Arthur Online – the cloud-based property management platform – has made property management simpler by integrating with Advanced Tenant Referencing and Signable. You can now manage the tenant onboarding process from end-to-end using the Arthur Online app or desktop platform, without a single piece of paper exchanging hands. This new
From listing properties and finding tenants, to screening prospective tenants and much more, the uses of social media in the rental sector are wide ranging. In the age of social media, personal information is fast becoming public property. Millions are now willingly sharing information which was previously confidential; photos, political
In the past, if you wanted to buy or sell a property the only option was to go through a high-street estate agent. Sellers were willing to pay thousands for an agent to take control of the process and guide them through each step. Yet recently, new technology and a
There has been much talk about the lack of investment opportunities in the UK in recent years. And it seems to be getting worse, with some UK cities now offering worse rental yields than they did a few months ago. It may even be too late to invest in properties
Arthur Online – the cloud-based property management platform – has launched new integrations with Rightmove and Zoopla making property managers’ lives even easier. You can now list your vacant properties for let directly via the Arthur Online platform. Millions of prospective tenants browsing Rightmove and Zoopla will be informed as
Changes to stamp duty and a lettings fee ban protecting tenants means several new costs have now been placed on property managers by the government. This means that property managers are now looking for ways to reduce costs in other areas. One of the ways to do this is to
Arthur Online – the cloud-based property management platform – has made property management simpler by integrating with Advanced Tenant Referencing and Signable. You can now manage the tenant onboarding process from end-to-end using the Arthur Online app or desktop platform, without a single piece of paper exchanging hands. This new integration enables you to swiftly and securely complete your tenant reference check and update your account with the new tenant’s details. Your prospective tenant can even sign all documents via the app. Arthur Online’s integration with AdvancedRent, a market leader in tenant referencing, allows for efficient management by seamlessly moving data from one software to another, saving time and money. With a simple push of a button, the information from the prospective tenant is sent out for referencing. Our tracking system allows you to easily track the progress of the reference. When complete, Arthur Online will notify you, your team, the owner and the tenant of the outcome. And, if anything needs to be signed, the Signable integration means that the tenancy agreement can be completed in minutes. Marc Trup, founder and CEO of Arthur Online, says: “Paperwork used to be the bane of property management, especially when it comes to HMOs. The paperwork and checks for just one building could zap a whole day. But now, with our integration to Advanced Tenant Referencing you only have to put the tenant’s information in once to get it checked, issue the tenancy, file the details with the accountant and deal with any issues that arise. At Arthur Online, we are all about enabling our clients to navigate the minefield that is property management, and Signable and Advanced Tenant Referencing are the latest of a number of leading tools we use to do just that.” Arthur Online gives property managers unprecedented control of their portfolio, whether dealing with tenants, contractors, accountants or agents. Arthur Online is available as an app and desktop platform from www.arthuronline.co.uk , you can sign up for a free 30-day trial today.
From listing properties and finding tenants, to screening prospective tenants and much more, the uses of social media in the rental sector are wide ranging. In the age of social media, personal information is fast becoming public property. Millions are now willingly sharing information which was previously confidential; photos, political views, work history and even whereabouts can be found in a few clicks. It’s now easier than ever to build a picture of someone’s habits and tendencies with just basic information. The applicability to the rental market is obvious; 11% of landlords now routinely check social media profiles of prospective tenants as part of their screening process. While this may seem more of a personality report and cannot replace hard facts like credit checks and criminal records, it helps build an overall picture of the prospective tenant which would be impossible to glean from information provided by traditional sources. Many part-time landlords are also using social media to find new tenants, other than saving on letting agent fees, the benefits of finding a tenant in your social network, and therefore someone you implicitly trust, can be priceless. And even if you don’t know the person well, you can quickly build trust through mutual friends. Using social media in a more traditional way also has huge benefits. Facebook has an advertising feature which allows targeting ads for rental properties towards specific audiences within their 2 billion active user base. While smaller landlords may find this too expensive, the wider reach may appeal to large portfolio managers. Of course, if you do go this route, you will lose the personal touch of posting on your own timeline, etc. But social media has its risks, if you are using it to screen tenants, you should consider using it as a quick way to spot red flags, rather than relying on it to fully guide your decision making. There’s also a question of ethics, is it fair to judge someone based on the few things they share online? Do you feel comfortable looking at a stranger’s profile without their consent? What if it was the other way around? Letting the prospective tenant know they will be checked online may allay some of these concerns. However, you may feel about social media, it’s here to stay. Other than a few moral qualms, there’s no reason not to use social media as part of your screening process, indeed it is likely to become a generally accepted part of a modern landlord’s due diligence. The sooner you get onboard, the better. Arthur Online is a cloud-based platform that enables property managers to respond instantly and solve problems fast from anywhere in the world, be it with tenants, contractors, property owners or letting agents. Since launching in 2015, it has helped thousands of property managers like Marc run their portfolios in the cheapest, most efficient way possible by using the full potential of new technology and cloud computing. See how Arthur can help your business by going to https://www.arthuronline.co.uk/private-rental/?utm_source=Property%20and%20Development&utm_medium=article
