Letting your house on a long term lease?

Grandma600

Another landlord here, and my advice is not to rent out your property. The current tenants are lovely, but in 13 years of renting properties, my experience has been far from rosy, and I'm now getting to the age where I don't want the hassle of fixing and maintaining

Absolutely! Headaches galore, a lot of tenants just do not give a monkeys about the property, lazy, filthy, entitled expecting instant repairs not tomorrow because the plumber can't make it until then! Delinquent with rent. I let my father's house out to offset his care fees. Nice seeming tenants turned into gremlins even with due diligence done, subletting, drugs, prostitution, pets when on agreement no pets, one was running a daycare centre on the qt & had diva meltdowns if I needed 24hr notice access. Never ever again!

When I left my flat in Aberdeen in the hands of an estate Agent - I could have wept! They were renting the flat for me and supposed to take care of it. Unfortunately the flat above leaked into it and the carpet was ruined. They asked me what I wanted the carpet replaced with, I said something similar. The similar carpet was a grey instead of fawn. My next lot of tenants turned out to be a bunch of students who locked themselves out, so they bashed the door down The door was pretty old and I never got a penny towards replacing it. I gave up and told them to sell the flat. Living in Yorkshire meant it was difficult keeping and eye on Aberdeen. The brochure they had made for the flat had a wire dangling down behind a chair which looked like a crack in the wall. Not too surprisingly I didn't get as much for the flat as I would have liked, but I just wanted rid of it!

There is a lot of misinformation on here regarding renting out and being a landlord. For a start the Renters Rights Bill has come into law yet. Likely to be early next year. Go to a letting agent and discuss the option with them. Not here.

Two small bungalows near me sold in less than a week earlier this year. They were very small (no cupboards!)
An extended one which was much more expensive, took a lot longer.

At present there's a bungalow up for auction, in a bad state but in an enviable position. It's had thousands of online views and could be a bargain for someone but my electrician told me that the land behind it has been designated for building more houses.
Is there something you can think of southdowns which could be the reason your nice bungalow is proving slow to sell?

A friend with a small rental house in Devon had a tenant who stayed for around 15 years, until he died. That was no problem.

But with new legislation, you’d have to be 100% sure that you wouldn’t want the property back, if you had a tenant who wanted to stay very long term.

i would just add that in certain areas where there are lots of bungalows you may want to get an agent who will advertise the benefits eg near public transport ? I keep seeing bungalows for sale but no buses for over 3 miles .

I am not saying that they are any good but have you had a firm which buys properties within weeks to look at it ? Some are better than others
It may not be that your bungalow is not overpriced but not presented the best way? maybe it needs to be presented in a more neutral fashion . If you don't intend to take the furniture with you then get rid of the unwanted items and then rent furniture as some developers do with new houses.

Anywhere around here, bungalows are like hen’s teeth, and comparatively expensive.
Are you sure it was priced competitively? It’s not exactly unknown for estate agents to overvalue, because a) they think it’s what the vendor wants to hear, and b) in order to get the business.

Do you have masses of bungalows in your area in that you can't sell? Where I am they are like hen's teeth. No sooner for sale sign up that Sold is all over it. Have you valued it reasonably? Seems unusual these days not selling. Wouldn't go for leasing, too complicated these days.

Where is your bungalow, Southdowns? Maybe in the South downs? We are looking for a bungalow! Our only experience of letting was not a great one, and we ended up selling after a year of letting. Luckily, it sold quite quickly. The agents didn't seem to pick up on any problems on their supposedly regular checks, and as we lived about 100 miles away, it was in their hands. Good advice from others above about seeking other estate agents' advice.

Also if you let it out at all you’ll have to pay capital gains tax when you do sell it.

Property market will pick up in September?

If I were you I would get a new agent. Is it overpriced? Do you need every last penny or could you drop the price a bit for a quicker sale? Selling might mean less long term stress for you. Letting it out could potentially cause more stress and more financial outlay. If it was me I’d want to just get it sold then go and enjoy my life by the sea.

Airbnb….but get someone reliable or a proper agent to manage the turnarounds. You can continue to advertise it for sale provided you restrict the bookings to say 3 months in advance. This also gives you the opportunity to declutter and stage your house. Have you tried changing estate agents? We went with a national firm…they actually lied to us about some factual issues and also over estimated the value. After 3 months with barely any viewings we swapped to an independent agen who had sold a lot of properties locally, dropped the price, and had an offer, acceptable to us, within 9 days.

My DiL was selling her DM house to help her downsize. It sat for months with very few views.
I looked at it online and saw the problem. It had been photographed in winter with dead looking plants in garden pots. The low ceilings -it's a historic house- looked dark and gloomy.

