Managing admin tasks as a private landlord

Dear Barry

Dear Barry, I’m enjoying reading your property blog, having recently come across it. I’ve been going through your archive of blogs and noted the Rental Yield Calculator tool, which I thought was a useful resource. I’m a landlord with 2 rental properties and I manage everything myself currently. I’m wondering firstly if you know of somewhere I could download a template spreadsheet for keeping track of income/expenses on a rental property? Secondly, while I am happy to continue managing things myself month to month, I don’t currently have a lease in place with these tenants and I wondered if rental agencies offered services like this on a one-off / ad hoc basis? Kind Regards, Sam

Dear Sam,

Thanks for getting in touch and I’m really pleased you’re enjoying the blog and finding it useful. It’s written with working landlords such as you in mind, and it’s great to hear the articles are reaching their audience and offering practical help.

The Rental Yield Calculator has proven very popular with our readers, and we still get requests for the pdf download to this day.

One of my long-term landlords has kindly shared with me an Excel spreadsheet template he uses to track his rental property income and expenses, which I can forward on to you.

Or if you prefer to DIY a tailor-made solution, you can click here for Microsoft’s free course on getting started with using Excel. If you're already familiar with Excel but could use a handy cheat sheet for the formulas and short cuts - you can click here.

Spreadsheets are ideal for recording this type of information on your rentals, as you can set it up to automatically make calculations based on the figures you input. For example, you could format cells to change colour when rent is due or overdue to act as a visual cue to chase payments.

Regarding your query about one-off services - a good letting agency, in my experience, will provide a range of services to landlords rather than insisting on a one-size-fits all approach.

Some of our clients pay us to 100% manage every aspect of their rental property; some like to look after some aspects of their rentals and outsource the rest to us on an ongoing basis; and indeed some landlords commission us to provide certain services (such as drawing up a tenancy agreement or finding a tenant) on an 'as and when' basis.

An agency worth their salt should always be willing and able to offer you a quick chat and a drop of sage advice for nothing more than perhaps the price of a frothy coffee.

If anyone would like me to share a free copy of the spreadsheet template mentioned above, just drop me a line to info@thebelfastpropertyblog.com You can also send any landlord queries you may have to the same address - I look forward to hearing from you.