In this episode of The LandlordZONE, Group Lettings Director for Andrews Property Group and President of ARLA Propertymark, Angharad Trueman, joins Nigel Lewis and Eddie Hooker to share her inspiring journey in the world of property. Tune in to find out about Angharad’s work championing the representation of women in property, what it takes to succeed, and how she plans to attract younger people into the profession. From navigating the impact of the Renters’ Rights Bill to understanding shifting tenant demands, Angharad offers practical tips to help landlords and agents stay ahead.
Podcast script
Nigel: And welcome to The LandlordZONE, an amazing podcast where we interview some of the industry leading lights to get their views on the private rented sector and the many things which are happening in it. Do you not agree, Eddie?
Eddie: 100% and what a year to have these interviews
Nigel: I know, it's like we pick the quietest, least relevant year in the industry to do some interviews. It's extraordinary, really.
Eddie: Absolutely
Nigel: And I will be asking some questions. Eddie, who is the CEO of Total property will also be asking questions when and as he wishes at any point.
However, the person we are talking to today is Harry Truman. To use your informal name, I think that's correct. To use your very formal name is group lettings director at Andrew's property group. But also the current holder of the President of ARLA Propertymark Title. I said all of that without saying ummm, can I just point this out?!
Eddie: In short an amazingly powerful individual.
Nigel: Indeed, a leading light doesn't really cover it. So, we're going to hopefully have an interesting but informative chat with Harry.
Eddie: Welcome
Nigel: Thank you very much for coming up to Borehamwood and the home of Sky Television and Elstree's film studio, as well as ...
Eddie: Absolutely - Total Property, Hamilton Fraser, mydeposits, the lot. We're all here.
Nigel: Exactly. Yes, them as well them as well. I'll point out that they're nothing to do with Elstree.
Eddie: Not yet anyway
Nigel: Thank you. So, I'm going to go straight in with the first question. Why property?
Angharad: Well, like most people, I think in property I fell into a role in property. So I came back from travelling when I was 21 and I needed a job. I didn't want to be a waitress anymore and my friend got me a job in a tiny little serviced department and letting agent in Cardiff Bay. And I stuck around because I loved it. I found I was really good at it and managed to build a career out of it. It’s actually one of my big passions for this industry that one day, one day we will be able to see young people go home from school and tell their parents that they want to be a letting agent or an estate agent when they grow up. And I say that to people and they laugh at me because they're like, that'll never happen. It will. We are going to build career paths for people.
And we’re going to make sure that this is an industry that people want to be part of, that they don't just fall into it and stay because they realise how great it is.
Eddie: Focused on what about it? I mean, is it the property management side? Is it the maintenance side, is it the?
Nigel: Salary.
Eddie: Well, the salary? What did you really feel, is it going out and seeing them meeting the landlords and the tenants or …?
Angharad: Yeah, I think there's loads of different angles I love about being in lettings. I've only ever really been in lettings and most of my experience is in property management. So, I really like helping people. I like, you know, letting agents get this bad name, but actually we exist to help tenants to look after tenants on behalf of landlords. So I always really liked problem solving my way around issues. And building on those relationships - as a letting agent, you have great relationships with landlords, with your tenants, with your contractors and that's part of the the job that I really loved. So I've really built that relationship building side has been the core part of being a letting agent.
Eddie: Yeah. And where do you find people? Are the youngsters coming in? I mean, everyone's a youngster when they look at me! But the younger people, where are, where are they struggling? In terms of when they come into lettings, why aren't they staying longer? What is the core ability that you would be looking for? I've got my view, I’d been really interested in…
Angharad: I think lettings and property in general is a really high pressure industry. You are balancing the wants and needs of lots of different people and as a letting agent, you're in the middle. And you know your landlords think that you're trying to spend too much of their money. Your tenants think you're not dealing with things fast enough. So you're really in the middle. And it's also volume. You get a lot coming at you. So I think occasionally we see young people coming who don't have that resilience that they necessarily need. They haven't been able to build that up through, you know, time in the workplace and that's where we lose them. They're not. They're not. They're not coming in with the understanding that times are going to be tough, they're going to go through hard times. But what I tell my team is that every time you go through a difficult situation within property and you learn how to overcome it, you have that learning for the future. So when they come to me and they say, Harry, how do we deal with this? The only reason I know how to deal with it all is because I've done it.
