Getting house ready to rent

[ApplesTheHare]

What are your top tips for getting a house ready to rent and attracting good tenants?

We're about to take on a house that we'd eventually like to knock through to ours but need to rent it out in the meantime. I never intended to become a landlord but want to be a good one and give tenants a lovely home.

Should probably say it's a small 2-bed, with kitchen and living room downstairs and a garage. No garden. I'm imagining a younger couple or older person would like to live there. It's in a secure, quiet location but within walking distance of various amenities.

Newly painted/decorated. Good general condition ( decent central heating,windows, etc) Nice kitchen( cooker in helps ) and bathroom. Damp free. Safe electrics ( You need yearly gas/ electricity checks anyway )
Modern curtains / blinds. Easy to maintain garden ( supply mower if it has grass)
Another observation in your situation is you will be the neighbour . Try not to be too territorial. Whilst they are paying you rent it is their home to live in ( obviously not to trash it) but there will be times where you have to bite your lips as how they live might not match how you live.

Was writing this at same time as your 2nd post. See you have no garden !

Hi op, i think to attract the right tenants (tidy, considerate, nice people) keep the house presentable without clutter, present it as you'd like them to keep it. Make sure the tenancy agreement clearly states your expectations (e.g if you want them to take on a cleaner, how to keep awkward surfaces maintained etc) and contact expectations etc. Being friendly but professional and responding quickly to problems without fuss has worked for us and we have lovely tenants who respect our home. We've let them put pictures up etc to make it theirs while they're there. Good luck, you sound like a caring and thoughtful landlord.

I always have the oven professionally cleaned. It isn't usually expensive (about £40) and it avoids any arguments at the end of the tenancy about how clean it was when they moved in. It's also a nice touch I think as no one wants to use a dirty oven.

I also always have a professional inventory done when tenants move in and out. It's about £80 but again covers any arguments.

We have just been discussing this!

We already have a long term buy to let, but we are becoming 'accidental landlords' of our long term home.

We are redecorating and recarpeting (although this will be after we move out which means they wont view it pristine)

We have just decided to leave our very expensive range cooker as it is more cost effective than buying one to replace it, moving it, having it converted to electric etc! We are going to write into the contract howvit must be cleaned.

We have just bought new blinds for the kitchen. We will leave our curtains that I adore! They wont fit in our new house anyway.

It will be a very high standard because it was always going to be our 'forever home'. So it has a good quality kitchen and bathroom. I am.hoping this will attract good tenants.

We were discussing whether we should not accept children initially. Obviously can't stop them having children once they are tenants!

Oh another one! Don't put anything in the house that you'd be upset if it got ruined. (Sounds obvious but I never even thought).

I left two pairs of very expensive curtains in a room with two windows, and one of them has been ruined by the tenants (not intentionally). They were very expensive but now I'll have to replace both pairs. Had I just bought cheaper ones then I wouldnt mind so much.

Oh and think about whether you want to allow pets. My husband won't allow dogs (but is ok with cats so long as there is a clause in the contract that carpets will be professionally cleaned at the tenants expense when they move out).

Also make sure you have fixed smoke detectors AND if possible a fixed carbon monoxide detector. I have a freestanding one that my tenants put in a cupboard and then couldn't find them it came to the gas safety inspection!

Thank you all, this is so useful. Everything will be new as the house has currently sat empty for years so hopefully this will be attractive and then they can make their own mark on it. We won't just go for cheapest kitchen and bathroom either as I want people to feel at home. We'd allow children but no pets I think as we have lots of our own. This house sits in same plot as our house and gardens so I wouldn't want our animals and DD being bothered by random dogs, etc.

I hadn't thought about curtains. Do you provide them if it's an unfurnished property?

I did, but only because we lived there prior to moving out and none of them were any use in our new house! I'm not sure what is the done thing actually.

@apples i think you should have some window dressing even if it's unfurnished. We left some black out roller blinds in bedrooms and some lighter material but still white blinds downstairs where the window looks out onto the street. I think it's a good security measure as well- no one wants randoms to see inside the property. We got ours from John Lewis and had a handyman fit them. Our place was bought and renovated as our forever home too, so was a bit more high spec which meant we could ask a good price and have a nice professional family in there now paying slightly over what we'd asked.

