What a Letter of Engagement Actually Is

A Letter of Engagement — you'll also hear it called a Property Services Agreement — is the written contract between you, the agent, and your client, the landlord. It sets out precisely what you will do for them and exactly what it will cost. Think of it as the foundation document of every landlord relationship: everything that follows (rent collection, statements, disputes about fees) refers back to it.

In Ireland it isn't just good practice. A letting agent is a Property Services Provider (PSP) — a regulated profession licensed by the Property Services Regulatory Authority (PSRA). The same framework that requires you to hold a licence also requires you to put an agreed Letter of Engagement in place before you provide the service. No signed engagement, no lawful basis to act.

For a busy agency onboarding landlords one after another, this is the step most often rushed or skipped — a verbal "the fee is 8% and I'll sort the RTB registration" and off you go. That informal start is exactly where fee disputes, awkward conversations and compliance exposure begin.

Three names, one document

"Letter of Engagement", "Property Services Agreement" and "management agreement" are used more or less interchangeably in the Irish market. What matters is not the label at the top of the page but whether the document does what the Act requires: names the parties, describes the services, and states all the costs.

The Law: Section 43 of the Property Services (Regulation) Act 2011

The Property Services (Regulation) Act 2011 is the statute that created the PSRA and put letting agents, auctioneers and property managers on a licensed footing. Within it, section 43 deals with the agreement between a provider and a client.

In plain terms, section 43 requires that:

  • A licensed provider must have a Letter of Engagement in place with the client before providing the property service — not afterwards, and not "we'll sort the paperwork later".
  • The letter must describe the services the provider will supply.
  • The letter must set out all costs — every fee and charge the client can expect, not just the headline management percentage.

That last point is where most informal arrangements fall down. It is not enough to mention the management fee. Tenant-find fees, re-letting fees, renewal fees, charges for arranging works, VAT — if the client could be billed for it, it belongs in the letter. The purpose is transparency: the client should be able to read the document and know, in advance, everything they might pay.

"Before providing the service" is doing a lot of work

The obligation is to have the agreed letter in place before you start acting. Signing an engagement three months into managing a property — after a fee dispute has already surfaced — does not cure the original gap. Build the letter into onboarding, not into damage control.

What the Letter Must Contain

The Act sets the floor — services and all costs — but a genuinely useful, dispute-proof Letter of Engagement goes a little further. Here's the checklist we'd use for a letting-agency engagement:

Element Why it belongs in the letter
Provider details + PSRA licence number Identifies you as a licensed PSP and lets the client verify you on the public register at psr.ie.
Client (landlord) name & address Identifies who you are contracting with — the legal person who owns the property.
Property / portfolio address Defines the scope — which property (or properties) the engagement covers.
Services provided Required by s.43. Be specific: tenant sourcing, rent collection, RTB registration, inspections, maintenance, deposit handling, rent review.
Schedule of all fees & costs (with VAT) Required by s.43. Every charge, on whatever basis — % of rent, fixed, hourly — so nothing surprises the client later.
Effective date & review date Fixes when the engagement starts and when the terms should next be reviewed.
Additional terms Term and notice period to end the engagement, and how client monies are handled — the details that prevent disputes.

Get those seven elements right and you have a document that satisfies the law, sets clear expectations, and gives you something solid to point to if a client ever queries a fee.

The Real Cost of Getting It Wrong

It's tempting to treat the Letter of Engagement as a formality. Here's why that's a mistake, in ascending order of pain:

Fee disputes you can't win

Without a written schedule of costs, a fee dispute is your word against the landlord's. When a client challenges a renewal fee or a charge for arranging works, the signed letter is your evidence. Without it, you're arguing — and often writing off the fee to keep the client.

Regulatory exposure

Failing to have a compliant Letter of Engagement in place is a breach of your obligations as a licensed provider. The PSRA investigates complaints and can impose sanctions on providers who don't meet the standards of the Act. For a licensed professional, a compliance finding is not just a cost — it's a mark against the licence your business depends on.

Professional liability and lost clients

The engagement is the document that defines your duties. Ambiguity about what you agreed to do — and didn't — is where professional-negligence arguments start. And landlords increasingly expect the professionalism of a proper agreement; a scrappy or missing one is a reason to move to the agency down the road.

