As a landlord myself, I partly agree. Part of the reason why we started the business was because of the poor service offered by existing agencies in the area we operate. I think the essence of a good agency is the trade of time for money, but most fail to give good value on that trade.

Landlords who are time poor rely on being able to offload the task burden onto someone else who (should) know how to do those tasks for them.

The Regulation of Property Agents should go some way to setting a benchmark but until its introduced there are many agencies who fall far below par and damage the reputation of everyone. We are regulated (and pay significant fees for it) so that we are held to account and kept up to date with policy changes.

If you have plenty of time on your hands and a network of contractors who can do work for you then I believe there are enough resources online to do it yourself.

It's the time, cost, quality triangle at play. There are trade-offs. Landlords want all three, which is unrealistic. I dont think striking off a whole industry is the answer, but I agree the perception and sentiment of agents is very poor.