In the past, if you wanted to buy or sell a property the only option was to go through a high-street estate agent. Sellers were willing to pay thousands for an agent to take control of the process and guide them through each step. Yet recently, new technology and a general shift to a do-it-yourself attitude has changed all that, with many people now turning to online agents to buy and sell property, drawn by the advantages of greater control and much lower costs. Online agents have expanded the range of services they provide, with the aim of adding a personal touch which many had criticised them for lacking. But why are some people still reluctant to make the switch from the high-street to the internet? The biggest selling point of online agents compared to high-street agents is the lower price point. High street agents tend to work on commission with an average of 2% of the sale, so for example, that’s the equivalent of £8,000 on a £400,000 property. In contrast, online agents have a fixed fee, usually around £300, sometimes going a little above this depending on the package. Popular online agents include eMoov, who charge £395 and My Online Estate Agent, who charge £325. Online agents also tend to be more flexible with payments, often having an option to pay a small amount upfront and the balance on completion. What’s interesting here is that despite the great difference in price, online and high-street agents use the same marketing tools. Zoopla, Rightmove and other property portals are favourites with several of the top high-street and online agents. Serious buyers will be checking these same websites regardless of whether the advert came from a high street or online agent. Ultimately, this shows online agencies offer the same ability to reach thousands of potential buyers but in a much cheaper way. So, you may be wondering, what’s the catch? Well, many people highly value face-to-face interaction when making large transactions (often the largest they will ever be personally involved in). Sellers value building rapport with agents, making them feel like the agent fully understands the qualities of their property and unique circumstances. High-street agents take full control of all processes from conducting viewings, carrying out negotiations and monitoring the sales process. A lot of the lower-priced online agents don’t offer these services and many people are uncomfortable with doing these themselves. Another distinction between the services offered is the connection that high-street agents have with the local market, which online agents lack. Local knowledge is, arguably, one of the greatest advantages of a traditional high street estate agent. High-street agents will know what sells in your area, what the pricing should be, and may know potential buyers looking for your property. The reality is that some people find it too risky to conduct the biggest financial transaction of their lives online without consulting an experienced professional, even if it means saving money. Purplebricks was one of the first online agents to successfully realise that for online agents to truly succeed, a face-to-face, local element needed to be added. Purplebricks provide a network of TrustPilot-rated local experts to offer advice, liaise on offers and conduct viewings (for an extra flat fee of £300) and several other online agents such as YOPA and Easyproperty have added this element to their online platform. This has meant that services traditionally only delivered by high-street agents are now accessible via an online platform and you can save a lot of money while not losing that personal touch. Buying and selling a property can get quite complicated, particularly if you don’t choose the right agent to guide you through the process (or even go it alone online!) and the same applies to managing a rental property. Like buying and selling a property, the process of property management has been transformed by the internet, simplifying what was once complicated. Using the right property management tool could make your life easier and save you a lot of time and money. Luckily there are a range of cloud-based property management software providers that offer great tools at a great price. Platforms such as Arthur Online provide new cloud-based technology, enabling property managers to respond instantly and solve problems fast from anywhere in the world, be it with tenants, contractors, property owners or letting agents. Processes are simplified into one single platform, with a suite of apps available to use at any time of the day. Arthur Online also provides an important personal touch, with excellent customer support to help you at any time. Marc Trup is the Founder and CEO of Arthur Online After selling his business to BUPA in 1998, Marc started investing in rental properties in London. Over the next 15 years Marc grew his portfolio to over 85 properties. While successful, self-managing his portfolio became increasingly difficult. With technological advances and greater connectivity, he assumed there was software available that would allow him to manage his business from his smart phone, while sipping espresso at the local coffee shop. Following a long search, he found that nothing quite cut the mustard. So being an entrepreneur, he started Arthur Online to make not only his life easier, but also that of other property managers. Arthur Online is a cloud-based platform that enables property managers to respond instantly and solve problems fast from anywhere in the world, be it with tenants, contractors, property owners or letting agents. Since launching in 2015, it has helped thousands of property managers like Marc run their portfolios in the cheapest, most efficient way possible by using the full potential of new technology and cloud computing. Start your free trial today by going to www.arthuronline.co.uk
