Guides
How much does a letting agent cost for overseas landlords?
Traditional full management typically costs 12–18% of your rent plus VAT, and setup, renewal and inventory charges are often billed on top. Flat-fee platforms charge a fixed monthly amount instead: Cheerfulrent is £40/month (Standard) or £99/month (Overseas Landlord) with no commission. On a typical London rent, the difference works out to thousands of pounds a year.
Written by the Cheerfulrent team · Reviewed by Gregory Smith, founder · Updated
What does "full management" usually include and cost?
Full management (the tier most overseas landlords need) typically costs 12–18% of the monthly rent plus VAT, deducted before the rent reaches you.
High-street agents usually sell three tiers. Tenant-find only: the agent markets the property, runs viewings and referencing, and hands you the keys back once the tenancy is signed. Everything after move-in is yours. Rent collection: tenant-find plus collecting the rent each month and chasing it when it's late, but repairs and compliance stay with you. Full management: the agent also handles maintenance requests, arranges contractors, tracks safety certificate renewals and deals with the tenant day to day.
Each tier costs more than the last, and full management is where the 12–18% plus VAT range sits. Because you're abroad and can't open the door to a plumber yourself, tenant-find only is rarely realistic, which is why overseas landlords tend to end up on the most expensive tier. Our guide to renting out a UK property from abroad covers what actually has to be handled on the ground.
Note the plus VAT: agent fees to landlords attract VAT at 20%, so a "15%" headline rate is really 18% of your rent once VAT is added. Quotes don't always make that obvious.
What extras do letting agents commonly charge?
Beyond the monthly percentage, agents commonly charge separately for tenancy setup, renewals, inventories and check-outs, so the headline rate understates the true annual cost.
Charges commonly billed on top of the management percentage include:
- Setup or tenancy fees: drawing up the agreement, referencing, deposit registration at the start of each tenancy.
- Renewal fees: charged again each time the same tenant signs on for another term.
- Inventory and check-in reports: the condition record at move-in.
- Check-out fees: the inspection and report when the tenant leaves.
- Contractor mark-ups: some agents add a percentage to repair invoices they arrange.
Amounts vary widely between agents, so always ask for the full tariff in writing before signing terms. One important piece of context: the Tenant Fees Act 2019 banned agents from charging most of these fees to tenants in England, which pushed more of the cost recovery onto landlords. The fees you're quoted are the ones the law still allows, and they land on you.
What does Cheerfulrent cost?
A flat fee with no commission: £40/month on Standard, £99/month on the Overseas Landlord plan: the same amount whether your rent is £900 or £2,900.
Standard (£40/month) covers flat-fee lettings management: tenant screening, tenancy contracts, rent collection and maintenance coordination for a tenancy that already has a tenant (we do not find tenants). Overseas Landlord (£99/month) adds everything distance makes hard: Non-Resident Landlord (NRL) scheme handling, foreign-tax-ready quarterly statements, native-language support and priority repairs. Neither plan takes a percentage of your rent. See who we are for the company facts.
There is no card and no fee until your first rent is collected. From then, the fee is simply deducted from collected rent before payout, so there's no separate bill to remember from abroad. How the money moves is covered in our guide to rent collection from abroad.
What does the difference look like on a real rent?
On a £1,800/month rent, full management at 15% plus VAT costs £3,888 a year; Cheerfulrent's Overseas Landlord plan costs £1,188, a difference of £2,700 every year.
Take a property letting at £1,800/month (£21,600 of rent a year). Here's the annual management cost at the common percentage rates (all shown with VAT at 20% included) against Cheerfulrent's flat fees:
| Option | Fee basis | Cost per year |
|---|---|---|
| Traditional agent (lower end) | 12% + VAT | £3,110.40 |
| Traditional agent (mid-range) | 15% + VAT | £3,888 |
| Traditional agent (upper end) | 18% + VAT | £4,665.60 |
| Cheerfulrent Overseas Landlord | £99/month flat | £1,188 |
| Cheerfulrent Standard | £40/month flat | £480 |
The mid-range agent costs £2,700 a year more than the Overseas Landlord plan on this rent, before any setup, renewal or inventory extras. And because the agent's fee is a percentage, every rent increase raises their fee too; a flat fee stays flat. For the full feature-by-feature comparison, not just price, see Cheerfulrent vs traditional letting agents.
Why do overseas landlords pay more attention to fees?
Because percentage fees scale with rent, and because from abroad you can't easily walk down the high street to compare quotes, so overseas landlords often stay on expensive terms for years.
A percentage fee punishes exactly the properties overseas landlords tend to own: well-located, higher-rent homes kept as a base or an investment. The agent's work doesn't double when the rent doubles, but their fee does. On top of that, the practical friction of switching (finding a new local agent, comparing tariffs, handing over keys and files) is much higher from another country, so the default is inertia.
The useful discipline is simple: once a year, multiply your monthly rent by your management percentage, add 20% VAT, add last year's extras, and compare the total against a flat-fee alternative. If the gap is four figures, that's your answer. What to check before switching (compliance records, deposit registration, key handover) is in our overseas landlord guide.
One flat fee. No commission. No fee until your first rent is collected.
Cheerfulrent manages your UK property for £40/month (Standard) or £99/month (Overseas Landlord): screening, contracts, rent collection and repairs included, with no percentage taken from your rent. Try it free for 30 days, no card needed; after that the fee comes out of collected rent automatically.
Start free: no fee until your first rent is collected