Renting until house sells....

[secretsquirrel1]

Need advice please.......

House is on the market (6/52 so far) and my new job starts on Aug 1st - so DD & I will need to rent somewhere until it sells.

I will need to rent out my house if it doesn't sell - and I don't know where to start! We are staying with friends in the new area until Sept when there will be more choice of rentals (after the hols).

I'm a novice to all this - haven't rented for eons. So I need to start planning.

Any advice would be most gratefully received. Thank You.

The first thing to do is decide if you want to use a rental agency or not. They will take a % of the rental income as payment. Do not go with the cheapest as this can turn out to be a false economy if your hosue is trashed. You also need to get landlords insurance and notify your mortgage company about the change in set up. Also any profits made from renting your property will have to be declared as taxable income.

Thanks, Midweek. Will ask agents for quotes....I'm hoping that I'll have some degree of protection if I go through an agent so wasn't going to privately rent it.

different deals with different rental agencies: I know our neighbours have an agency for the legal paperwork, but do rest themselves (maintenance, money flow). I think that's a common set up.

I rent my flat privately, having used an agent for the first tenant who was rubbish and charged a fortune (1 month's rent just to get a tenant/do the paperwork, not even to manage!). Because I wanted to be there to meet the prospective tenants anyway it didn't save me any time with viewings, and they were completely crap with paperwork getting contracts wrong multiple times, refusing even to deal with putting the deposit in DPS which they said wasn't included in their fee! For £850!!

I was a bit scared at first, but actually it's not nearly as hard as I thought.

You can do credit checks online at Letting Ref and contract templates and all the other stuff at Oyez (and I'm sure plenty of other places too). Then you just have to put the deposit in the DPS, which is easily done online with a debit card, takes minutes.

I have a British Gas homecare contract for maintenance - for about £55 per month the tenant can ring them direct and arrange appointments and they will come out and do it free at point of use. Covers boiler/heating, plumbing and drains, electrics and the washing machine/cooker/fridgefreezer. I probably have spent more on that then I would have on ad hoc fixes but then you only need one expensive thing to go wrong for it to be worth it, also it takes all the administrative hassle of finding a tradesman and getting quotes and stuff. Tenant just calls them, quotes the account number and bish bash bosh. I don't even need to be involved. For anything else I send a local handyman round at £40ph or whatever.

I've been pleasantly surprised at how easy it has been. Little bit of hassle in terms of placing adverts/fielding enquiries/doing viewings at the beginning but I'm lucky that I've always had lots of interst (tiny studio flat in trendy part of north east London!) so last few times I've had an 'open viewings' morning and let it to someone that day.

Thanks Ecuse & Voles, it's all v. valuable info!

Mine is a 3 bed detatched house - it'll be a bit harder to find suitable tenants, I'm guessing.

It may not be hard to find suitable tenants - we rent a three bed house!

Bear in mind that selling your house will become more complicated once you've let it.

Firstly many people will only enter into a rental agreement if you take it off the market for selling.

Secondly, assuming you agree a 6-month AST with your tenants then (within the AST period) any buyer will also need to take the tenants with the house.

Also your selling agent cannot just show potential buyers round whenever they/you want - it will be down to when it's convenient for your tenants

I'm house hunting (for a 3 bed house!) and I wouldn't make an offer on a property that had a tenant in it. That's because I know that they have rights which go beyond the mortgagee's rights.

If they decided not to leave they'd need to be evicted through the courts, which can be lengthy and expensive.

Too risky for me!

Also we're currently waiting to see a house which has a tenant in it (although as I said we won't offer until it's vacant). We haven't managed to see it yet though as it's not been convenient for the tenant. They're understandably less keen to change their plans to accomodate viewings than the owners!

The plan would have to be to take it off the market and rent it out for 6 months - I can only imagine how difficult it would be trying to sell with tenants in situ

I have actually rented mine out whilst selling it with not too much hassle. Agree all those things are risks in theory but it won't necessarily pan out like that. I was very upfront and honest with my tenant, explained I was selling and that I would give her as much notice as I could (more than the contractual minimum if I was able) and that I'd understand if she found somewhere else in the interim. In the end she stayed 6 months or so whilst it was up for sale then left. Then for the last few months I rented it out on a month-to-month contract having advertised it as such and been absolutely clear with tenants before they moved in that this was what was happening. I offered a substantial decrease over market rent to compensate for the inconvenience of potential short notice and of having viewings. It didn't quite pay my mortgage but it was better than having it standing empty. I know that approach is not without risks, but it worked OK for me.

...although I concede that plan is better to work better for a studio flat in London than a 3 bed family house!