Renting out my house

[L3nny]

I want to move house but cannot afford to buy in the area I want to.

I also don't really want to sell my house now as I won't get a very good price for it.

Another reason I don't want to buy another place is I may get the same problem of being fed up with the area after a while, similar to what has happened in my current location.

My plan is to rent this house out and rent another place somewhere else.

Has anyone done this before? Did they use an estate agent? What did they charge you? Did you get any hassle with the tenants?

Thanks lovely org

Yes .... let my flat out ....
Yes .... used an agent ...
No ..... no problems ...
Cost ..... numerous .... Agent charges, gas cert, deposit registration, insurance, inventory .... etc ....

Overall though ... go through an agent .... will cost more, but they will get you more ..... void periods reduced ... and good tenants use an agency (as a rule)

PM me if you have any more questions .... my Mrs is a runs a lettings office !!

[L3nny]

Thanks mate, will do.

[Dave20046]

Rent prices are due to go up even(!) higher soon, wondering if you could capitalize on this. Rent asap and rent yours out as soon as it's ready at the inflated price? You'll need to idiot proof your existing house and remove anything expensive/you like. People always seem to have problems with estate agents and I've been advised time and time again to rent privately/direct from the landlord (just check the contract thoroughly etc.)

[timwilky]

A mate across the road is renting his place out. Doing it himself. downloaded an off the shelf contract from the net and tweaked it to suit.

The difficult part is getting decent tenants. his first managed to scarper the day before he was coming round to forcibly evict. The one now are a delight, keep it clean, no pets apart from a Kwak Zed thou.

He put my name on the contract as his agent with a right of entry. Just to ensure after the first lot there would be no problems. I have actually been in twice, but as the guest of the tenants and even when nick (The owner) turns up at my house to scrounge a brew he has nothing but praise for them

I thought about doing this. Only problem is that the rent you receive is taxable and can't be offset against the rent that you're paying.

[L3nny]

I know using an agent is probably the easiest way of doing it but for what they do they seem to charge an awful lot and it's nothing I couldn't do myself. The only thing I would use them for is to find a tenant, they said they can do this for %75 of the cost of the first months rent.

Does this sound reasonable?

[L3nny]

Originally Posted by wyrdness

I thought about doing this. Only problem is that the rent you receive is taxable and can't be offset against the rent that you're paying.

I see, do you know how much tax you have to pay?

[dizzyblonde]

I thought of this also, but then I suppose its seen as second income, and the taxman would get Capital gains on it(or something). Wouldn't be worth it for me.

When my mother moved to Fueterventura she left her house here for me to rent from her, for 2.5years I had no problems sub-letting the rooms.
When I moved out my mum got an agency involved with letting out the whole house. Local Properties were the agency of choice and within a month they had 2 blokes living there.
3months later I get a phone call from a naighbour which went along the lines of
"POLICE ARE ****IN EVERYWHERE, ITS YOUR MUMS HOUSE ITS YOUR MUMS HOUSE QUICK DRUGGYS EVERYWHERE! QUICK"
BOLLOXS! me thinks, hops in the car (no bike then thank god!)
make it to the house and sure enough 2 blokes sat in the back of a pair of paddy waggons and coppers everywhere. They'd been growing the ganga in the attic! Back door totally feck#d needed the extension wall re-building.

Needless to say they were evicted, god knows how they werent banged up tbh but anyway they were out the next day.

They moved out, in moved a loverly family of polish people. Paid 2 months rent never paid again and refused to move out claiming squatters rights. Eventually we got them out by basically making life for them hell. (I might be all smiles but I can b a right ruthless **** if provoked, ask miss YC lol).


So in my experiance I'd never rent anything out to anyone ever again unless I personally knew them, agencies dont do enough because data protection actually stops them from finding out about prior convictions. An the liability of slander and people having human rights to accomodation stops them from knowing the real reason why they are changing lettings.
NEVER EVER EVER AGAIN!