So they need to look at it as positive, like, oh, this is how you sort that out. I'll remember this next time, but unfortunately, young people don't seem to have that view. They just see it as stressful and they could get paid a similar amount for working in a shop and then we lose them from the industry.
Eddie: I know where I’d rather be. Definitely a letting agency. But communication is quite key and I think a challenge I see for landlords and agents to be fair and I deal with a lot of both - landlords want communication, letting agents want to give the communication but don't necessarily know how. And with regulations changing. Especially this year of all years, communication is absolutely key and I think I don't know if it's general. I think the younger people tend to try and hide behind e-mail a bit more. I want a phone call. I'm a bit. I'm an old school. I want someone to say I've got a problem with your tenant. I'm sorting it or at the end of the tenancy I've had a chat with the tenant and they want to stay on, or actually they want to go, so we need to jump on this. Now, that’s where I think we need a bit more effort in the industry.
Angharad: Definitely. You're 100% right. There's two things that I tell my teams all the time it is. Call them and then follow up with an e-mail.
Eddie: Absolutely
Angharad: Number one and the other thing is you can never over communicate and I think as an industry we are very guilty of in the background doing all the work, getting things done, but then not telling our customers about it. So they're sitting at home thinking nothing's happening. We need to be over communicating even if you don't have an update, let them know you don’t have an update.
Eddie: Yeah. So we run Property Redress, as you know here, and we're dealing with complaints and they are service level complaints. So we don't get involved necessarily in who's right, who's wrong, and whether the fees are worth it or whatever it happens to be. But it generally is about service, and I would say 60 to 70% of awards made against letting agents are purely because of a lack of communication. Or can I say evidence of a lack of communication because it's all about who said what, where and when. It's generally one person on the phone, against another person on the phone.
And I think if there's one thing Propertymark and all of the other great organisations can drill in is in this day and age, if you don't tell the landlord what's going on or you don't communicate, chances are you're going to get a complaint against you because no one wants to pay fees, do they? So, and there's always the way. I don't know whether you agree with that, Harry.
Angharad: Yeah, I totally agree. I think communication is key in our relationship with landlords and tenants. And you made an interesting point there about making a note. I say to my team as well, if you didn't write it down, it didn't happen. All the time, so it doesn't matter that you think you said that. Write it down on CRM and then we can use that as evidence then to back up.
Eddie: We had a director here once and he said that all the time and we all hated him and we all got wound up. How right that man was.
Nigel: Turns out he was. It was good advice.
Nigel: Talking of Propertymark, so I'm told that being president of one of the two arms of it is basically akin to having another job. Are you doing your current job at all?
Angharad: I am managing to keep all the plates spinning. One of my exec directors actually said to me last week that he is in awe of how much I've managed to, you know, not drop any balls while I go along spinning them all. Yeah. So lots of travelling, lots of events. So between September and the end of November last year, I did 19 events, I think over 14 weeks or something so.
Eddie: Why did you want to do? I mean, I know you're young, but why did you want to take that on now, at probably the height of your career if you look at what we're doing?
Angharad: Yeah, I think it's an interesting question, isn't it? I think it's for me. I really want to impact positive change in our industry and I want to show that you can be a mother and have a career and that you can do things that challenge you that you were inspired to be. And I think for me, I wanted, I wanted to be living proof that it can be done that you can do all of these things. You can keep them all going and actually the age demographic of presidents is coming down. We had David Votter a couple years ago. He was the youngest. Then we have me. I'm the youngest. And then next is Megan and she's the youngest . So the age…
Eddie: How'd you juggle everything you know, your your main job, your family life, your kids, how do you?
Angharad: It takes a lot of organisation.
Eddie: I mean write lots of notes on the fridge, presumably, I'm not here, I am.
Angharad: Yeah, I'm a slave to my outlook diary. I don't know what I’d do without it. I time box a lot of things, so I will put things into the diary to do at certain times. I have a very supportive husband who does the majority of the childcare to allow me to be out on the road all the time, so a lot of different things and I know not all women will have access to those things, but I've been very lucky to have a supportive husband, to have a supportive employer. You know, they've obviously had to be supportive of the fact that I'm out on the road two days a week at the moment. But they can see the benefits for the business and you know for my career as well.
