Painting and Renovating a Rented Apartment

[limehouseyuck]

We live in Central London (Zone 1). The cost of renting here is significantly cheaper than buying due to interest rates and prices being out of sync. We don’t want to buy in London.

We live in a townhouse where several other apartments are held on leases of about 5 years. Currently about to renew ours, and were thinking of signing up to a 3 year+ lease.

The thing is, that the entire flat needs repainting, and new flooring in one room. If we were to pay for this and paint ourselves, at say a cost of £1,000, we’d be happy here. Would we be in a better position to negotiate a fair price for the lease? Has anyone done this? Appreciate this won’t be commonplace in the UK.

In this market, no you wouldn’t get a discounted rent. You would likely get permission to repaint the flat but like with like, as in you can’t paint a cotton white room marigold yellow, but you could paint it linen white.

You would likely get permission for new flooring- however unless the landlord at a minimum buys the materials the flooring remains your property even after installing and you have the right to take it with you when you move out or sell it to incoming tenants or sell it to the landlord.

I definitely wouldn't do it before negotiating rent. If you've already done it you've nothing to negotiate with. And the landlord knows you won't want to leave having spent all that money so would be even less likely to agree to a discount. It puts you in a weaker position. If you end up staying I'd paint the walls and get huge rugs for the floor that covers most of the room, then you take them with you easily when you go. You wouldn't get a good price for flooring you'd installed if you tried to sell it, everyone would already know you didn't want it because the chances of it fitting another room exactly are low. Rugs for any room that is bigger than the rug so much easier to sell on or use yourself for other properties.

It’s true you would not recover your costs from selling on flooring, but if OP wants to do new flooring it’s nice to know it doesn’t become the landlords property just by virtue of her installing it with their permission. Some floorings are easy to remove and refit to a new space- ie floating wood flooring like laminate or engineered hardwood.