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Getting workHow to get work from landlords and letting agents
One landlord can be worth twenty domestic customers. Here is how the work is really won, and why the best electrician rarely gets it.
James Dewane, electrician and founder of My Electricians ToolBox•Updated 22 August 2026•5 min readDomestic customers ring you once every five years. A landlord with nine properties rings you nine times a year, and a letting agent managing four hundred doors can keep two electricians busy on their own. Same trade, same van, completely different business.
The reason most electricians never get that work is not skill. It is that landlord and agent work is won in a way domestic work never is. Nobody searches, compares three quotes and picks the nice one. They use whoever is already on the list, and the list is short.
Understand what an agent is actually buying
A letting agent does not care that you are a good electrician. They assume that. What keeps them awake is a tenant with no hot water on a Friday, a landlord shouting about a bill, and a compliance folder with a missing certificate in it when the council asks.
So they are not buying electrical work. They are buying the end of a problem. The electrician who gets the call is the one who answers the phone, turns up when they said, and sends the certificate the same day without being chased three times.
The five things that get you on the list
| What they need | What it means for you |
|---|---|
| Answers the phone | Calls returned inside two hours, every time |
| Access handled | You ring the tenant and book it, not them |
| Certificate the same day | Report written and emailed before you go to bed |
| Prices they can predict | A fixed schedule of rates, agreed once, no haggling |
| Paperwork in order | Public liability, scheme card, and a clean invoice with the property address on it |
Read that list again. Only one line is about electrics. The other four are about being easy to deal with, and that is exactly why an average electrician who is organised beats a brilliant one who is chaotic.
How to approach them without being a nuisance
Do not email. Everybody emails and it goes in the same bin as the boiler company and the drone photographer. Walk in on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning, ask for the property manager by name, and keep it to two minutes.
Say who you are, that you cover their area, that you do EICRs, remedials and emergency call outs, and that you handle tenant access yourself. Leave one sheet of paper with your rates on it and your insurance details, and go. Then go back in three weeks. Not to sell, just to say hello and leave a second copy. Most electricians give up after the first visit, which is precisely why the third visit works.
Take a sample report with you. Print one real EICR with the address blanked out. Nothing else you can hand over makes the point as fast. They can see the detail, the layout and how readable it is, and they immediately picture their compliance folder full of them.
Give them a schedule of rates, not a discount
Every agent asks the same question, and it is always some version of what is your best price. The answer is not a number off. Discounting to win an agent teaches them that your price was soft in the first place, and you will never get it back.
What they actually want is certainty. So give them a schedule of rates: a written page that says what each job costs, what is included, and what your response time is. That is a package, and a package can be priced as one. If they commit to real volume you can build things into it that cost you little and are worth a lot to them, because you are booking work in batches instead of chasing it. Same day certificates. A named contact. First slot on a Monday. Priority on emergencies.
What you do not do is drop your minimum charge. It is the floor under every job you take, and it does not move because somebody is offering to send you more work. Neither does emergency cover, which is the one thing they struggle most to buy anywhere.
Before you write a schedule, know your floor. Run your own costs through the free minimum charge calculator so the page you hand over is built on your numbers rather than what you think an agent wants to hear.
Write into the schedule what happens if the volume never appears: the rates go back to standard. Say that politely at the start and it is never an argument later.
Get paid, or it is not work
The one real risk with agent work is payment. Thirty days becomes sixty, sixty becomes a phone call you keep putting off, and one bad agent can hurt more than a year of good ones helped.
Three rules keep you safe. Agree payment terms in writing before the first job, not after. Invoice the same day with the property address as the reference so it cannot get lost in their system. And the moment an invoice goes past terms, stop taking new instructions from that office until it clears. Say it warmly and stick to it. The good agents respect it because their decent contractors all do the same.
Two agents is a full diary
You do not need this to work at scale. Two decent letting agents and a handful of private landlords will fill a diary and take the panic out of January. Twenty minutes a week walking into offices for a month is usually enough to land the first one.
Then keep the flow going. Ask every landlord you already work for who manages their other properties, because most of them own more than one and almost none of them get asked. It is the easiest lead you will ever generate, and it is sitting in your invoice history right now.
If you also want the private customers to keep coming in alongside it, that is a different job, and showing up in local search is where it starts.
Common questions
How do I find letting agents in my area?
Search your town plus letting agents, then sort by the ones with the most properties listed. Walk in to the nearest ten. It takes a morning and it beats a hundred emails.
Should I discount for a letting agent?
No. Give them a written schedule of rates instead, priced as a package for committed volume, with things built in that cost you little and matter to them, such as same day certificates and a named contact. Your minimum charge and your emergency cover do not move.
What paperwork do agents ask for?
Public liability insurance, your scheme registration, and sometimes a health and safety policy. Have all three ready as PDFs so you can send them the same day they ask.
How do I stop agents paying late?
Agree terms in writing before the first job, invoice the same day with the property address as the reference, and pause new instructions the moment an invoice goes past terms.
Is landlord work worth it if I prefer domestic?
It is worth having some. Landlord work fills the quiet weeks and is bookable in advance, which makes the whole diary calmer even if domestic stays your main trade.
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