Anyone ever rented their property through a letting agent? And did you get payments even if you had no tenants?

[jmum6]

We are thinking of moving soon and are seriously considering letting our excisting property out instead of selling it, and then using the monthly payments from tenants to help pay for a new mortgage on a new house (we have a small minimal mortgage which we would pay off before moving on our house atm.)

But, the problems I can forsee with this option is that:
a) what happens if we have no tenants? Therefore no rent to help fund the new mortgage.
b) cost of repairs.
c)cost of a letting agency to manage the proerty.

So has anyone done this...or is this just a pipe dream of ours?

We let a house as we are overseas and we use an agency. If house empty we don't get any rent. We pay a percentage of the rent to the agents to manage the property for us.

Our house has been let now for almost 13 years. We have always kept the rent slightly lower than what we could get as we feel it is better to have x amount for a year rather than risk it being empty for 6 months.

Yes that makes sense to keep the rent slightly lower to ensure a tenant.

I don't know why I have it in my head that some letting agencies will still pay you a sum even if you have no tenants. Maybe I dreamt it!!! Or wishful thinking maybe!

some of them guarantee the rent - as in if you have a tennant they ensure you always get paid, even if tennant does not pay, they chase for the arrears . you have to pay more for this service

jmum - we were in UK over New Year and I did notice a sign in an estate agents about renting out property and guaranteeing rent. Have no idea how it works though.

We have two properties that we let out and like Buda says, if you don't have tenants in, then you won't get any rent.

Again, like Buda, we tend to keep our rents on the low side. We would rather keep our current tenants as long as possible, and both properties rented out with no vacant periods.

Letting agents will charge you a percentage of the gross rent for managing the property and they will have different rates depending on the level of service you want from them.

We don't really aim to make any profit on the properties, we just want the rent to pay our mortgages and costs really. You will have to factor in a contingency for things such as boilers (both breaking down and annual safety checks - which are compulsory) and maintenance of the property, and also for things like the white goods breaking down.

If you do make profits, then this amount is taxable if you are a tax-payer. So you will have to keep detailed records of both your income and outgoings related to the properties, which you have to declare on your tax return.

Thank you everyone, it's definitly given me something to think about...to see if it's for us iyswim.

nope - just bills! lol
If you want some more details of what we pay to letting agents, you can CAT me.

I had a bad experience with a letting agent who selected bad tenants for us. It cost a lot of money.
Obviously no tenants are guaranteed but if I was going to do it again, I woudl select them myself. Frankly I care a lot more about my property and therefore about who I allow to live in it than any letting agent.

We've recently rented out our old house to fund a new one as we couldn't sell it.
We paid a letting agent to find the tenant but we manage it ourselves. We paid them 6.% of the year's rent, which they took out of the first payment from the tenants.
The tenants have to give us two months' notice if they want to end the tenancy, which hopefully is enough time to find another one.