'Stop-gap' house rental

[Glamorgans]

I've got a 3 bed property that I've previously rented out for 10 years. Tenants moved out last year and I've renovated it, as it was getting tired.

It's a modern townhouse near a popular spa town, and I was thinking of letting it out as a long term 'stop gap' house instead of a usual AST.

So for example, families whose house purchase has fallen through etc and they have their stuff in storage but they need a nice home temporarily, without committing to a tenancy, as they search for a new purchase, breaking the chain - it'd be fully furnished and include all bills.

-gas, electric, council tax & water included
-fibre broadband
-no maintenance garden
-two parking spaces
-fully furnished

Basically a long term airbnb with a minimum 1 month stay.

I'm wondering if this would actually have any demand, and what your budget would be for this, per month? Or if you'd just go for a usual 12 month rental?

Hi OP,

We have a one-bed central London garden flat which we used to rent out via Airbnb using an agency to manage. The agency got a lot of requests for medium-term stays for these sorts of reasons, and more than 3/4 of the period we rented it that way it was taken up with these longer-term all-inclusive tenancies.

Couple of thoughts:

1. The agency were always fretting when it came up to the 6-month mark with a mid-term rental - because in law the occupants qualify for certain renters' rights after that period and it could have been much more involved to give them notice after that time. We only went over that time with 2 people and were lucky, but the agency strongly advised us to always stick to a 5.5 month maximum stay.

2. We made good money on our all-inclusive rates but that was a couple of years ago - with energy bills skyrocketing I'm currently glad that we currently have our tenants responsible for their bills! (If someone else was paying for my heating I'd be using it right now :))

Good luck with it.

That's very helpful, I really appreciate your reply thank you!

That is one thing that concerns me (gas/electric) but it is a very energy efficient house, and I think I'd have to reconsider rates if the usage was ridiculously astronomical!

A standard rental price for the house is £1100pcm, with running costs & furnishings taken into account would a flat rate of £1650pcm sound reasonable? Location is the Midlands.

The need for long term family accommodation is currently so high... Bearing in mind the additional maintenance, responsibilities, paper work and potential void periods, I'd urge you to keep the house available for long term tenants!