The record-keeping angle

It isn't enough to sign the letter once and forget it. Providers are expected to retain engagement and client records for the six-year record-keeping period. That means keeping every signed letter — and any superseded versions — in a durable, retrievable form. A signed PDF lost in an inbox is not a record you can rely on when it's asked for.

Generate a Compliant Letter Free, in Minutes

Drafting this from scratch in Word every time — and remembering to include the licence number, the VAT, the review date — is exactly the kind of repetitive, error-prone task that should be automated. So we built a free Letter of Engagement generator and gave it away.

It's genuinely free, needs no login, and — importantly for a document full of client data — the free tool does not store the letter or your client's details. It builds the PDF from what you type and hands it back to you. Here's the whole process:

1

Add your agency and PSRA licence details

Trading name, business address, and your PSRA licence number (there's a dedicated field for it, so your client can verify you on psr.ie). Add your email and phone so the letter is complete.

2

Add your client and the property

The landlord's legal name and address, and the property or portfolio the engagement covers.

3

List the services you provide

Type your own, or one-click the common ones from a set of suggested chips — tenant sourcing & referencing, rent collection & monthly statements, RTB tenancy registration, inspections, maintenance coordination, deposit handling, rent review & RPZ compliance, end-of-tenancy re-letting.

4

State all costs — with VAT

Add as many fee lines as you need. Choose the basis for each — % of rent, fixed fee, hourly, or other — enter the amount and VAT rate, and add a note (e.g. "of rent collected", "per successful letting"). A live summary totals your fixed fees including VAT as you go.

5

Download or email the PDF

Generate a formatted, professional Letter of Engagement PDF, preview it on screen, then download it or have it emailed straight to your inbox — ready to review, sign with your client and keep on file.

A Field-by-Field Walkthrough

A few practical notes on getting each part right, so the letter you produce is one you'd be happy to put your name to:

Your PSRA licence number is not optional

Displaying your licence number is how a landlord confirms they're dealing with a licensed agent rather than an unregulated operator. It signals professionalism and lets the client check you on the Register of Licensed Property Services Providers. Leave it off and you've undercut the trust the letter is meant to build.

Be specific about services

"Full management" means different things to different landlords. Spell it out. If you handle RTB registration, inspections and rent review, list each — it both satisfies s.43's "describe the services" requirement and protects you if a landlord later claims you agreed to do something you didn't.

List every fee, on its real basis

The generator lets you mix fee types in one schedule, because real agency pricing is mixed: a management fee as a percentage of rent, a tenant-find fee as a fixed amount, occasional works billed hourly. State each on its true basis, add the VAT rate, and use the note field to remove ambiguity ("8% of monthly rent collected", "one month's rent per successful letting"). This is the single most important part of the document — the "all costs" the Act demands.

Set an effective date and a review date

The effective date fixes when your duties begin. A review date is your prompt to revisit the terms — useful when rents change, when the national rent cap shifts what you can charge a tenant, or when your own fees move.

Tip: use the additional-terms field

This is where you cover the term of the engagement, the notice period to end it, and how client monies are held and disbursed. A clear notice clause alone can save a painful exit conversation later.

Beyond the PDF: The PSR Compliance Workflow

A downloadable PDF solves the drafting problem. But a single landlord onboarding has three more steps after drafting — getting it signed, proving it was signed, and keeping it for years — and at scale, across dozens of landlord clients, those are where the real admin lives. That's the difference between the free tool and a free TenantSync account.

Inside TenantSync, the Letter of Engagement becomes a tracked, end-to-end workflow:

  • Draft → Issue → Signed → Superseded. Every letter carries a clear status. You prepare it, issue it to the client, and mark it signed when the agreed contract is in place — so you always know, at a glance, which clients are papered and which aren't.
  • Issue for signature and track who has signed. Send the letter to a client to sign, and see who has and hasn't returned it — no more chasing a paper trail through your sent folder.
  • Automatic nudges on unsigned letters. If a letter has been issued but sits unsigned, TenantSync reminds you so it doesn't quietly fall through the cracks during a busy onboarding week.
  • A durable six-year record, kept for you. Signed letters — and any superseded versions — are retained automatically, so the record-keeping obligation is handled rather than hoped for.
  • Client accounts and party details in one place. The engagement links to the landlord and property records you already hold, so a letter stays a faithful snapshot of what was agreed even as the underlying records change.

