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Basic concepts about real estate and flats for beginners

Estate agents usual fees
Lettings

Estate agents who handle lettings of commercial property normally charge between 7–10% of the first years rent as fees, this is in addition to taking the first month’s rent in its entirety. This will be the total fee. If, say, two agents are charging 10%, they split this between them. Estate agents selling commercial property (known as investment agents) typical charge 1% of the sale price.

The fees charged by residential Letting Agents are extremely variable, depending on whether the agent manages the property or simply arranges new tenants. Charges to prospective tenants can vary from zero to £300 in non-refundable fees usually described as “Application”, “Administration” or “Processing” fees (or all three). There are no guidelines for letting agents on charges except that they are forbidden by law to charge a fee for seeing a list of properties; otherwise, they are free to charge as they please.

The first month’s rent in advance plus a refundable bond (usually equal to a month’s rent) is also generally required. Most residential lettings in the UK are effected through a particular form of contract known as an “assured shorthold tenancy”. Assured Shorthold tenancies (generally referred to simply as “Shorthold”) give less statutory protection in terms of security of tenure than earlier, mostly obsolete, types of residential lettings. Shorthold Tenancy agreements are standard contracts generally available from legal stationers and the internet for around £1, the average lettings agent will charge £30 to provide such a contract.

Selling

Estate agents selling residential property generally charge between 1/2% to 4% of the sales price plus VAT, depending on the contractual arrangement and whether an individual firm has sole rights to the sale.


What is a estate agent?

Estate Agent is a European English term for a person or business that arranges the selling, renting or management of homes, land and other buildings, although an agent that specialises in renting is often called a Letting Agent. Estate agents are mainly engaged in the marketing of property available for sale and a Solicitor or Licensed Conveyancer is used to prepare the legal documents. In Scotland, however, many solicitors also act as estate agents, a practice that is rare in England and Wales.

It is customary in the United Kingdom and in Ireland to refer to real estate or real property simply as property.


Other kind of apartments

In some parts of the world, the word apartment refers to a new purpose-built self-contained residential unit in a building, whereas the word flat means a converted self-contained unit in an older building. An industrial, warehouse, or commercial space converted to an apartment or flat is commonly called a loft.

When part of a house is converted for the ostensible use of a landlord’s family member, the unit may be known as an in-law apartment or flat or granny flat, though these (sometimes illegally) created units are often occupied by ordinary renters rather than family members. In Canada these suites are commonly located in the basements of houses and are therefore normally called basement suites.

In Milwaukee vernacular architecture, a “Polish flat” is an existing small house or cottage that has been lifted up to accommodate the creation of a new basement floor housing a separate apartment, then set down again; thus becoming a modest two-story flat.

Flat and apartment characteristics
 
Laundry facilities may be found in a common area accessible to all the tenants in the building, or each apartment or flat may have its own facilities. Depending on when the building was built and the design of the building, utilities such as water, heating, and electricity may be common for all the flats in the building or separate for each apartment or flat and billed separately to each tenant (however, many areas in the US have ruled it illegal to split a water bill among all the tenants, especially if a pool is on the premises). Outlets for connection to telephones are typically included in flats. Telephone service is optional and is practically always billed separately from the rent payments. Cable television and similar amenities are extra also. Parking space(s), air conditioner, and extra storage space may or may not be included with an apartment. Rental leases often limit the maximum number of people who can reside in each apartment. On or around the ground floor of the apartment or flat building, a series of mailboxes are typically kept in a location accessible to the public and, thus, to the letter-carrier too. Every unit typically gets its own mailbox with individual keys to it. Some very large apartment or flat buildings with a full-time staff may take mail from the mailman and provide mail-sorting service. Near the mailboxes or some other location accessible by outsiders, there may be a buzzer (equivalent to a doorbell) for each individual unit. In smaller apartment or flat buildings such as two- or three-flats, or even four-flats, garbage is often disposed of in trash containers similar to those used at houses. In larger buildings, garbage is often collected in a common trash bin or dumpster. For cleanliness or minimizing noise, many lessors will place restrictions on tenants regarding keeping pets in an apartment.


Flat and apartment types

Flats can be classified into several types. One being a Studio, efficiency, bedsit, or bachelor style flats. These all tend to be the smallest flats with the cheapest rents in a given area. These kinds of apartment or flat usually consist mainly of a large room which is the living, dining, and bedroom combined. There are usually kitchen facilities as part of this central room, but the bathroom is its own smaller separate room. Moving up from the efficiencies are one-bedroom flats where one bedroom is a separate room from the rest of the apartment. Then there are two-bedroom, three-bedroom, etc. flats. Small flats often have only one entrance/exit. Large flats often have two entrances/exits, perhaps a door in the front and another in the back. Depending on the building design, the entrance/exit doors may be directly to the outside or to a common area inside, such as a hallway. Depending on location, flats may be available for rent furnished with furniture or unfurnished into which a tenant usually moves in with their own furniture. A garden apartment or flat has some characteristics of a townhouse: each apartment or flat has its own entrance, and apartments are not placed vertically over one another. However, a garden apartment or flat is usually only one story high and never more than two stories; they are often one-bedrooms and almost never more than two-bedrooms. Some garden apartment or flat buildings place a one-car garage under each apartment, with pedestrian entrances from a common courtyard open at one end. The grounds are more landscaped than for other modestly scaled flats. Alternately, “garden apartment” can refer to a unit built half below grade, putting its windows at garden level.


Flats and apartments

An apartment or flat is a self-contained housing unit that occupies only part of a building. Apartments or flats may be owned (by an owner-occupier) or rented (by tenants).

The term “apartment” is favored in North America, whereas the term “flat” is sometimes, but not exclusively used in the United Kingdom and most other English-speaking areas and Commonwealth nations.

Some apartment-dwellers own their flats, either as co-ops, in which the residents own shares of a corporation that owns the building or development; or in condominiums, whose residents own their flats and share ownership of the public spaces. Most apartments are in buildings designed for the purpose, but large older houses are sometimes divided into apartments. The word apartment or flat connotes a residential unit or section in a building. apartment or flat building owners, lessors, or managers often use the more general word units to refer to apartments. Units can be used to refer to rental business suites as well as residential flats. When there is no tenant occupying an apartment, the lessor is said to have a vacancy.

For apartment or flat lessors, each vacancy represents a loss of income from rent-paying tenants for the time the apartment or flat is vacant (i.e., unoccupied). Lessors’ objectives are often to minimize the vacancy rate for their units. The owner of the apartment or flat typically when transferring possession to the occupant(s) gives him/her the key to the apartment or flat entrance door(s) and any other keys needed to live there, such as a common key to the building or any other common areas, and an individual unit mailbox key. When the occupant(s) move out, these keys are typically returned to the owner.