Privately renting scares me

[EllieRosesMammy]

Has anyone else who rents privately ever came to the end of the contract and their landlord have just decided they don't want to renew it - and you've had to move out??

I have this absolute fear that will happen, eventhough we have paid our rent on time every month and never asked the landlord for a thing (so we are good tenants😂). We moved into a private rent property in June from living in a Housing Association house (council house) for 6 years.

Our tenancy is a 1 year one, and then I assume you just renew it after the year is up? But what if the landlord randomly decided he doesn't want to? I never had to think about any of this living in a housing association house 😅

Why did you leave a HA house for private rental? These are exactly the sort of things that happen when you privately rent. That's why it's very unusual to leave a HA property willingly.

When my 12 month tenancy came to the end I just went on to a monthly, rolling contract. I hated the insecurity of private rental and am very glad I am now renting from our local authority.

They moved some absolute horrible people onto our road (aggressive insufferable drug users) - the housing association made little attempt to do anything about their antisocial behaviour. My car was vandalised by these scum. We had no choice but to leave, and a lot of other nice families on the street did so too.

I was completely happy renting from the LA for 6 years, my house was lovely and for the majority of the time living there was no issue. Then they moved several people onto the road that were antisocial morons and we had no choice but to move :(

Unless the landlord needs to sell up no landlord would want to lose a good tenant who pays their rent on time.

That's reassuring to hear. We were told the landlord owns roughly 25 properties so hopefully we are secure here :)

It is a constant worry for us even though we are good tenants with good jobs and technically shouldn't have any trouble finding somewhere else to live if that did happen. It would just be such a hassle!

We rented our first place for 10 years with no problems and only moved because we wanted to live in a different area. 3 years into renting our new place now and still worry one day this one will decide she wants to sell and tell us to leave. When the mortgage rates increased I thought that was us done for but we just had a small increase in rent. She had new flooring put in the kitchen and has just paid for the entire kitchen to be redone which we never asked for. That sent alarm bells ringing. I think really she's just a very lovely landlord who wants us to enjoy where we live but my first thought was that she's doing the place up to sell it. I don't think I will ever feel fully secure while renting but we just can't scrape a deposit together for our own place.

This is how I feel! Also good tenants, with good jobs etc. But theres always that fear isn't there? 😭

I had to move because they decided to sell after many years. I always hoped it would be the sort of thing that happened to other people’ and I went into absolute panic when I got the dreaded email one night around 8pm. It was just a ‘hi x we have decided to sell, thanks for being a great tenant for the last (approx 2 decades)… . Im not sure they even realised the utter stress and panic that little email caused me. The fact that your people own multiple properties makes me think you will be ok though.

Oh god that's so scary! I hope that doesn't happen to us, we do plan to eventually get a mortgage ourselves but it's just saving up that huge deposit isn't it? :(

I've had a lot of bad luck in that regard. Always paid on time, no unreasonable requests (I only ever contacted the LL about broken boilers, bar one who made a number of promises to repair stuff prior to me moving in and never did).

Before I bought, I've had one S21 for asking for said repair work (it was fairly obvious, that after a year, nothing had happened). I've had one amazing LL and regretted ever moving areas, because the next LL served a S21 after one year despite advertising for long-term tenants (they wanted to let to family), the next one kept significantly increasing the rent every 6 months and refused a rolling contract, so we had to be ready to leave every 6 months.

I would never privately rent in the UK again.

Yes I know the feeling very well. I rent a room in a shared house and my money mad landlord is often moaning to me about the tax he has to pay and the regulations he has to comply with. Being a landlord isn’t as profitable as it once was. But I doubt he’ll be selling up because since he bought the house 18 years ago the road has gone downhill so he won’t get the £350K that similar houses in the area sell for. That’s my hope anyway.

OP and others, have you thought about shared ownership? You don’t need a big deposit as you do with a mortgage and you also have the security of the tenure.

I've never looked into shared ownership, how does that one work?

I have had this happen to me twice, as
on both occasions the landlords decided to sell up. It was a bit upsetting at the time, especially as I had a young child, but worked out fine in the end..
I moved into a shared ownership place:
I pay mortgage on 25% and rent the rest. Service charge is annoying but that's the case in a lot of places. The pros are that the deposit was relatively small, I can staircase up to owning the whole place if I like and, crucially, nobody can sell it up from under me!

This.

It costs landlords a fortune to have empty houses, even if just for a month, not to mention the admin that comes with re-advertising and viewings and finding a a decent new occupant. So unless they are selling up, you're probably fine OP.

Myself and my husband are landlords and we love good paying occupants who keep the places nice. We have been gutted to lose some when they have moved onto pastures new and bought their own homes. However, delighted for them that they have got themselves their own house at the time time! X

I've never looked into shared ownership, how does that one work?

You pay part rent and part mortgage, you need a deposit, have to do the total checks and I’ve heard it’s best to see a shared ownership broker. Over time you build up your percentage in the house with your mortgage payments as your salary hopefully increases.

To get more of an idea on prices, this is an example of an available house in Manchester:

www.plumlife.co.uk/development/the-fairways-little-hulton/

I'm going to have to have a look into these shared ownership things, they sound quite good!

Is it just something you can take out on new builds? As I've never been a huge fan of those - when we do finally buy we are looking for somewhere old and rural :)

Private renting can be pretty rubbish. We’ve just been told, very casually, that our landlord is going to put our home on the market in the spring. I’ve a three year old and I’m due another baby in March, so that was just fantastic news to be told two days before Christmas 🙃 we’ve been here nearly ten years and have been the perfect tenants in that time.

Shared ownership can be great, but be aware they are often mixed in with HA properties, and several friends who bought under SO schemes have to deal with exactly the same sort of behaviour that drove you to move out of your HA property. And the same failure by the HA to deal with the behaviour.

Obviously this could happen anywhere but the incidence may be greater in a development where a substantial proportion of the properties are HA.

Oh god how stressful for you!! :( we have 3 young children and a 4th due in 2 weeks - we also run our own business from home. So we would need a whole lot of notice if our landlord was to up and sell, as there's so many things that would need moving around and sorting!

You won’t get shared ownership on something old and rural. Plus you’ll likely need far, far more cash deposit. If you’ve never owned, and worked your way up the ladder, affording something like that will be very unlikely.

How about starting off with shared ownership and building equity to buy your dream home?

Avoid shared ownership if you can and just hang on and keep saving for a deposit so you don't need to go down the rip off route that is shared ownership. Seriously!

Yes unfortunately I suspect your landlords have been hit hard by the new rules for landlords which mean it isn't viable for them to keep the property anymore. The government (both parties) just didn't think through the consequences of the rule changes on BTL landlords and how it would force so many to sell.

Might you be in a position to buy from them if you have been there so long?

We just signed a three year contract with our tenant with the rent remaining unchanged over that time. The small mortgage we have on it is covered and we “make” about £250 a month from it. They have been a great tenant so it’s good for us and good for them.

They want the financial security to be able to save for a deposit each month and they are hoping to buy it off us at the end of the three years.

Not all landlords are out to shaft you.

Don’t be worried about privately renting from private landlords. The renters reform bill is coming to force next year. The private landlords will have no rights after that, you could literally live for free and it’ll take them years to evict you, especially if you’ve got children. That’s the main reason the majority of them are selling up.