An empty property still costs money
During a void, nobody is using any gas or electricity, but the meter is still costing money. Standing charges run every day whether the lights are on or not, and they've risen sharply. A landlord with a property empty for three weeks between tenancies is paying for the privilege of an empty house.
It's one of those costs that rarely gets questioned, because on a single property it looks small and it arrives after the new tenant has moved in and everyone has moved on.
The energy bill is worth a closer look
What most landlords don't realise is that the energy at an empty property can be moved onto a dedicated void tariff for the period it sits empty, and the better arrangements are worth a real amount.
A credit of £15 per fuel, with the first 30 days of standing charges covered, comes to up to £58 on a property with both gas and electricity at current standard variable rates. Because most voids are shorter than a month, the majority of void bills on an arrangement like this come out at zero. The landlord pays nothing for the gap between tenancies, and if the void runs longer, they still keep the full amount off the final bill.
It's worth agents asking how the energy at their void properties is currently handled, and whether landlords are getting anything back at all.
Now multiply it
One void isn't a headline number. A portfolio is.
An agent managing 200 properties with normal turnover is handling a few hundred voids a year. At up to £58 each, that's comfortably over £10,000 that never leaves landlords' pockets, generated in the background of work the agent was doing anyway.
That's worth putting in front of a landlord. When every other conversation is about a cost going up, being the agent who can point at a real figure going the other way counts for something: at valuation, at renewal, and every time a landlord sits down and works out whether to hold the property or sell it.
Void bills are wrong more often than they should be
The second half of the picture is the bill itself. With the property empty and usage low, void bills should be small or nothing at all. Yet they're wrong constantly.
Wrong dates. Estimated readings instead of actual ones. The previous tenant's name still on the account, or the landlord's name on a period they were never responsible for. Every one of those turns into a phone call, a hold queue and, too often, a letter from a debt collector about a property that's been empty for six weeks.
The checks every void bill needs
The dates. If the supplier has the wrong move-out or move-in date, the landlord can end up paying for part of a tenant's stay.
The readings. An estimated reading on an empty property can be well off the mark. Readings with dated photos at both ends of the void make any error easy to prove.
The account name and billing period. A bill in the wrong name, or covering the wrong period, is hard to unpick weeks later and usually ends up back on the agent's desk.
Checking all of this by hand on every changeover takes time. But paying first and finding the error later almost always takes longer.
In summary
Utility admin won't solve the pressure the sector is under. But the agents doing well right now are the ones finding ways to put real money back in their landlords' pockets and take real work off their own team's desk. Voids are one of the few places you can do both at once.
How Homebox helps
Homebox handles utility admin for letting agents. Void properties are moved onto a dedicated void tariff, with a £15 credit per fuel and the first 30 days of standing charges covered, worth up to £58 per void to the landlord. Across the voids we manage, 71% of bills come out at zero.
Every void bill is also checked before it reaches the agent: dates, meter readings, account name and billing period. Agents get a clean list of bills that are correct and ready to pay, and anything that isn't right is challenged with the supplier directly. It's the part agents tell us they notice most, and the difference between outsourcing the bill and outsourcing the problem.
Find out more at homebox.co.uk.
Homebox: Utility bills management for agents and tenants
Allow your tenants to turn any home into a bills included home and never spend time dealing with void utility bills again.