Eddie: And what do you want your legacy to be? Is it a year if I remember rightly?
Nigel: A legacy sounds like retirement!
Eddie: When you step down to that well-earned holiday, to the Caribbean to relax for three months, just letting your employer know you won't be here for three months. What do you want to be remembered for?
Angharad: So my talk, what I speak on every conference is about as I've already mentioned, getting younger people into this industry and how some of the ideas that I have, how we can go about this. So I speak to 150 different agents a week about this topic and I hope that some of those agents will take away some of those ideas and implement them into our own business. Nobody's coming to save us with this. We have to, as an industry, adapt what we're doing to appeal to a younger generation. So if they can just do a couple of the things that I've suggested, for instance, we don't have career paths in agency, you know you join. You go in to the police, you go in to the NHS, you go in to the army. You know what your career path is going to look like from the start. You're going to do this, you're going to get there …
Young people don't understand or create paths like an estate agency or lettings, because nobody talks about it. We just assume that they know that they're going to get to senior negotiator and then assistant manager and then manager. So we need to be communicating this to encourage younger people to go. That looks like a career I can do. I'm going to apply to be a letting agent.
Eddie: But does not regulation form part of that because I know in a regulated business that I run on the insurance side, we have to have career paths because of responsibilities to the regulator, so they want trained people only certain people can do that oversight and then blah, blah blah blah blah. Does that not call for to change lettings and estates into a more structure. There needs to be some framework that is forcing employers to introduce them.
Nigel: Oh, is there a framework around the training of estate agents? Has that been put together?
Eddie: I don’t think there is…
Angharad: Well there was …
Nigel: Oh, I know. I'm taking mickey out of ROPA!
Angharad: So unfortunately, we were all for ROPA and you know, we really backed the findings that came forward with them.
Nigel: Eddie’s right, there isn’t one.
Angharad: There's nothing and there's nothing in the renters rights that they're totally that they're talking about regulating landlords more. But actually there's no further regulation for agents, which is really disappointing to see.
Eddie: I thought that was back on the on the agenda.
Nigel: Well, Pennycook, current housing minister, has made sounds about it before the election and just after the election. But it's gone very quiet. And then hasn’t spoken.
Angharad: Renters’ rights would be the perfect time to bring it.
Nigel: Wouldn't you think? Yeah, just slip it into the.
Eddie: Whole podcast on that.
Harry, you work for a very large letting agency. There's a lot of noise in the market about landlords exiting the market now I have a slightly different opinion that I think yes, there is a little bit of exit, but I do think the demograph of landlords of older, where they can get a good return now in stocks and gilts and the interest rates are at that level.
And I do think the section 24 tax issue has not helped, but mainly because I think they're coming to their late 50s, early 60s, late 60s and thinking well, actually time to offload. What is your opinion? Are landlords running for the exit?
Angharad: I don't think they're running for the exit in mass numbers. I think that it's a bit of a misconception by the press.
Nigel: It’s a polite way of saying it’s not true
Angharad: But I do think you're correct. I do think there is a change in landlord behaviour and I think if you were a landlord who bought in the early 90s early 2000s, you might have bought one or two as a bit of a hobby because your friends were buying. I think it's those landlords who are getting out because it's no longer profitable to have that one or two property. And you're getting to a point in your life where you want to release that capital and enjoy it. So it's really interesting. I look at the different branches that I've got. And I've got some branches that are in really rural farming towns, and it's those landlords that are the ones that we're seeing are selling, are leaving because they are, they're probably farmers or, you know, that kind of thing. Whereas if you look at cities, that's where you see more proper investors coming in their setup, the limited companies. Those are growing and they're still buying and you know, I'm a young landlord. I'm still buying. That is my retirement plan for the next 30 years. And there are more people like me who are doing that, who are joining, you know, my friends so. I think we're definitely seeing a change in behaviour, we're seeing a change in landlord age demographic - landlords are leaving because they want to enjoy their assets. But there are younger landlords joining.
Nigel: Do you find that the younger landlord or landlords are better informed because they're not accidental, I suppose.