In other words: the free tool gets one letter out the door; the account turns "issuing and tracking engagements" into a repeatable process that scales with your book — sitting right alongside your RTB compliance and rent tracking.

Why "workflow" beats "template"

A template is a starting point you re-solve every time. A workflow remembers the state of every client relationship for you: who's signed, who's overdue, what's on file, and when to look again. For an agency adding landlords month after month, that memory is the actual product.

The Bigger Picture: PSRA Licence Renewal Automation

The Letter of Engagement is one thread in your PSR (Property Services Regulation) compliance — and TenantSync is building the platform that automates the whole cloth. The most time-critical thread of all is your own PSRA licence.

A PSRA licence is valid for one year and must be renewed. The renewal has a deterministic, unforgiving timeline that's easy to miss when you're heads-down running an agency:

  • Roughly 12 weeks (84 days) before expiry, the PSRA issues a renewal invitation and a unique PIN.
  • Under section 35(2)(b) of the Act, the renewal application must be made at least 6 weeks (42 days) before expiry.
  • Miss the window and you risk your licence lapsing — which means you cannot lawfully provide property services until it's restored.

TenantSync turns your licence expiry date into that timeline automatically and fires escalating reminders in each window — invitation expected, apply-by approaching, expiring — delivered as an email digest plus in-app and mobile notifications, so the deadline reaches you wherever you are. The licence status (valid, renewal-due, expiring, expired) is derived from the dates, so your compliance picture is always current.

And the licence renewal sits within a broader PSR compliance set the platform tracks, including:

  • Professional indemnity insurance (PII) renewal — the cover you're required to hold, with its own renewal date.
  • Tax clearance — kept current as part of remaining a licensed provider.
  • Client account reconciliation — the discipline around handling client monies correctly.
  • Accountant's report — the periodic report on your client-account handling.

Handled by hand, these are five separate deadlines living in five separate places (or worse, one person's memory). Handled as a workflow, they're a single compliance dashboard that reminds you before anything is due. That's the position TenantSync is built for: the PSR compliance automation platform for Irish letting agents — Letters of Engagement, licence renewals, client-account discipline and the RTB work, in one place.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Letter of Engagement for a letting agent in Ireland?

It's the written agreement — also called a Property Services Agreement — that a licensed agent must have with a client before providing a service. Under section 43 of the Property Services (Regulation) Act 2011 it must set out the services provided and all associated costs.

Is a Letter of Engagement legally required before I act for a landlord?

Yes. Section 43 requires a licensed Property Services Provider to have an agreed Letter of Engagement in place before providing the service. Acting without one — or with one that fails to state all costs — is a compliance failure the PSRA can investigate.

What must a PSRA Letter of Engagement contain?

At minimum: the provider (including PSRA licence number), the client, the property, every service being provided, and all costs and fees with VAT where it applies. Adding an effective date, review date and additional terms makes it a complete, professional agreement.

Do I have to show my PSRA licence number on the letter?

Yes — so the client can verify you on the public Register of Licensed Property Services Providers at psr.ie. The free generator has a dedicated field for it.

Is TenantSync's Letter of Engagement generator really free?

Yes. You can create and download a PDF for free with no login, and the free tool does not store the letter or your client's details. A free account adds issuing for signature, signed-status tracking, a durable record and renewal reminders.

How long should I keep a signed Letter of Engagement?

Retain engagement and client records for the six-year record-keeping period. Keep every signed letter, and any superseded versions, in a durable, retrievable form so you can evidence the agreed terms if a client or the PSRA asks.

Summary

A Letter of Engagement isn't red tape — it's the legal foundation of every landlord relationship and a condition of trading as a licensed agent. Section 43 of the Property Services (Regulation) Act 2011 requires you to agree one, describing your services and stating all costs, before you act. Getting it right prevents fee disputes, keeps you clear of regulatory findings, and marks you out as the professional agency landlords want to stay with.

Start free: generate a compliant Letter of Engagement in minutes, no login required. Then, when you're ready to stop re-solving the same admin for every client, a free TenantSync account turns issuing, tracking, retaining and renewing into a workflow that runs itself — the PSR compliance automation the rest of your agency has been missing.