To want to have a NICE rental house that isn't

[Blueuggboots]

Falling down, cold, exhausted decor and carpets, smelly, with a kitchen that has more than 6 cupboards?
We live in a big rental house. We've been served notice. Trying to find another decent sized house that isn't in its knees is so hard!
Don't tell me to get a mortgage. It's not possible right now.
Oh, and while I'm at it, estate agents don't want to help either! We actually got told the other day that an estate agent wasn't sure if the could do bookings in school time because they need their lunch?! I was just WTAF?!!

London?

plenty of decent rentals about although demand is obviously high in some places. And upcoming law changes mean many landlords are doing what I guess yours is, selling up. MN and Shelter will be pleased, at least.

There's a preponderance of folk on here and in real life who believe renting is second tier, and people who rent have made sub-optimal life choices.

It's not hard to believe that some of those folk may well be landlords, and put the very minimum into their rental properties.

Personally I think both that viewpoint and approach are disgraceful. No matter how you pay for something or what rights you have, a house should be clean and decent, and should be a home.

My parents have rented their entire lives, and my father is on six figures and the rest. It's a choice they've made, I think their retirement planning is safe.

Landlords should be held to a standard more, there is a real sense of renting out any old thing to "maximise yield" (ugh).

Good luck with your search, and hope you find a decent estate agent also.

That's exactly it Gindaddy! It's like we're second class citizens.
We're not in London, we're in the Midlands.

YANBU. Private renting in the UK is absolutely shitty.

Agree OP. My parents also rent although through a housing who seem to think they're doing my parents a favour by renting a badly maintained property for a shit load of money a week. Also midlands

Agree OP, when we were looking for houses to buy we looked at a lot of houses that had been rented out and some of them really shocked me. One only had an outside toilet. This was 2018! Landlords definitely need to be held to higher standards.

... I guess though it's because there aren't that many large houses up for rent because the owners are living in them .

Have you tried openrent?
When we decided to let out a lovely house we renovated (new boiler, kitchen, bathroom, carpets, replastered and decorated, rewired, etc.) as landlords, we were completely underwhelmed by the letting agents who came round so decided to go direct and used openrent and set the rent at around 5% less than the local market rate (as we had no agents fees to pay).

But you have to be dedicated in your search and be quick to respond We had a LOT of interest but let it to the first people who came to view it as we really liked them from the start - they had been looking for somewhere 'nice' for 2 months.

Nice rentals at sensible rents do exist- and I don't exaggerate when I say our rental house is in far better condition than our actual house!

Openrent are just Purplebricks for landlords, fine if it works but I wouldn't touch them, I'm in an area where there are a lot of 'don't even think about it' tenants and I use a real agent to filter out those. (He's very good at it) They advertise on rightmove etc so you won't miss any of their properties.

I note their website makes a big sales pitch of 'no tenant fees', 'deposit protected' etc; jolly good, if they did otherwise they would be breaking the law.

@fev11 I hope your rewiring won't fall foul of the upcoming electrical regulations, there are mutterings that these have been REALLY cocked up and all rentals will need to come up to the latest wiring regs. Housing Associations are of course totally exempt which shows that it is their tenants who are the ones considered second-class citizens. Not good.

Well there are plenty of large lovely houses in my area... but they're £3k a month!