Angharad: Yes, yeah, yeah. And they're consuming their information in different ways, so. You know, you see them, they are. They're coming to us and saying I've researched this. And, you know, I've watched this video on this …
Nigel: TikTok landlords
Angharad: And and actually it's quite interesting 'cause you can have a much better dialogue with these landlords. You know, I had a really good conversation in a branch a couple of months ago with a landlord about a Pat test. Because he was, he was saying. Well, tell me where the legislation says that I have to have a Pat test. And I said, oh, well, it's a bit different to EICR legislation. It's you're obligated to ensure the safety of the property and to ensure the safety of property you get a Pat test for the appliances.
And he was he was sort of sparring back with me and saying, where does it say it? So they are better informed. But that's a good thing. That's a good thing for tenants because it means that they're better looked after. They have better quality rental properties and they're safer in their properties.
Eddie: I mean I do. I do agree with that. I think the young, the younger generation now they are more. It's not all about the money, I mean, I know for the longer term they probably look at it, but they are more socially aware. And property conditions are more important to them and all of the frills and the bells and whistles that they enjoy when they're at home, when they're living with mum and dad, they want to introduce to that property so faster broadband, you know, ring technology for security and that sort of thing. And they want, you know, they're buying properties where there's gyms nearby because that makes them more desirable, and I think they get that because they're looking at would I want to live there. And I think that is very true of the younger.
Angharad: Well, millennials are more socially conscious. You know, we are socially conscious consumers as and we see this in a rise of different products and businesses that have that have prospered over the last few years. So it's only it's only natural that it would also consider that with their rental properties as well.
Nigel: I mean you could, you could do a whole podcast, which I might suggest, on why are people landlords? And it's because I assume it's historically changed.
Eddie: One of the biggest regrets I've got, actually, and then we'll finish off there. But is that when they introduced tendency deposit legislation and we won a scheme, there was such an opportunity for the Government to allow us to ask a few more questions. So like what is the date of birth? And we could have then given the market a lot more information about the demography of the landlords. As we've been, you know, we've been going 15 years now, tenancy deposit protection almost 20 years actually. So you think about the amount of data. But we weren't allowed to ask the right questions, and now they're coming back to us saying, well, could you find out a little bit? Well, you started asking that that question, but yeah.
Nigel: We know there are at least 20.
Eddie: But yeah, I'd love to know. You know, have we got any anecdotal evidence that the age group is changing over a period of time?
Angharad: It would be really interesting to know that wouldn’t it
Nigel: So given that a lot of people in the industry who do want to move up through it and have ambition, and at least half of which are women. Do you feel the weight of responsibility on your shoulders to be a flag waver for more representation of women in the industry? Is that how is that how you feel or do you not feel that?
Angharad: It's not a weight on my shoulders, but I think that as a woman who has progressed in her career in property and holds a senior level, that it is my obligation to talk about that and to talk about how I got there and how I manage it, how I juggle it because I'm living proof that it can be done.
I think the workforce is split. I think I've got stat here. It's 49% of over 16 year olds in employment in the UK are female, so it pretty evenly matched. And then that stat gets smaller and smaller and smaller as we go up and of the Footsie 100 CEOs in the UK, only 10, are women, so 10%. Same for agency. We have a very small amount of women in senior roles within agency and as a woman in the senior role, I think it's my duty to talk about it and to try and help more women see that it is possible. I also have my women in property speakers list, which I created.
Nigel: You do, which by the time this is broadcast will be public
Angharad: It will be public. Yeah. So I created it last year basically just off the back of the frustration that we see lots of broadcasts such as this happen and industry events and we often see an all male line up on the panel or we see male guests always on podcasts, and when me and my colleagues and friends have challenged some of these organisers their response often is we didn't know who to ask, which frustrates me because there are many, many women around you see that are expert in their fields. So I created a list last year. It was 80 different women based on a nomination process on a LinkedIn post. And it was really well received and actually we saw a lot of people using it. Stephen Brown, for instance, went through it and used it. And so I've recreated the list again for 2025 and it is, it is nearly ready to be published. So I hope that people use it.