They found a new agent and much improved presentation and were instantly rewarded.

They didn't have to reduce the price.

Every property has a price at which it will sell. If your bungalow is not selling pricing is definitely an issue. Have stern words with your Estate Agent about this, ask for advice. Depending on the price bracket, you could think about hiring a professional to stage your property. They assess it, the area, the likely buyers and using a combination of your own or hired furniture & accoutrements, then get the agent to take new photos. You could do this yourself with advice, of course. I always severely declutter, using a local storage facility for furniture that makes the rooms cluttered (to others), books, decorative items etc. Before each viewing I would again stage the house with fresh flowers, opened windows, pleasant aromas etc. You need prospective buyers to be able to see past your well loved items and the easiest way is to remove them and provide a minimalist view to people coming round.

Our SA friends, lately living in UK 7 years, decided to return to outside Cape Town. Couldn't sell their luxury apartment, as the charges are prohibitive, so they rented it out. Fast forward to last year, when they actually found a buyer - no chain, a 90 year old single lady who loved the apartment. BUT sitting tenant refused to move out saying he would stay put until a court order was produced. From CT, this cost them an arm and 16 legs, they lost the buyer, the tenant moved out, so now the apartment is empty. They are hoping for another buyer but there doesn't seem to be anyone in the offing. Take heed but good luck.

With the forthcoming changes in legislation, giving all the power to the tenant, I would not let out any property, even if it was a garden shed! I was lucky when I let out a flat - a good tenant, rent paid on time and the place looked after. I managed it myself.

I suggest you look at the television programme "Rogue Tenants, Slum Landlords" - some salutary lessons therein.

If you are within travelling from a USAF base IN Uk, their housing office will manage letting and any rent default is immediately dealt with . A U.S. Airmen generally does not want a bad record when renting overseas .
Airforce pay airmen a rent allowance according to rank.
Just an idea.. we have had great success renting to USAF . The only downside for landlord is that renter can be relocated overseas at very short notice, and understanding of this is written into contract.

Another landlord here, and my advice is not to rent out your property. The current tenants are lovely, but in 13 years of renting properties, my experience has been far from rosy, and I'm now getting to the age where I don't want the hassle of fixing and maintaining

Another option, which we chose, is to let it out on Airbnb as a Serviced Accommodation. We actually passed our to a management company who let it out for us and they take 15% plus that of all the increment generates. Thankfully our property has been fully booked for months because the agency we use specialises in Contractors. We don’t have any problems the agency is very efficient and we’re happy to leave it there until the market changes and we earn a good income and we don’t have to do anything, the agency does it all.

Bungalows have always been hard to sell, families don't want them and the old are downsizing.

I would look again at trying to sell rather than go in to long term letting at the moment.

A letting agent should collect the rent for you, and chase for any late payments, but realistically they soon revert back to the property owner to handle any serious arrears e.g. no payment for a couple months or so. Insurance policy might be a good idea, but still does not deal with a bad tenant you cannot easily move out.

Agents vary in how effective they are at actually managing the property, as others have said the tradesmen they use are usually unsupervised and most of the jobs that have been done for us under this arrangement have been mediocre at top dollar price. It is really worth hunting around for an experienced agent. Steer clear of any that puts a school leaver or other inexperienced person in charge of maintenance, collections, or any part of the transaction with the tenant really. This side of the work needs experience and a professional approach.

Likewise, at end of tenancy: An experienced agent, with a serious approach, is your best bet for getting compensation/deposit retention for any damage sorted out with your tenant.

There are also onerous (potentially expensive) responsibilities on landlords for health and safety, especially fire safety. It’s right and proper that all rented places should be safe, but the regulations often exceed the type of safety measures you would have in your own home, so there might be up front costs to put them in. Also, anything in the house which is not totally 100% fine and working (sometimes as a homeowner we might readily live with e.g. a cupboard door that sticks, a lock that needs a ‘knack’ to open it, a tap that drips unless you know to turn it off thoroughly etc) will need fixing or replacing before you let, otherwise you will get complaints, broken items, or expensive repairs.

Who would be a landlord these days!? 🤪

If you bungalow isn't selling watch some of Channel 4s TV show "Can't Sell, Must Sell," which features property developers Scarlette and Stuart Douglas helping homeowners transform unsellable houses into desirable homes to get them sold quickly. This might help you see things that are preventing the house from getting away. Certainly as others say look again at your agent and the price. The costs involved in renting your property would be high so reducing your price to get it sold is the best thing.

You could ask the question on your local Facebook group. Then you would get the perspective from tenants as to which agents are the most reliable.