There’s a variety of reasons why people choose to sell. It could be to focus on other business interests, change your career entirely or to enable relocation, free up time to spend with loved ones or retirement. You might find it’s simply to banish the stress of increased running costs and the pressure of increased legislation. Whenever you decide it’s the right time to exit, and we’re here to chat about how we can make the transition as straightforward as possible.

Once you’ve decided it’s time to sell, the next step is thinking how to find the right buyer. You can approach other agents directly, or if you’re looking for support throughout selling your business, a broker could help.

Respected brokers The Haversley Group and Adam J Walker often match us to sellers on their books. They’ll offer you extra support throughout the process, which is reassuring to have if it’s your first time selling a business, and they’ll typically charge 2% of your overall sale fee for the service.

If you’re going direct, make sure your buyer has the means to back up their offer and experience of handling portfolio takeovers sensitively. We often find we’re the right match for those looking to sell to a big company with a small company feel.

Buyers are looking for confidence in future cash flow when they’re purchasing a business, influencing the figure they will be willing to pay. They’ll be analysing your recurring revenue, the type of stock on your books and the quality of landlords you work with amongst other factors. Our complex calculator uses your data to determine how desirable your lettings portfolio is for us which formulates what we’d be willing to pay. 

If, for example, you mainly managed HMOs and only had a few key landlords, this wouldn’t be desirable for us so the multiplier used wouldn’t generate you a particularly attractive offer. It’s likely in this scenario, we wouldn’t make you an offer at all, as we wouldn’t be a good fit and you’d get a better offer elsewhere. We’re not here to rip anyone off, we want to pay a fair price for lettings portfolios that work with our existing business model.

Be aware of agents giving you ‘too good to be true’ offers with inflated clawbacks on lost business post-transfer. If they don’t look after your customers, you could find you end up a lot worse off in the long run. A lot of people talk a good game, so be sure to thoroughly investigate anyone who makes you an offer.

Work on removing yourself from the picture 

You need to prove your business can run without you to be appealing to a buyer. If you can’t do this, it’s not the end of the world, but you have to accept a business isn’t worth as much to a buyer if it’s heavily reliant on you. Buying a lettings portfolio is a strange one because you’re essentially buying relationships. If your customers have loyalty to you as a business owner rather than valuing the service that’s provided to them, then it’s less likely they’ll stay with whoever purchases the business from you which means your business is less valuable. One crucial thing buyers look for is confidence in future cash flow and this has a huge influence on the figure the acquirer is willing to pay. To increase that confidence, you have to decrease the risk of the cash flow disappearing if you were to step out of the picture.

Prepare your figures 

There’s a certain level of information you need to be prepared to disclose so a buyer can be clear on what they’re buying and offer you a fair price. When we’re contacted by letting agents who are looking to sell, one of the first things we ask them to complete after our initial informal chat is our seller’s fact find.  This fact find contains crucial information for us to evaluate if the deal is for us and what we’d be prepared to offer - we’re happy to share this with you if you’d like to start gathering info together for when the time comes.

Declutter your business 

With any established business, it’s likely there’s a fair amount of ‘tidying up’ that’s required to get prepared for a buyer to take over. There’s a lot that goes into transferring a business over, but organising elements like this ahead of time will help you to focus on the sale and not get bogged down with admin tasks like this that can be carried out well in advance:

1. Refine your CRM
   Make sure your data is as accurate and decluttered as possible. The data you hold on your landlords, tenants and properties should all be accurate and any old irrelevant information removed. 
   

2. Sort your keys
   Check to make sure all the keys you hold are all tagged up and labelled correctly and that you know how many sets you hold for what properties. Are some of your keys out with contractors? Make a log. Do you hold keys that you know no longer work? Get rid. 

3. Collate all passwords / login details - If you’re going to be passing over any assets like social media pages or software subscriptions then make sure you have a clear list of what you’ll be handing over with all the relevant login details checked and detailed. 

Only you can make the call as to whether or not your customers are going to the right place. Consider if you’d let the agent you’re selling to manage your own properties. Lettings is often a very personal game and it’s important to make sure your clients (who often become more like friends over the years) are looked after. Rest assured that we’re well prepared with a plan of action cultivated from our previous experiences that make it as straightforward as possible for everyone involved. Our standards and commitment to customer care will always remain high.