Member Article

A festive chat with… Wayne Treveil, CEO of Tenants Plus

Having spent 13 years in letting and property management, Wayne Treveil launched Tenants Plus Ltd earlier this year. Tenants Plus increases efficiency and reduces costs for the agent and the tenant during the lettings process.

The Canterbury firm pre-references and credit checks tenants with available rental properties, reducing costs for all parties, protecting the tenant’s holding deposit and increasing agents’ productivity.

We spoke to Wayne Treveil as part of our ‘festive favourites’ series on Bdaily South East.

2015 – Looking back

What were the highlights for your business in 2015?

Tenants Plus is a new service that matches pre-referenced and credit checked tenants to properties available for let. We only launched to letting agents in September, predominately in London, and in that short space of time we have successfully hit our target of marketing over 2,500 properties to let with numbers growing daily.

The private rented sector is forever evolving whilst being incredibly fast paced, and it continues to embrace technological innovation that enhance the services provided by letting agents to their clients. Being able to offer a new concept in an illustrious industry has been a highlight in itself, but now our ability to present tenants who are actively looking to rent a property with an increasingly level of available stock is the focus.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently this year?

We haven’t been in operation for the whole of 2015, but since September everything has gone to plan and as we had projected. Having said that, we did want to launch the service early in the year, but experienced some unexpected delays with the build of our website, something that isn’t uncommon within any industry.

Our website had to be in perfect working order to enable members to use the service effectively so until everything was in place and user-friendly we couldn’t officially launch.

How has your industry changed in the last year?

We work in an industry that continuously changes and develops. New legislation is being introduced to the private rented market all the time with the most recent being the ‘Right to Rent’ scheme.

Although it doesn’t come into effect until 1st February 2016, an announcement was made by The Home Office in October that the scheme, compulsory checks on the immigration status of new tenants, was to be extended across the country.

Whilst I think it will have little impact on the sector, landlords and agents need to make sure it’s included as part of their comprehensive tenant reference check to ensure they’re being compliant. All our tenants will have undergone the complete pre-tenancy ‘Right to Rent’ checks prior to viewing properties with letting agents. This gives our registered agents and their landlord’s complete peace of mind that tenants are legally permitted to rent in the UK. This is just one small element of the regulation the industry faces and professionals need to keep up-to-date with all changes that happened last year and look out for what’s to come in 2016.

2016 – Moving forward

What are your key focuses for next year?

Considering how new we are to the industry our focus will be the publicity of Tenants Plus. We have an advertising budget set aside for 2016 and are planning an agenda in order to gain sufficient traction in London going forward. Once we have this established we can offer our service in other major cities around the UK.

What are you most looking forward to in 2016?

• Breaking our 10,000 and 25,000 targets of rental properties marketed by Tenants Plus.
• Expanding across the UK.
• Making the rental process efficient for more tenants and letting agents.

What do you expect will be your biggest challenge in the coming year?

It will be to change the mindsets of tenants. It’s expected for someone looking to rent a property to automatically go to a letting agent direct, but by registering with us they can save hundreds of pounds in the rental process through reduced referencing and credit check costs as well as no agent administration fees. This represents a significant saving to the tenant.

The softer stuff

If you could go back in time, which piece of advice would you give your younger self?

Find out what your passion is and work out a way to get paid to do it.

How will you be celebrating the festive period?

I will be working a lot over Christmas, but when I do have some down time I will be spending time with family and friends.

Take a look at previous ‘festive favourites’ across the South East and London:

Rahul Parekh, CEO and co-founder of EatFirst

Tracy Ewen, managing director at IGF Invoice Finance

Michael Page, joint managing director of Saracen Interiors

Martin Campbell, managing director of fintech startup Ormsby Street

Salman Iftekhar and Michael Gadsby, co-founders of Staffing Match

Graham Marley, chief executive of Let’s Do Business Group

Sarah Anglim, founder and managing director of Gatwick’s I Love Meet and Greet Parking

Kristian Poliszczuk, director of online job portal Workango

James Wyatt, partner of Surrey letting agency, Barton Wyatt

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .