ARLA – the Association of Residential Letting Agents – is the best known of the agency bodies to landlords.
But only a handful have ever heard of SAFEagent – underlining the need for a publicity drive among consumers so that they are aware of the need to use an agent who ring-fences client money and who also has Client Money Protection insurance (CMP).
The Property Academy, a research and training organisation, conducted some large-scale independent research which asked if landlords were aware of their agent being a member of various professional bodies.
The most well known entity by far was ARLA, with 47% of landlords saying they were aware that their agent was a member.
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (13.5%), Property Ombudsman (12.6%) and National Approved Lettings Scheme (12.4%) were much less well known. This was despite the fact that the Property Ombudsman now has over 8,700 registered letting agents subscribed to its voluntary code.
Just under 4% of landlords were aware of their agent being a member of SAFEagent.
A worrying four in ten (38%) of the survey respondents did not know if their agent belonged to any of those mentioned, and therefore cannot have known if their agent has CMP.
CMP is an insurance that can only be obtained by letting agents who are members of ARLA, RICS, NALS or the Law Society. The SAFEagent scheme signposts members of the public to agents who are members of one of these bodies, and who has CMP.
The surveys also revealed that 17.5% of tenants do not know who holds their deposit, despite efforts within the industry to promote the importance of deposit protection.
There were over 5,500 responses in total, with the surveys circulated to landlords and tenants by letting agents throughout the country during April and May.
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