Making an offer on a 'To-Let' property (rather than 'For Sale' property)

I thought you could make an offer on anything really, whether it gets accepted on terms you like it's a different story.

sharkattack25 wrote: »

Hi all, long-time lurker here with my first post:

Is it possible to make a purchase offer on a property which is only advertised as 'To Let' (as opposed to 'For Sale')? I'm a first-time buyer, and the area that I'm looking is going through a bit of a dry spell in terms of new properties for sale on the market (the previous 2 years or so it's been non-stop action).

However, there are a lot of properties To Let that have been sitting untouched for several months with no developments, and given that buy-to-let is starting to lose it's appeal I was wondering if making an offer is a good idea? Does anyone have any experience/advice/pointers in this scenario, or should I just take a punt and make an offer?

Cheers

Just a quick note on advertising rental property. I have recently had two tenants give notice. Both properties were taken within 48 hours of appearing on RM.

Tenants then have to be referenced and the property will stay on RM until the day they move in which in one case is two months as the tenants gave 7 weeks notice and I always have a void week to get jobs done.

If as you say there is a dearth of property available I would be unlikely to sell unless you offered a fantastic price but others may be different.

Our last rental property was advertised on Rightmove for about 3 days and then removed as it had been let. However if you had been to look at it, it would have been vacant for about 3 weeks while the references were done and while the new tenants worked out when they wanted to move in.

Some rental properties are advertised as soon as tenants give notice so can be on Rightmove for several weeks. It doesn't mean that they are not letting it is just the way that a particular lettings agency works.

The properties that really are vacant for weeks and weeks on end and not let are going to have a lot of problems. Something like there is no parking outside, or they are on a busy main road, or miles from anywhere with no decent parking space. They may be on the lettings market because they are difficult to sell or the owner won't accept that they will have to sell them cheaply because of some problem.

We have in the past had offers to buy from tenants living in the properties but it is not our policy to sell our carefully chosen rental properties.

sharkattack25 wrote: »

Thanks, that's really useful to know. For you personally, would you ever get to a stage where a lack of rental demand would lead you to sell, or would you simply keep lowering your rental demands until there was interest?

The people who are running successful lettings businesses don't buy properties that won't let. They do their research as to what lets well and they buy a property that they know will work well as a rental. They don't just go out and buy any old property and put it on the market as a rental. The rental properties are carefully chosen to meet a certain rental market. So it is unlikely that any of the professional landlords would have properties which didn't let.