Thinking of renting our house out ... What do we need to know?

[bubbleandsqueaks]

We are thinking of renting our house out, what advice would you give to us?

The letting agent is coming out Wednesday to give us a valuation.

What sort of questions should I be asking?

What sort of condition would you expect the house to be in? It's recently been decorated but there a few holes in the walls, should we decorate? Do all the walls need to be magnolia or will the pale colours we have be ok? Carpets in the bedrooms are not greeat quality but would hire a carpet cleaner - would that be ok?

I know we need gas and electric checks - how much are they roughly?

How much roughly is landlord insurance?

Any other advice really appreciated!

bump

there was a thread on here a while back with some tips - so suggest you do a search. gas boiler checks vary, so worth getting several quotes - about 70 here - you also need the landlords certificate to show its been done.

think about who your target audience is and then decide if they would be bothered by holes in the wall - eg student probably wouldn't care, but a professional type might.

pale colours fine. i wouldn't recarpet as they may get trashed anyway.

i've never had electric checks - you had to get some energy efficient one - but we've never done this. ga boiler one has to be done annually and very important.

landlord insurance - get quotes - depends on your property. will your mortgage company ok it being rented out? we just have buildings, no cotents - our places are unfurnished

make sure you have a signed contract - obviously - and i always check references - though i guess your agent may do this. i'd ask them. i'd also ask about what happens if something gets damaged by the tenant - you would need some way of proving it - ie no good just saying they trashed the place, you would need to prove it.

can't think of anything else at the moment - let me know any other questions.

are there any sorts of people that you don't want to rent to? eg big dogs. we have found families quite good as they like to keep the place clean and tidy and don't seem to have lots of wild parties.

you have to lodge the deposit with a recommended gov agency - the letting agent should be able to tell you about this.

you cannot tell what a tennants going to be like no matter what they look like and how good/bad their references are. you have to accept its pot luck

The mortgage company say its fine for us to rent out, we found that out a year ago when we were considering it.

Would prefer to rent to a family so I'll guess we better do the walls up.

Do you have any rules dreamingofsun such as no pets/hanging things on walls etc?

Have you ever used a letting agent? Do you know what sort of %'s they charge?

good advise from "dreamingofsun". Just want to add we have cookera nd carpets professionally cleaned before tenant takes over, we then have a clause put in the tenancy that both need to be done before they leave and provide receipts.
Oh and ALWAYS do an inventory and get tenants to agree, takes time but it is worth it's weight in gold when tenants leave.

We use an agent to find tenant, do credit and reference checks and get tenancy agreement drawn up and signed. We then collect rent and manage ourselves, which is easy to do if you live locally. This service is about 1 months rent.
For properties we have further away we use fully managed service for peace of mind.

Not sure what part of the country you are in but we have seen a huge rise in the cost of renting in the last few months in our area, due to supply and demand, so now is a good time to do this.

Best of luck.

we try to be as flexible as possible (or my husband does) I'm more of a stickler. consider how offputting whatever it would be for another tennant and how important it is for your current tennant. For example, hanging a few pictures unlikely to be a problem as further tennants will have pictures, unless they want to hang 50 in the lounge which i would say no to.

we have accepted a tennant with a dog but it was a small one and we have laminate floors. i wouldn't accept anything larger as they will trash your carpets (we have dog)

some tennants ask to redecorate - fine as long as its not rainbows or strange colours. we have let them off a bit of rent or provided paint sometimes.

i would have some form of documentation or picturs to show the condition of the property that they need to sign - might be sensible to get advice from agent - we haven't done this but i know if we had to take a tennant to court i would be on a losing case.

we have a tennant who gets some help from the gov, but i wouldn't normally accept one on HB - i would be concerned about how easy it was to evict them they if they got into arrears or trashed the place

it is a risky business - we have been doing it around 7 years with 2 properties and I've had to take someone to court. and that reminds me, don't listen to any sob story from a tennant - thats what resulted in our court case

Can I ask what do you think the minimum amount of money you need for 'back up' money? For example the times when you don't have a tenant and need to pay the mortgage or do repairs?

