Any landlords who live outside UK?

[AmericasTorturedBrow]

We own a small flat in London but have moved to America and want to rent our flat rather than sell it. Would rather rent to someone we know (prepared to take less money) and manage it ourselves but in case we can't find anyone, would you go through an agency to find tenants and then manage it? We'd obviously then have to charge more to cover the costs but I think the going rate would cover than for us.

Any recommendations? Have only dealt with agencies when I was renting myself and always found them to be a nightmare, much preferred dealing direct with landlords (even had a landlord who lived in America and it was fine him managing, but we were good tenants!)

We live in Europe and rent out our UK house through a management agent. It's so much easier having someone the tenants can call 24 hours a day if the heating stops working!

We rented a house in London and had a landlord in America. We had a very good relationship (never met) but kept in touch by email and if something went wrong (and the heating did) he got on to it straight away.

He had advertised through an agency but then took over management himself.

We were delighted not to have to deal with agents.

We had a similar situation Carla and it was great

I just don't trust agencies to get things done for the money you end up paying them, not to mention as a tenant having to pay out just to renew contracts etc.

We lived in a rented house owned by someone who lived abroad.

It was a nightmare, even through an agency, nothing got done, but got very arsey as we wanted to pay monthly not weekly (!) and weren't happy with a broken cooker or sub-standard washing machine.

We're now in our own house. My advice to tenants would be never rent from a landlord not in your time zone , and don't trust Countrywide as an agent, they were quite frankly shite!

We are and use a property management company rather than estate agent. They only charge 500quid/year, not sure if that's mates rates or not. They handle everything for us, and any repair costs are deducted from rent. To be fair, we've had the same tenant for 5yrs so has not been a hardship.

It does, of course, depend on both parties being decent and I like to think that most people are decent, so it should work.

We rented very happily with this set-up for 3 years and only left the house to go overseas.

The only time we heard from the agency was when they tried to get us to renew a rental agreement (and pay for it). We just ignored that and they never bothered us.

This is the thing, it does totally depend on both parties - and I appreciate the time zone issue button used to still working with those in UK and have a handyman friend round the corner who's happy to be "on call"

Likewise I can't check the flat regularly and worry and worry about managing potentially difficult tenants from so far away.

I suppose I just need to decide which risks I'm willing to take - I don't want to risk pissing off decent tenants with a shit management company (which in my renting experience they ALL have been!)