There has been much talk about the lack of investment opportunities in the UK in recent years. And it seems to be getting worse, with some UK cities now offering worse rental yields than they did a few months ago. It may even be too late to invest in properties near the long-awaited Elizabeth line in London, as the benefits are already priced in. The good news is that there are still some areas which offer good investment potential. UK law is also comparatively reliable, making it one of the safest places in the world to invest in property. Coupled with a vibrant economy and plenty of rental demand, the UK remains a popular choice for international investors. University towns are continuing to provide some of the highest rental yields in the UK. Affordable student flats in areas like Liverpool and Middlesbrough are providing rental yields up to 7 times higher than in London. Investing in student property can be especially profitable as there is reliable high demand and consistent rents, meaning shorter void periods. There are also stark regional differences, the North of England is now the only option for investors looking for cash generating assets. Manchester has received the largest number of investments outside London, and the Manchester-Liverpool metropolitan area is ranked the 10th most popular location in the world for foreign investment. Manchester has a large student community with four universities and houses a student population of 100,000, meaning demand for rental properties will remain high. Liverpool currently has some of the UK’s largest public investment projects, like the £5 billion Liverpool Waters Scheme. This has had a positive knock-on effect on Liverpool’s booming property investment market. The transformation of a 60-hectare brownfield site is making way for five new neighbourhoods and is part of a widescale regeneration of the region. Liverpool’s average house price also ranks well below the UK average; while the average UK property is valued at £231,422, the average house price in Liverpool is £148,031 which paints an attractive picture for any would-be investor. While the investment potential of properties along the Elizabeth line have been exhausted, areas around the Crossrail 2 still offer promising rental yields. Birmingham remains a UK property investment hotspot, having recently been ranked 21st for its overall investment prospects in Europe in 2018. The average house price in Birmingham stands at £183,399, as opposed to London’s £484,926, and has an average yield of 5.02%. Birmingham also offers great investment potential. Britain’s second most populous city has ambitious plans to improve transport links. As well as receiving the new Crossrail, Birmingham will see an extension to its metro, and Birmingham Airport is expected to add many more international routes over the next few years. Sourcing and buying are just the first steps in making a good property investment. Depending on your strategy, managing a portfolio efficiently is arguably the most important and time-consuming part of being a property investor. Luckily there are a range of cloud-based property management platforms that can save you time and money. With new cloud-based technology, you can manage your investments from anywhere in the world, broadening the areas you may consider for investment, and opening up the best opportunities from around the world. Systems including GoTenant and Arthur Online are entirely customisable. You can use them to remain in a central managerial position while not actually being on the ground, as things like tenant check/out can be handled by local agents. You can arrange viewings, sign documents and assign workorders to contractors all through dedicated apps. This new generation of proptech is making the property sector more connected, ultimately helping investors manage and grow their portfolios efficiently and hassle free, while opening up the most profitable opportunities. Marc Trup is the Founder and CEO of Arthur Online After selling his business to BUPA in 1998, Marc started investing in rental properties in London. Over the next 15 years Marc grew his portfolio to over 85 properties. While successful, self-managing his portfolio became increasingly difficult. With technological advances and greater connectivity, he assumed there was software available that would allow him to manage his business from his smart phone, while sipping espresso at the local coffee shop. Following a long search, he found that nothing quite cut the mustard. So being an entrepreneur, he started Arthur Online to make not only his life easier, but also that of other property managers. Arthur Online is a cloud-based platform that enables property managers to respond instantly and solve problems fast from anywhere in the world, be it with tenants, contractors, property owners or letting agents. Since launching in 2015, it has helped thousands of property managers like Marc run their portfolios in the cheapest, most efficient way possible by using the full potential of new technology and cloud computing. Start your free trial today by going to www.arthuronline.co.uk
Arthur Online – the cloud-based property management platform – has launched new integrations with Rightmove and Zoopla making property managers’ lives even easier. You can now list your vacant properties for let directly via the Arthur Online platform. Millions of prospective tenants browsing Rightmove and Zoopla will be informed as soon as your property is available, making long void periods a thing of the past. Trouble remembering when to upload vacant properties to Rightmove or Zoopla? No problem, with its intuitive automated events feature, Arthur Online will do this for you as soon as a property is marked as “available for let”. Rightmove and Zoopla automatically pulls all the information needed for a listing directly from Arthur Online’s database including images, description, location, price, etc. meaning you only have to upload this information once. Once your new tenant has moved in they can use Arthur Online’s tenant app and web portal so that both you and your tenant can track payments, view the tenancy agreement, flag and track the progress of maintenance issues and schedule convenient times with contractors (who also have their own Arthur Online app!). Speaking of the latest integrations, Marc Trup, founder of Arthur Online says: “We’re delighted to offer our customers an even higher level of service by partnering with Rightmove and Zoopla. As a property manager myself, I fully appreciate how hard it can be to manage a property portfolio and how much time it takes up – which is why Arthur Online uses an open API so it can easily integrate with market leading websites like Zoopla and Rightmove. “The rental market is moving faster than ever, and time lost literally means money lost. With the integration of Rightmove and Zoopla, you can significantly reduce your void periods. Not only that, vital documents and information like rental agreements, tenancy inventories and images are just a click or swipe away, so you can react quickly to those unexpected changes” Arthur Online gives property managers unprecedented control of their portfolio, whether dealing with tenants, contractors, accountants or agents. Arthur Online is available as an app and desktop platform available from www.arthuronline.co.uk with a 30-day free trial. Integration with Rightmove and Zoopla can be added for an additional £5 per month to an existing Rightmove or Zoopla account.
