We moved into a rented apartment in the North West about 6 years ago. It was a fancy 2 bed flat, in a very lovely area in Cheshire, and I loved it. It felt like our first real home. We lived there for 3 years, and I enjoyed the best part of our time there. During our time at the flat, We realised the rent we were paying was a lot higher than other flats in the area, but I didn’t want to move. I hate moving, the amount of time and stress it takes to move houses puts me off, I rather pay a high rent, than move, which was what we did for 3 years, until we bought our own place.

I have rented quite a few properties in my life, and in the North West, that I feel I am in the position to dish out some advice to anyone thinking of renting a place. However If I was asked to dish out just 1 advice, it would be;

Go Through a Lettings Agency

I have nothing against private landlords. I am sure there would be some few good ones around, but majority of them have the tendency to behave out-of-order, and that is where the Letting Agencies come in to make sure everything is in order. I have rented apartments through private landlords and through Lettings Agencies, and the level of service I got from renting from a Letting Agency was over and beyond what I expected. Even after the contracts have been signed, and the move has taken place, some of these Letting Agents still manage the apartment, which usually makes the tenancy run smoothly. For my North West tenancy, the Letting Agency handled every repair and breakdown enquiry, and usually had most issues sorted on the same day, which was fab.

However once the landlord decided to start managing the property herself, everything went downhill. She never picked up her phone, never returned calls until she was chased multiple times, repairs and breakdown enquiries were ignored, it became a joke really. It became so annoying that we couldn’t wait to move out of the over priced flat, and move out we did.

I could be here all day moaning about my days of being a tenant of  private landlord, but I won’t want to bore you with the details. You can get more rental information off  Homelet’s soon to be launched eBook, titled – “Landlords Advice with Regional Relevance”, which I am part of, so keep an eye out for that. I should be tweeting about the eBook as soon as it is released, so look out for my tweets.

Do you have any tenancy advice or horror story to share?

*This is a collaborative post.