Let only or fully managed? Neither of them moves the liability

Fully managed buys you the work. Let only buys you the tenant. Neither buys you the liability: in England the statutory duties of letting a property attach to the landlord, and a contract about who does the work does not change who the law treats as the landlord. So the question that actually matters is not which service level to pay for. It is what system you have for the duties that stay with you either way.

On that test, let only is the option most likely to catch a landlord out — because it is sold as the cheaper one, and its cheapness consists entirely of handing you the expensive half.

What each one is actually buying

Fully managed, at around 10% of the rent, is broadly: marketing and viewings, referencing, the paperwork at the start, rent collection and statements, repairs coordination, inspections, and being the person the tenant rings. Let only, usually a one-off fee, is the first three and then a handover.

It is worth saying plainly which parts of that are genuinely hard to replace, because a post that pretends otherwise is not much use to you. Standing in a property at six on a Tuesday to show four people round is real work. Being local enough to meet a contractor is real. So is taking the call at nine on a Sunday evening, and having the difficult conversation with somebody whose home you are talking about. We have set out the honest split in what a letting agent's 10% actually buys, and nothing here contradicts it.

What is not hard to replace is the process. Knowing which certificate is due when, what has to be given to a tenant before the tenancy is agreed, which duty runs to a deadline and which to a renewal date — that is a list, and a list is the sort of thing software is actually good at.

The duties that do not move

Before the tenancy starts there are ten compliance items on a standard let, eleven if it is furnished or part-furnished, and six more on top if you are letting room by room. They apply identically whether you signed a managed agreement, a let-only one, or nothing at all:

• A Gas Safety record annually where the property has gas appliances, carried out by a Gas Safe registered engineer. Letting without a valid certificate is a criminal offence.
• An EICR at least every five years. Missing or failed checks can mean fines of up to £30,000 under the Electrical Safety Standards Regulations 2020.
• An EPC, valid for ten years, minimum rating E. Letting a property rated F or G without a registered exemption is unlawful under the minimum energy efficiency standards and can mean up to £5,000.
• Smoke alarms on every storey used as living accommodation, and a carbon monoxide alarm in any room with a fixed combustion appliance other than a gas cooker. Up to £5,000 for non-compliance — and note the duty is to test them and confirm they work on the day the tenancy begins, which is a different thing from having fitted them.
• The Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet, given to the tenant before the tenancy is agreed. On tenancies that were already running it had to be given by 31 May 2026, with a fine of up to £7,000 for not doing so.
• A Legionella risk assessment, which is HSE best practice rather than a certificate, but worth dating.
• Right to Rent checks on every adult occupier, whether or not they are named on the agreement and whether or not they pay rent.
• Deposit protection — into an approved scheme within 30 days of receipt, with the prescribed information to the tenant inside the same window. Both halves, same deadline.
• Landlord insurance, which is not a legal requirement but is usually a mortgage condition.
• The tenancy agreement itself.

Furnished lets add furniture fire safety under the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988. Letting room by room adds the HMO set — the licence, a fire risk assessment, the manager's contact details, escape routes, common parts, room sizes — and operating a licensable HMO without a licence is a criminal offence. The whole list, item by item, is in the compliance checklist for letting a property in England.

An agent may well be in scope alongside you for some of this. What they cannot do is take it off you. And enforcement, when it arrives, does not read your management agreement first — we have written that out in full in who is legally responsible when a letting agent gets it wrong.

So why is let only the riskier of the two?

Because of where it puts the cliff edge.

On fully managed, the work is being done by somebody. You are paying around 10% for it, you do not hold the file, and you are still the one who answers — but the gas certificate is probably being booked, because chasing it is in somebody's job description.

On let only, the agent's involvement ends roughly at the point the duties begin. You have bought the month that has a clear finish line, and kept the four years that do not. And you have usually kept them without inheriting any of the infrastructure that made them manageable: no reminder diary, no document store, no renewal dates, no ledger. The agent's system knew when the EICR expired. Yours is a folder of PDFs and a memory of roughly when.

The landlords who get caught are almost never the careless ones. They are the ones for whom every duty was a one-off task on a busy fortnight two years ago, with no second prompt built in anywhere.

What it looks like if nothing changes

Not a scandal. A date.

Year three, and the gas safety record lapsed eleven weeks ago because the annual one was booked in a month you happened to be away. Or the EPC quietly reached ten years old, and the property has been marketed and let below band E since. Or the deposit went into a scheme on time and the prescribed information was never sent, so the duty is half-discharged — which, if you ever need possession on a rent ground, blocks the order entirely.

