Rental: cheeky potential tenants

[erloe]

I have a rental which was my home before I met dh. It’s a one bedroom flat in a very very sought after development. I listed it for £3,200 a month and got no interest. I reduced to £3,000 and got one viewing. They offered £2,700 a month.

I got another message asking if the kitchen appliances had been updated since the pictures because the washing machine looked 20 years old. I have now had new pictures taken.

Have other people had tenants haggle on price? I rented it for £2,700 in 2019.

It’s commonplace for the sitting room to be used as a bedroom in Central London.

🤣 in a student house share or and HMO maybe. Otherwise definitely not!

It's not common in £3000 flats! Who is stupid enough to pay 1500 to share a 1 bed

Exactly!
1500 to sleep on the settee??!!

@dreamingbohemian
It's not common in £3000 flats! Who is stupid enough to pay 1500 to share a 1 bed''

Exactly!

Who is going to pay £1500 to share a bedroom or sleep in living room?

It makes zero sense.

Sharers would go for a cheaper property in a different part of London where each person can have a room and privacy.

Also a landlord should be rather concerned about this type of arrangement.

A one bed should be for a couple or a single occupant, not for sharers.

Does not bod well in my opinion.

so you’ve accepted an offer from two sharers because they offered you the market price per month?
YET… you declined a guaranteed income of £65k almost for the next two years….
give yourself a shake OP.…..
And get the decorum of grace and common sense at the same time. You are so gullible.

Sorry but that’s just not true. Yes for student accommodation, not otherwise.

I would also imagine you will have more wear and tear from two people sharing the flat in this way turning the living room into a bedroom.

Yeah seems a bit of a copium to save face.

It's not unheard of one person to sleep in the living room, but common, I doubt it. You are probably looking at a single figure percentage even in London using a flat in this way, it's not optimal.

The difference is £300 a month = how much is that after tax and other expenses?

The ideal tenants are people that are reliable and stay long-term, of course there is no way to know who is better at this point but let's face it a setup like this hardly screams long-term arrangement, otherwise they too might have offered two years?

Don't understand why any sharers would choose OP's flat over having their own one bedroom flat. Usually the set-up she's describing is people who can't afford their own place. That's not relevant at the price OP is charging.

I saw a couple of flats on Rightmove going for around £1,500 a month in Kentish Town, where Keir Starmer lives. Not quite central London but pretty close and a desirable area.

Still it's up to her and her new tenants if that's what they want to do.

The only thing I can think of is international students with parents that have money to burn. Paying £3000 between two & having to use the lounge as a bedroom seems bonkers to me. I would have gone with the couple that wanted reduced rent but would commit to two years. Especially based on the faff of getting new tenants (as you’ve found).

I don’t even think it’s acceptable for students not to have a common place to gather. I can’t imagine all these flats have lounges that are completely separate with their own door that doesn’t mean people have to traipse through someone’s lounge / bedroom to access amenities.

If someone has to sleep in the lounge, as far as I am concerned, it’s overcrowding. The council wouldn’t give a 1 bed flat to a single parent with two opposite gender kids and expect one kid to sleep in the lounge, would they?

Either way, at 3k per month, I think it’s a vile state of affairs, and I very much doubt these new sharers will be staying very long.

I only ever came across one house share with no common lounge or other area and it was basic AF and pretty unpleasant. But that LL was only charging £350 a month. For £350 a month maybe it’s alright to be forced to eat in your room. Well, I didn’t think it was alright and I didn’t move in, but iirc no one had been there more than 4-6 months anyway.

I'm surprised that the layout allows for sleeping in the living room. Most one beds we've seen in central London have an open plan living kitchen.

Generally new builds are open-plan but the OP's flat maybe is not that.

And there are varying degrees of suitability - some flats I've seen lean themselves quite well to this if the kitchen is self-contained and large enough to put a table in.

Let's be honest though for landlords this wouldn't be the ideal first choice of tenant. If there were two groups paying the same rent but one was a couple of course you'd choose the couple. After all, open-plan really was just an excuse to make the kitchen much smaller.

TBH though the renters willingly have paid; on that sort of budget they could easily have rented something bigger further out, so to them the location is worth it. Nobody knows exactly where it is or even what it is, so although expensive in absolute terms it could still be value for the right people.

Even the period ones seem to have been knocked through where we've looked ( although that may be related to our budget tbh).

The ones with a kitchen that fitted a table were very rare in our price range- so may well merit a 3k price tag in prime central areas!