Changes to stamp duty and a lettings fee ban protecting tenants means several new costs have now been placed on property managers by the government. This means that property managers are now looking for ways to reduce costs in other areas. One of the ways to do this is to reduce time (and therefore money) spent on admin. By introducing software designed specifically for the property sector (aka PropTech), businesses can streamline their management business, allowing them to scale more easily or simply reduce the cost of their current business. Property managers have to jump through hoops every day: this person must be sent that bit of information, otherwise a terrible thing will occur. Trying to keep track of it all can be a nightmare. However, thanks to developments in technology, there is now software out there to make life easier. Be that new payment systems such as GoCardless, e-signature platforms such as Signable or full management systems such as Arthur Online. At its heart, property management is a people business. Managers are tasked with keeping tenants, owners and contractors happy whilst trying not to tear their own hair out at the same time. One way that PropTech is making management easier is by bringing all these groups together. In the past, disparate communication between the different groups involved meant a manager would spend half their time on the phone, typing with one hand and writing an address with another and heaven forbid if they had to produce proof that someone received it. Thanks to technology, property managers can send emails with recorded delivery to ensure that they have proof someone received the information. Systems like this protect a property manager against potential problems in the future. Alternatively, managers can use CRM systems to email their contacts; this means that all their conversations are marked against the contact. By keeping records of interactions with someone against their contact card, management is made a lot easier. The best solutions bring all the different groups onto one platform, allowing them to communicate with only the people that they need to. This prevents different people using different platforms. One of the areas that property managers can spend a lot of time trying to deal with is financials. With the best will in the world, rents don’t get paid, payments get missed and it can cause managers a lot of problems. However, now there are a lot of different options for managers to make their life easier. New payment portals such as GoCardless and Stripe allow managers to have larger control over charging and recharging tenants when payments are missed. On top of this, managers are now using cloud accounting software like Xero and QuickBooks to follow live payments and reconcile charges to easily see the state of their portfolio. Finally, by linking management platforms together as well, automated communication can be had with tenants notifying them of outstanding charges. By creating this sort of ecosystem around the payment of monies, arrears can be reduced and management time can be saved, thus making the management of a property portfolio easier. Property management can involve a vast amount of paperwork. Previously, this meant having a room dedicated to filing cabinets. That was until software such as Dropbox and Google docs came to be. This solved part of the problem; everything moved online and that other room could be used for more exciting things! However, they were not specific to the property world and you still had to come up with a less than ideal way to easily share these documents with other people. Furthermore, what happens when a certificate needs to be renewed? Now, true document management systems for property people have been created. There are several different areas where these systems can be very helpful and streamline your business. The first is by constantly updating your documentation to ensure you have a legal contract, notice etc. The second is by reminding property managers when something needs to be done. As an expiry date approaches for a certificate, systems are able to automatically contact contractors or managers to inform them of the news. This prevents a manager’s business from falling behind in terms of compliance. The best PropTechs on the market are the ones that know what they are, Arthur Online is one of these. By knowing what they are, the software doesn’t try and shoehorn in functionality. Instead, in this wonderful world of cloud software, systems can integrate by using their APIs. This means the two systems have a conversation, pushing and pulling data to offer a user a complete solution. Marc Trup is the Founder and CEO of Arthur Marc fell into the property sector after selling his first business in 1998 to BUPA healthcare. Focusing on residential property, he built up a portfolio in and around the London area, starting off with a small block of flats. Over the following 15 years Marc grew his portfolio to manage over 85 properties. He wanted a system that allowed him to manage the portfolio from his iPhone, while drinking his espresso at the local coffee shop. Having searched online to find an app to help him do just that, he realised that it simply didn’t exist. So, he founded Arthur to make not only his life easier but that of other property managers. Arthur is a cloud-based platform that enables property managers to respond instantly and solve problems fast – be it with tenants, contractors, property owners or letting agents.
