To ask if anyone has rented out their home before?

[Hungryy44]

I own mine and considering doing this later down the line, however I'm worried about having nightmare tenants who refuse to pay, trash the property etc..
Has anyone got any tips or experiences of this? Thanks

Yes. One time. About a decade ago. It ended badly with massive stress for us, complaints from neighbours about noise, non payment of rent, drug dealing and painting a room gold.

I do not recommend. It’s even worse now. People just don’t pay their rent.

Unless you want to become a career landlord you are best steering well clear.

Renting out one house is rarely a money spinner and it is naive to think think that there is not a high risk of any of your fears coming true.

Tenants have an increasing amount of rights to stay (rightly so) and the legislation for landlords continues to become more complex

Absolute nightmare, took a year to get her out, dont do it!

It's not sounding good so far..maybe the best option is to try and sell then.

I have a flat I rent out and have done for over a decade. I have never had a nightmare tenant but I do have a very good agency who manage it for me and I do not make money from it. After agency costs, certificates, repairs, insurance and whatever else I can offset legitimately it just about covers its own costs.

My advice, good agency (talk to a few) and don't expect it to be a money spinner

I think it would be best to sell to be honest. Being a landlord isn’t easy and there are a lot of legal responsibilities involved. It’s not just an easy way to make some spare money.

Like most things in life though, you won’t hear many stories of the good tenants. For every bad tenant there will be hundreds of normal, decent people that just need a home to live in. Most people don’t trash their homes. Most people aren’t difficult about paying rent. Most people just want to live normal lives. But you won’t hear that side of it.

I have but be prepared to just break even, as expenses are so high these days. The gov.uk publishes a guide to landlords to have a look at it to work out your obligations and how much these are likely to cost you. As you are inexperienced, get an agent involved.

I really wouldn't these days. Courts have a tremendous backlog of cases where the tenant isn't paying AT ALL and it costs the LL thousands in legal fees to get a Court ordered eviction - if they get one at all.

You make very little money if any, you obviously still have to declare it to tax (even if rent is in arrears) and when you need your property back you may have another legal fight on your hands.

It's just not worth the stress IMHO. Sell it so it's done and dusted.

We do, and have done for about 8 years. We have been fortunate with our tenants but like to think we are very reasonable landlords. We pay a local estate agent nearly £200 a month for full management fees but to be honest they are useless and have always more of a pain than any tenant. We have always allowed pets and for tenants to decorate, as long as it is professionally returned to how they moved in. We don't increase our rent annually and keep it lower than market value. We get any issues resolved immediately and have the house painted every couple of years. By doing this we have had good, long term tenants.

I find this totally weird in the U.K. We own a flat in Australia which we rented out when we moved to the U.K. (only planning to be here a few years and may want to move back into it when we return). It is managed by a real estate agent - they find the tenants, check the references, arrange the lease agreement, collect the rent, organise the repairs, do an annual inspection, ensure we comply with rules eg around smoke detectors, etc. For all of this they take 7% of the rent as a management fee, plus two weeks’ rent whenever they find new tenants. This is totally the standard model in Australia. I don’t understand why in the U.K. there is this assumption that if you rent out a property you would so all of this yourself instead of handing it over to a professional to manage for you?!? Can’t you do that in England?!

I did for about 8 years. I was lucky and had two sets of good tenants. I used an agency to find them and conduct the relevant checks, then I managed the property. I also conducted all the viewings so I could get a feel of any potential tenants.

I never had any major issues but I know others that definitely have.

my advice would be to not consider it unless you can pay the mortgage without rent if the worst comes to the worst, do your research and make sure you stick to all the legislations and ect and make sure you get good landlord insurance.

I wouldn’t say there’s an assumption that you manage everything yourself. Plenty of people use a management service but I didn’t feel there was any point as I lived locally, and agents offer over charge for contractors and simple things such as sending letters.

OpenRent are a good low cost option to handle all your legal bits, advertising, collection and safeguarding of deposit, including escrow system for holding deposit and background checks for prospective tenants.

Once tenants are in place you "manage" it yourself but assuming the property is in good condition that workload is minimal.

You do have to be willing to treat it like a business though, to manage without the income if they don't pay and be able to ignore the hard luck stories.

I evicted my tenants for subletting to illegal immigrants, as a landlord you are legally obliged to verify that everyone in the property is in the UK legally.

Luckily for me they kept paying rent and fucked off without an argument when the notice period was up. Could have been horrible otherwise.

I sold it and never looked back!

