If you are a novice who is considering property investment, you might have a few worries. What happens if the tenants don’t pay their rent? Or if you can’t let the place? Or if the tenants wreck it?

These are legitimate concerns which can trouble even the most experienced buy-to-let landlord, which is why so many target what they regard as dream tenants - professional young sharers.

After all, the common perception is that surely the most troublesome tenants you could have in your properties would be people on council house waiting lists who may well have been homeless.

But a bold scheme, currently only operating in parts of west London and Edinburgh but likely to spread elsewhere, is showing that it is high time to drop any prejudices. Indeed, it could prove a lifeline for some landlords.

Essentially, the scheme operates as a partnership between local authorities, private landlords and estate agents.

The agents concerned are Orchard & Shipman, who are an unusual and probably unique estate agency, carving out a completely new niche business in social housing.

What essentially they do is find private landlords for council tenants, and then manage both the properties and the tenancies. Until very recently all this would have been considered a no-go area by all concerned: council tenants would have viewed private landlords with suspicion and distrust; private landlords, with their preference for smart professional tenants, would have run a mile screaming; and councils are more used to regulating private landlords than using them as a resource.

And who would have thought that estate agents would even begin to have either the social conscience or the right kind of skills? Certainly not estate agents themselves, let alone anyone else.

Yet, so far, so good. And that is putting it mildly.

The business - and that is exactly what it is for ARLA members Orchard & Shipman, who are based in Slough, Berkshire - is proving soundly commercial as well as financially rewarding and risk-free for the landlords.

Fears of void periods between tenants, of not being able to find a tenant in the first place, of having the place trashed and unpaid rent, all vanish at a stroke. Rents are paid quarterly in advance. There are no managing fees to pay the agents - the councils pick those up. There are no void periods and tenants are guaranteed. And Orchard & Shipman also guarantee to pay for dilapidations and rent arrears.

There are, perhaps, a couple of possible downsides for landlords: first, the rent will be less than you could get in the usual private market. But it won’t be that much less, and given all the other advantages, is more than outweighed.

Second - and this needs emphasising - only good quality properties will be considered. Orchard & Shipman chief executive Nick Medhurst says that it is a misconception that any old property will do for council tenants, and in fact it is common to have to ask landlords to upgrade the facilities.

The councils which have been operating the scheme longest, Hillingdon and Spelthorne in Greater London, have discovered that this is a partnership that really works: the tenants are moving off waiting lists and out of homelessness, which is always good for targets.

But perhaps the biggest testament to the success so far is that Orchard & Shipman this year won the biggest private sector leasing contract in the country, managing a portfolio for Edinburgh City Council that will comprise around 1,500 privatelyowned properties. They are also talking to other local authorities - a case of watch this space.

Their pitch for the Edinburgh contract was successful but unusual: indeed, so unusual that the impressed council had to re-work its requirements around what Orchard & Shipman had proposed and ask everyone to tender again.

"We were different because we had come up with a financial model that was attractive to the authority," says Medhurst. "The commercial edge is important. Any organisation needs to be efficient, and as a private organisation ourselves, we need to make money."

One attractive feature for the councils is that Orchard & Shipman indemnify them against loss as a result of tenants’ actions. How do they get insurance for this? They don’t and can’t, so what they have to offer is the best possible management.

The rolling-out of their offering to Edinburgh means that there will have to be an office in the city with a staff of around 30 within two years.

Undoubtedly, they will be busy: homelessness in Edinburgh has been described as a crisis, but the other side of the coin is that the private housing market has been buoyant, outperforming England and Wales and a magnet for buy-to-let landlords. Furthermore, new developments are scheduled to regenerate the port area of the city.

It is, of course, far too early to say how successful it will be, but the firm’s track record in London speaks for itself: Orchard & Shipman’s social housing division contributes a staggering 40 per cent to the firm’s entire business.

That is not bad going when you consider the diversity of the firm: as well as the usual residential sales, there are private lettings and property management, commercial property, financial services and surveying.

Many estate agents have diversified in the last few years, worried that if they have all their eggs in the one traditional basket of residential sales, they are too exposed to a housing market crash. But apparently only Orchard & Shipman have diversified into social housing.

Certainly, when the firm started, it would probably not have crossed their sights, any more than the next firm of commission-hungry estate agents. However, the fact that the firm began at the height of the last boom and shortly before the last crash, is a factor.

Chairman Chris Shipman recalls: “The company was started in 1988 by myself and John Orchard. We began in house sales and enjoyed six months of boom. I remember thinking at the time, ‘I know estate agency is a good business to get into, but should it be as easy as this?’ Then came the crash.

"We did everything we could to stay in business - marketing and advertising - but nothing was moving. We had to change. Then along came the Housing Act, which created shorthold tenancies, allowing landlords to serve notice on their tenants, and this kick-started the lettings market. So, we moved into that."

Today, the firm - which started with one office and now has four - lets around 1,000 private properties a year in the private sector, of which it also manages half.

It was this experience which prompted the firm to reply to an advertisement in a local newspaper three years ago, inviting tenders for social housing.

On behalf of Hillingdon and Spelthorne authorities, Orchard & Shipman now have a total of 930 properties on the books owned by about 700 private landlords, and which house 2,500 children and 1,000 adults. Many of the landlords are also with the firm’s private lettings and management division, although to begin with, some were - and new ones still are - scared by the perceived stigma of social housing tenants. "They do need - and I won’t call it education - a lot of convincing that this is a good market to get into," concedes Medhurst. He says that although his staff do come across - and have to deal with - drug taking and domestic violence, in practice such incidents are incredibly rare.

"Our people get a lot of job satisfaction. It’s not really about properties but about looking after the welfare of tenants," says Medhurst.

"The job is often about handholding but it is also based on empathy and respect: tenants may know nothing about how to clean a house, so they will need to be shown how to do the simplest chores, not just on the first visit but repeatedly. But the fact is that they have had a long and difficult life journey to reach this point and our staff acknowledge this. Of course, it’s rewarding."

The statistics are also reassuring: in the three years that Orchard & Shipman have been in the sector, there have been just eight repossessions, of which six were for anti-social behaviour and two for rent arrears. And, despite the circumstances of some tenants, there has not been a single case of violence against staff.

Medhurst strongly believes that social housing is a market that more estate agents should get into, particularly now that the Government has thrown open most of the Housing Corporation’s £1.7 billion a year budget to non-housing association providers.

Medhurst’s own firm is planning to expand this side of the business, to around 5,000 homes in the next five years.

He points out that of the estimated need for 3.8 million homes by 2021, one million will be needed for the social housing sector, predominantly by older people. He says that because of pension under-provision, many will be dependent on the social sector for accommodation for the first time in their lives.

It is quite a thought for private landlords to consider.