Agree with pp about the professional inventory.

Oh and you'll have to be ok with general wear and tear, make sure you save some of your rental income for maintenance and emergency costs but also make sure you get yourself landlords insurance and boiler cover, and know your appliance warranties so you don't waste money on fixing broken appliances that are still under warranty. Sounds obvious!

We're just having FIL's property renovated to rent out, what are your thoughts on provision of WiFi?
I'm saying no, we'll be forever taking calls about it not working etc but I can see it might make the property more attractive!

you dont do that. tenants organise all their own utilities. you could get the phone line installed but that's it.

upthread - detach, do not leave complex things, meet all legals, expect rent paid, no drug dealing and no trashing, anything else is a bonus.

clearly states your expectations (e.g if you want them to take on a cleaner...
In general, you can't tell tenants they have to employ a cleaner, surely? You can only ask them to keep it clean and tidy, but actually you can't really insist on that (their right to quiet enjoyment trumps your right to have the property kept how you'd like it) - they only have to return it to you in a tidy state when they leave.

make sure you save some of your rental income for maintenance and emergency costs
And for the tax on the rental income, which you'll need to work out (or get an accountant), and pay through self assessment.

you cannot put unreasonable contract terms in. no demanding cleaners or how a cooker is looked after.

TBH if you will be living next door, I would use a reliable letting agent, and disengage. You don't want the tenants to be contacting you for every small thing and to be arguing about maintenance or similar. If you don't, get a professionally drawn up tenancy agreement, tenant vetting service and as pp has mentioned inventory.
Curtains are debatable, some recommend they are supplied others don't. we have tenants who have taken them down, stored them and replaced with their own while living there, others used them ( and some who took my curtains when they moved) . If you supply them make sure the bedrooms have blackout blinds or linings.
No to wifi- they can organise that themselves, although you might want to see if you can get fibre to the front door if you have it in the area.
Decor - neutral - usually white or magnolia and be explicit about re-decorating and whether you want the rooms returned to your colour when they leave. We had a flat where the tenant redecorated in a dark mustard throughout and could not re-let it until it had been returned to magnolia- which took several coats.
As far as pets are concerned, would you consider a house cat or house rabbit?

We rented out a 5 bed house with a large, 150ft, garden and included in the rent a monthly gardener to keep the garden in check.

The tenants like not having to worry about the garden and it won't be an overgrown jungle when they eventually leave!

My sister paid a £50 supplement to be able to decorate her place - just painting the walls.

Made her feel a lot more at home, and they approved the paint colour (basically to avoid anything hellishly hard to remove).

It could filter out people who don't want to look after the place?

As an ex-renter having items like curtains or light shades that are not to your taste is frustrating as you want to take them down and store them. Blinds are useful to have and fixings to put up your own curtains if you want.
Basically everything neutral and nothing that’s not fixed down like ornaments that the tenants will have to remember to leave behind when they leave!

To be fair we'd be happy for tenants to decorate. I think it's important to be able to make somewhere feel like home.

Sounds like curtains are controversial so might just avoid them. I'd like to go through a letting agent but seems crazy when DH is based here so could deal with any queries. I'm hoping that if we hand everything over in good working order there won't be too many things to fix??

p.s. keeping a portion of the rent aside each month for maintenance and tax are great points. Thank you!

We don't use an agent (but have previously when we lived far away). We are ten minutes away now. It means we have more choice of tenants (rather than agents choosing for us) but means we have to sort out our own tenancy agreement, referencing etc. It can be quite time consuming setting it up especially with the new right to rent legislation. However, I just cannot justify the huge sum that agents charge when we live so near.

I would recommend setting up a separate bank account and keeping all your payments entirely separate from your everyday account. We have one that rent goes into and we pay for any expenses out of that account, including the mortgage. It means there is always funds there if the boiler needs fixing, the insurance is due etc etc.

We are in the middle of this right now. 😫

Trying to get all the little odd jobs done that we’ve ignored for years and pack at the same rime!

Good luck.