Then the compounding version. Say the rent is £1,000 a month and the management fee is 10%: that is £1,200 a year, £6,000 over five years, for a service whose core is a list. Work it through on your own figures rather than taking ours — that is the whole point of it being arithmetic. Meanwhile, on the let-only path, the same five years produce no system at all, just five years of individually-remembered tasks and a growing file nobody has indexed.

And the third cost, the one nobody prices: when a deposit is disputed or a claim is defended, what is wanted is a dated record. "It was done" is not a document. Neither is "my agent had that".

Where Tenarize fits

Tenarize is software for private landlords in England who manage their own properties, and it is built around the list above rather than around a portfolio spreadsheet.

Adding a property generates the checklists — vetting, compliance, move-in — with the right items for that property, including the furnished item where it applies and the six HMO items where you are letting room by room. Each item says what it is for and what the exposure is, because the description is usually the only place a landlord finds out why the item is on the list at all.

Then the dates stop being yours to remember. Every document can carry an expiry, and Tenarize raises a notification — and an email — before a certificate or licence lapses, with anything outstanding repeated in a weekly digest on Monday mornings. From 60 days before a Gas Safety, EICR, EPC, Legionella or fire risk assessment expires, you can book the renewal from the reminder itself: one button picks the right trade from your own suppliers, gives you their number and a drafted email, and tracks the visit as a job you can put the invoice on. Uploading the new certificate afterwards is still a manual step.

The deposit deadline is tracked against the date the deposit was actually received, across both statutory duties — the money and the prescribed information — and recorded as done on time or done late rather than folded into one tick. Tenarize does not protect the deposit; that sits with one of the approved schemes, chosen by you. Right to Rent follow-up dates are held against the tenancy, and the check itself is still yours to carry out. The agreement is generated and e-signed with a real, legally binding signature recording who signed and when — and it is not solicitor-reviewed, which is stated permanently on the document rather than buried here.

Rent moves onto Bacs Direct Debit, charged directly on your own Stripe account with Tenarize taking no percentage of it. It is slower than a standing order — up to seven working days on a new mandate, around four once established — and it produces a dated record a standing order does not.

If you are coming off a managed agreement rather than starting fresh, Import existing tenancy is the entry point: vetting can be marked as already done, a start date in the past is accepted, the compliance checklist is deliberately not skippable, and you can activate with your own signed agreement instead of generating a new one. What to ask your agent for before you give notice is in leaving your letting agent.

What actually changes

The decision stops being "how much service can I afford" and becomes "which parts of this do I want to be standing in the room for". Viewings, the local visit, the Sunday evening call — those are real, and if you want to pay somebody for them, pay somebody for them.

What you stop paying for is the list. The certificates have dates you can see rather than dates you half-remember. The deadlines arrive before they matter instead of after. The evidence for every duty you carry is under your own login, in a form you can hand to somebody who asks for it. And the question of whether it was done is answered by a record rather than by trying to remember which year that was.

Where to check this yourself

• Renting out a property — GOV.UK's overview of a landlord's duties in England
• Landlords' responsibility for gas safety — HSE, with the Gas Safe Register for checking an engineer
• Electrical safety standards in the private rented sector — GOV.UK, the EICR guidance
• Minimum energy efficiency standard: landlord guidance and find an energy certificate — GOV.UK
• Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms: explanatory booklet for landlords — GOV.UK
• Legionella: landlords' responsibilities — HSE
• The Renters' Rights Act Information Sheet 2026 — GOV.UK, free to download
• Landlord's guide to right to rent checks — GOV.UK
• Deposit protection schemes and landlords — GOV.UK, including the approved schemes
• House in multiple occupation licence — GOV.UK, for a room-by-room let
• The Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988 — legislation.gov.uk, for furnished lets
• Repossessing your privately rented property after 1 May 2026 — GOV.UK, for Section 8 and its grounds
• Shelter and Citizens Advice — free, independent advice on a specific situation

If you are costing out the two service levels against doing it yourself, the letting agent fee calculator puts your agent's annual cost next to Tenarize's on your own rent and fee figures, shows the working line by line, and tells you outright when self-managing is the dearer option. Tenarize is £15 a month for one to five properties, and the first month is free. The help centre is free to read either way, whichever way you decide.