I rented out a flat for approx 10 years and used an agent to look after it, find tenants, do inspections etc. Whilst we had no issues with tenants, we had to change our mortgage to buy to let and that was extra per month. Then there was all the electric and gas checks along with other fees you don't realise. The main thing for us was 'issues' in the flat so like something you could put up with them tenants wanted sorted. You need £XXXX for repairs as tenants will want everything minor thing sorted. Oh and there is the annual tax return. I sold eventually and would never do it again

Let out my house decades ago. Used an agency because I thought that would make it easier with them managing the day to day. What a mistake. They seemed to do very little for their money, allowing the tenants to not look after the place property. Ended up having to ditch the agency and get solicitors involved. Not a good experience. Much happier after I sold the house

We rented our house out for 4 years and luckily had the same great tenant who generally looked after the property (a few issues but that is to be expected). We were living abroad so decided to go with a managed letting through an agent for peace of mind but found that we didn't really need that after the first year. We did get landlords insurance with non payment of rent insurance from Alan Boswell but didn't need it. I'm not sure I would do it again as we knew we wanted to move back in and the laws are changing for tenants and landlords. We also didn't (and didn't expect to) make money from the letting and we didn't raise the rent as our tenant was great and we didn't want her to leave.

YANBU to ask, but YABU to do it, imho. Some friends did it, when they moved away for a planned 3 years. Nightmare, apparently, with rent arrears, damage etc. They said never again. 👍

I did it. Paid an agency to find and vet tenants. Was told it was a respectable young couple consisting of a man with a secure career in a local engineering firm. Stay at home wife with two young children. They paid the deposit, one month's rent and moved in.

From that moment they never paid me a penny more. It took me 9 months and two court appearances to get them evicted, and even then it took a bailiff and two police officers to drag them out, kicking and screaming and hurling verbal abuse at me, accusing me of being a "fucking capitalist bitch" who was forcing their kids out on the street. Later the husband came to my house drunk and tried to kick my door in.

Entering my property i found dogshit all over the carpets, used nappies and hypodermic syringes.

They owed me £3000 in rent arrears and I could not regain a penny of it. The police took no action. He sent me death threats. Again police did nothing. The council rehoused them then refused to give me their address, without which I could not pursue them for the debt.

The experience led me to sell up.

I walked into the agency office and demonstrated with the boss, who had supposedly vetted the couple. He ordered me off the premises saying I was no longer his client!

We did it for about 9 years (flat we rented out when we moved into a house elsewhere). Our tenants were lovely. We had about three sets, but they were all connected to the first lot (friends, partners moving in, etc). So we never had it empty. We rented it privately (i.e. no agents) at below market rate.

However, ultimately I don't think we made money on it. Probably broke even. The costs are high, the tax situation unfavourable and we probably would have been financially better off selling it when we moved out. But we were initially keeping it as an investment for DH's retirement (no pension). We sold it when the mortgage rate went up and it would no longer have broken even and there were also impending capital improvement costs on the building that would have landed us with a large bill for new windows.

I think the main question is, why? I rented my flat out for a couple of years when I moved in with (now) DH, to give us a chance to see if the relationship was going to work out. I then sold it and we bought somewhere together, so it worked for me. The tenants were fine but I do think I was lucky, they were a professional couple from abroad, and I'm glad I kept that security net when I first moved in with DP. I paid an agency to manage it and also paid for payment protection insurance (can't remember the exact name), so that if the tenant stopped paying rent I was guaranteed the money from the agency. Also if you let it out then sell you could be liable to pay Capital Gains tax, something else to consider.

Hasn't the value of the flat has increased over the past 10 years? If so, you have made some money from the letting. If not, why are you doing it?

I rented my parents' house to someone I thought at the time was a trusted friend. It was an utter nightmare - she started finding excuses for us not to go round and it turned out to be because she'd got involved with a local drug dealer and turned the entire upper floor into a cannabis farm. Plus she was smoking in the house, and when I finally got her out (minus her last month's rent), she left absolutely loads of her crap there, including a non-working, untaxed car, which we then had the hassle of removing, and then popped up a year or so later wanting the money for the car and the stuff she'd left!!! Never again.

OP- Is the house near a university?

When I met my now DH, he owned a rental property which a family had rented for 15yrs. They were generally very good, but decided to do a runner and not pay the final few months rent.

The house is in a university town and for the past 8yrs, has been rented to students. Not via a high street real estate, but the student union have a department which act as the agent. If the students leave the house a mess/damage etc- they don't get their degree! The union also inspect (I think) 3 or 4x a year to keep an eye on things.

We can choose which plumber/electrician is used, or the uni have their own to appoint. Generally, students change annually, but occasionally some stay a year or 2. So far, no major issues.

Bought house as it was where we wanted and not much comes up here, then rented out for 4 years before we moved back from abroad. Decorated badly not all with permission. More, larger, dogs than we gave permission for (we agreed to 2 chihuahuas, they had 5 dogs, including a St Bernard. Damage to widow sills (chewed by dogs), doors (4 had been punched or kicked in), windows etc. Swore at the neighbours and kept them awake at anti social times. No, I probably wouldn't do it again

Yep. Rented out our home for many years. Never had a problematic tenant. We tried, where possible to get tenants through word of mouth, knowing people who could personally vouch for them. But people direct through estate agents too and didn’t have issues.