Eddie:I mean, I think that this is a really important topic. In not just your industry. If you take my or we in the same industry? But if you take the insurance industry I was very pleasantly surprised when I got into lettings years ago in all the schemes that we run of how many women were progressing up the seniority level, whereas in insurance it is very male dominated, very white middle class I wouldn't even say young men, actually, increasingly older men sitting in their big chairs and I thought that lettings actually was a little bit more progressive because a lot of the people we talked to a lot of the agents, large agencies that we deal with are ladies and the problem what I've noticed, sometimes women are portrayed in business and they put in front, you know, this power hungry, you know, lady.
That you know, with big wide shoulder pads, you know, like the old 80s style. And I still think the insurance world is doing a little bit of that. But I think the lettings agency market from what I'm seeing there are more and more women that are doing what you've been able to do. And are demanding more seniority in business.
Nigel: And actually I think it works as well.
Angharad: A lot of landlords are women. That's right, I think. I think you're right that women previously in senior roles may have felt the need to sort of dial up their male, you know, and be over the top with what they would deem male characteristics. And I think that part of my, I guess duty is to show that you don't have to manage like that. So I'm very much I'm a collaborative leader. I like to listen to employees, I like to lead with empathy, and that's my strength. So when I sit in a in a room full of people who are predominantly male, and I can say that this is my strength, this is how I lead. That differentiates me, and I think women shouldn't be. They should be proud to lead like that. It shouldn't be. They shouldn't feel like they have to be more male, so hopefully we're seeing more of that.
Nigel: Talking of agents, we have some research from Total Property which shows several things, but one of which was that 3/4 of agents are clearly.worried that the regulations about to hit them are going to be a challenge rather than a help, I think it'd be fair to say are they right to assume that or is this all about hot air and people frightening everyone into the into their graves about the Renters’ Rights Bill and soon to be Act. What's your feeling on that?
Angharad: I think the Bill, soon to be Act, as it stands, it does present some challenges, but I think that every challenge such as this brings opportunities as well, and I think it's really important that agents are getting ahead of the legislation now and trying to understand where those opportunities are. So for instance, if a landlord in the future is going to have to wait minimum 12 months to get possession on an arrears case because at the moment it's already four to six months, it's going to get even longer then something like an RRP policy is going to be essential for that landlord. I'm a landlord, I have an RRP policy. I'm not bothered about Renters’ Rights because I know that even if my tenant falls into arrears, I'll get paid. I'll get help with the eviction. You know that. And I think that's one of the opportunities. Is that up selling things like that to landlords, it will be essential. So there's various opportunities. I think letting agents have a right to be concerned.
Because there are various elements at the moment of the legislation that are particularly worrying, the inability to take more than a month's rent upfront will really restrict some of those more vulnerable tenants in how we're gonna house those. Because if they can't get access to a guarantor and they can't pass their referencing, then how are we going to get them in?
Eddie: Overseas tenants as well, yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Angharad: Yeah, you've got three categories. So you've got your overseas tenants. You've got your students and you've got your tenants who have bad credit.
Nigel:Yeah, yeah or no history.
Angharad:Or no history. Yeah. So those are some of our most vulnerable tenants. We are going to have real issues with getting those in. So there are definitely concerns with the legislation, but then there are also opportunities. You know there's the landlord register that they're creating. Could this be an opportunity for agents to help their landlords with going on to the register getting compliant on there? You could charge for that so there’s various opportunities to look at and my advice to agents is to get ahead of it. Now is to start planning now is to start looking at your budgets for 2025. Understanding what you're going to lose. So we're going to lose money from renewal fees, for instance, understanding exactly how much you're going to lose and then working out where you're going to get that from and what other things you can do to make that backup,
Eddie: So focus on that a little. I mean obviously if you're running a fully managed book of business then obviously there isn't a renewal stage because it's new, it's rolling each month is how the management charge and the let only I agree, where may be an issue at the end of the tenancy. Certainly if it gets renewed. So are you seeing more, more letting agents or is Propertymark pushing the whole idea of getting landlords on to a fully managed service which will protect a large percentage of the income?
