a number of ‘protected characteristics’ that you cannot lean on to reject a tenant. These include nationality, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability or religion. You also cannot reject someone due to their age, marital status or being pregnant.

Prioritise your rent

If you weren’t able to make money from being a landlord, would you still do it? We’re guessing you probably wouldn’t. Your rent is your revenue and being a landlord is your business. Without it, you will simply be paying a second mortgage (unless you’re mortgage-free) and you won’t be making any money.

It is therefore important that you stipulate the process you’ll follow with a tenant if rent comes through late so that they know it’s something you’ll take seriously. Remain open and personable so that tenants know they can come to you if they are having an issue making rent, but make it clear that it’s not something you’ll let slide month-to-month without explanation.

Obviously, times are hard for so many people right now. Financial commitments can be stressful. By screening your tenants, you should mitigate the risk of taking on a tenant who cannot afford to live in your property, but if you do run into issues, help your tenant resolve these. You may be able to get a three-month rent holiday if your tenant has for instance lost their job and cannot meet the rent payments.

Take out landlord insurance

Landlord insurance isn’t actually mandatory, but that certainly doesn’t mean you should leave it off your list of essential outgoings. You will probably find that your mortgage lender will insist you have landlord insurance cover before they give you the green light to take tenants on because a regular home insurance policy is not enough to protect you against rented activities.

Landlord insurance covers you against eventualities such as loss of rent, accidental damage, legal protection, alternative accommodation for your tenants should anything happen to your property and so much more. Consider property owner’s liability insurance, contents insurance and buy-to-let buildings cover to ensure you’re fully protected. As a first-time landlord, you’ll want comprehensive insurance on your side to safeguard you against things going wrong.

Consider using a letting agent

Whether or not you decide to use a letting agent will depend on a few factors. The biggest is probably cost. Depending on the level of service you require, they don’t come cheap. As you can imagine, the more support you need, the more you’ll pay. However, if you’re a first-time landlord feeling the pressures, utilising the help of a letting agent could be worth its weight in gold.

As a basic rule, letting agents services are as following:

Tenant-find only: The most basic of services means a letting agent will find tenants for your property and arrange the let. This often includes collecting references, doing credit checks and collecting deposits. This is usually a one-off fee.

Tenant find & rent collection: This includes the above along with collecting the rent payments each month and chasing late payments. Due to this being a rolling service, this is usually paid monthly.

Full management: Just like it says on the tin, full management service covers pretty much everything. It’s perfect for the landlord who doesn’t fancy being hands-on. The letting agent will manage all aspects of the rental including rent collection, being the main point of contact for your tenants and arranging any maintenance and repair work.

Whether or not you’ll decide to use a letting agent will depend on the kind of landlord you want to be. Do you want to build a rapport with your tenants and pride yourself on providing a service? You may want to handle all aspects of the rental yourself, and enjoy saving some pennies for yourself along the way. If you’d prefer to hand the difficult jobs to someone else and are happy to pay for that peace of mind, using a letting agent will suit you perfectly.

Despite everything happening in the world at the moment, the rental market is still going strong and it’s a great time to be a landlord, so long as you are keeping up with any changing legislation to avoid getting hit with any fines.

It’s all a learning curve, but hopefully, these tips for first-time landlords have helped you understand the important basics and make some decisions to set you in good stead. Good luck!