If the tenants do not provide receipts do they lose their deposit havetowearheels?

we don't use an agent unless we cannot find a tennant - i just put an advert in the local paper. they charge too much and i ended up sorting all the problems out anyway. you need to accept that when you have a new tennant you will probably have to allow some time to sorting out some niggles.

we use a contract from WHSmiths which maybe isn't the best but has always done what we needed

bubble - back up money - in past 7 years we've had a couple of times when we struggled to find someone and proprty has been empty for say a month. we tend to have longterm people which is good. though we do our best to get on with them and try and keep the places decent - unlike some awful stories you hear on here. so we don't really have money allocated - though we have savings. where you live may be different though

both our places are quite new, so repairs are fairly minimal

Can you do a scheme which will pay your rent if the property is empty?

i have heard of such schemes ....think a letting agent advertised it. call me synical but there's probably a catch eg rent is low or their charges high

Dont forget to factor in that you are liable to pay tax on the rental income (minus cost of repairs, mortgage interest and some other costs.)

I think we would switch to an interest only mortgage.

bumping for any more advice

If one of you earns a lot less than another, you can minimise the income tax by putting the house in the non-taxpayers name. Then you'd need to pay a lot less or maybe no income tax if the income is below the threshold.

Don't use barnard marcus or foxtons. IMPORTANTE.

I did this. Never again. Everyone I know who has ever rented their house out has said the same. It gets destroyed. My friend's house was spectacularly destroyed by professionals who you'd think would know better, mine was destroyed by a family.
Getting it let to a legal standard costs a fortune, as does putting it right after the tenants have left. I was advised to call the police.....

Gay40 that has really put me off

We rented out a house over a period of 3 years.
To families. It wasn't destroyed. In fact, it was all fine. We used Crowes as agents. It really pays to get a decent agent who will deal with the tenants so you don't need to deal with the legal issues or if it gets tricky.

Our last tenants refused to leave, making us homeless.

We had very bad experience with leasing out our home when we had a year away in another county....

Be wary of sharers. Esp men/boys.

Dont accept agents' assurances that they will visit - they wont.

DO your own inventory, detailing every nail, stain, lump, tear. Get a mate to walk around the house with you with the inventory to get everything recorded.

Take a video log of the house in the condition you leave it. Include the outside of the property and the garden.

our tenants put in a sky dish - we are a listed property - remodeled the garden, laid a path, put up reinforced fencing to prevent the dogs (rotweillers) escaping (we said yes to a dog. They had 3, including a puppy that dug up the garden). AGents never visited, so we did not know.)

Tell all your neighbors how to contact you. Ours lost our contact detail and spent a year being terrified of said rotweillers.

If you can, organise to visit with 24hours notice (as detailed in your contract)

We effectivly lost thousands - ours flooded the shower (water all through the living room ceiling), garden was decimated, back room was destroyed by dogs chewing the plaster from the walls and clawing the doors. Brand new kitchen was ruined - work surfaces gouged and doors scratched by dogs, oven beyond dirty (professional cleaner required)

The added insult - we found the place had been used as a doss house, we still get baliffs around.

Oh my goodness - Hatti that sounds awful.

Consider whether there are any social landlords who would lease house from you. Longer term security.

Borrow which guide to letting and renting.

A solicitor can draw up tenancy which is relevant and has clauses that you want. D I Y kits aren't always comprehensive enough.

If renting to a family consider if things like hanging pics etc is more likely to show they are making it homely and therefore likely to want to stay. Listen to euthausism when showing them around. Ask why they would like to live there and where they have lived previously.

Can I add that I used an agent. Two actually. Lying money stealing bastards.

We let out our home for six months - it was fine, the tenants (sharers, three men, one woman) looked after it reasonably well (though they didn't clean it when they moved out . Get a good contract, chase up references and make sure you are in an area where you will have a lot of people renting the house and won't have to take someone that you have reservations about. There are terrible tenants out there but, by and large, most people are perfectly reasonable.