Angharad: Yeah, I think. I'm not speaking for Propertymark here, but from myself as a letting agent. We're very much talking to our landlords about the benefits and the necessity to be managed by a competent, qualified agent, because if you think it's difficult now to manage your properties, it is going to get worse and I always use the example that if anyone knows the legislation and how to manage a rental property it is me. I am managed by an agent for my property because I just don't want that liability if anything goes wrong. I've got somebody to point the finger at. I don't want to have to sit there remembering when the gas safety is due. So I think that if you're a landlord and you are managed by a great agent and you have an RRP policy, the Renters’ Rights Bill is not going to be a concern to you. You're going to be covered and that's the message to agents at the moment.
Eddie: I think terms and conditions need to be looked at by agents as well because there's a lot of archaic terms and conditions, and I think I think the biggest frightening thing for agents and landlords. But let's focus on agents in a minute, is they don't know the full detail and the Government because it, you know, this has been rumbling on what for three to four years and it's been…
Nigel: March is going to be busy.
Eddie: Absolutely and I think agents are just holding back a bit because they don't know, you know, are they going to? If we take Section 21, they're all saying it's going to happen immediately. So what happens? Does everyone have to reissue their tenancy agreement or from what I've heard rumblings, it'll just be certain clauses will be outlawed.
So does that mean that you don't have to suddenly get 508 tenancy agreements and redo them? And you haven't got the staff because someone's going on holiday over Easter. I think that's where I think the Government should be held a little bit more account is it's happening so get on with it. But can you let us know if there's going to be an implementation period or if there's going to be a phased approach to some of this?
Angharad: We need clear guidance on it. So if you take the Tenant Fees Act, which was the last major piece of legislation change that we had. I think that was enacted in the February and then it didn't come into play until the May or the June of that year. So we had a bit, and that was only for new tenancies and then we had a year.
Eddie: That's correct, they did it with deposit protection as well, is there? Yeah, we had a year until it for continuing tenancy, so the letting agents across the country, we need some sort of guidance on what that implementation is going to look like.
Nigel: Because it would be fair for agents to say to the government, you know it is a bit tiresome because you keep saying these things are going to happen so we had regulation for property agents, we had the original Renters (Reform) Bill and we've had several other examples of this and they get almost to the point of becoming law and then either governments change or whatever. If I was an agent I'd be annoyed.
Eddie: Absolutely, and take it one step further. Take pets for example, so at the moment charging a tenant for anything to do with the start of a tenancy is currently banned. But in the renters rights, it's saying you can charge for an insurance policy back to the tenants. So are they going to amend the Tenants Fee Act?
Angharad: Well, that's what they're saying. And what's the detail on that? And that's what we're missing at the moment. You're right.
Eddie: And I do think that's a problem, let alone the court problem. But I do think from the letting agents and I think that sentiment, I think that it was something like 40% no three quarters of agents have said that they are concerned about the impact. Well, that's a large number. And I think someone needs to be listening and.at least saying look, this is going to happen and it's 99% where it is, but anyway that's just a few.
Angharad: I mean, we're spending a lot of time trying to tell government this. Unfortunately, they are listening to other groups and they're not interested in particularly the landlord or the letting agent view.
Nigel: On that note we shall say thank you very much for coming in.
Eddie: We could have been here …
Nigel: We could do another hour, I think …
Angharad: We're just getting started, aren't we?
Nigel: I said because people watching, but we thank you very much for tuning in and listening and watching this. Thank you very much indeed. Again, thank you very much to Harry Truman for coming in. And also we have one last question for you. We have last question for you which is before we leave.
Eddie: Oh, forgot the killer.
Nigel: What would be the one thing you would change in your sector in the letting sector if you had a magic wand?
Angharad: So it actually relates to what I've just said. If I could change one thing, it would be that the Government would listen to agent and landlord groups just as much as they listen to tenant groups, because then we would get a balanced view. We would get legislation that would support both sides. And would not ultimately end up being detrimental to tenants in the long run.
Nigel: So I think what you're saying is write to your local MP!
Angharad: And Lords
Nigel: Yeah, it is in the Lords.
Angharad: There is a Propertymark toolkit, it’s very easy to use.
Nigel: What we love about the Parliament is that the final act before legislation gets Royal assent is called Ping pong. Isn't that great?
Eddie: Is that when it goes back between the Lords and the Commons
Nigel: Yeah, it goes ping pong, ping pong pong. Then good. Anyway, before ping pong. Yes. Goodbye.
Angharad: Thanks
