Buy to Let - Guaranteed rent -Good/Bad?

Nosht

Local Council or Local Housing Assocation can give a fair long term investment & should return the premises in a good condition depending on the terms of contract.

N.

BitterAndTwisted

Nosht it has already been pointed out by someone who has direct experience that what you have said is not necessarily always the case. Have you read Jowo's post at all? £7k-8k's-worth of damage and refurb costs but the LA are only paying £1k. That brings the rent down per calender month for a three-year let a fair bit I would say. Almost not worth bothering for all the aggro and time expended imo

gld73

I rented out my house for a year when I moved abroad with work - I used what was allegedly a good, well established letting agent, paying them for the full managed service seeing as I wouldn't be able to deal with things from the other side of the world.

It was an absolute waste of money, and when I came back to to UK on leave a year later, I sold it to get rid of the hassle, having not even covered the mortgage payments in the end. Anything the tenants wanted dealt with, the LA sent someone round at ridiculous cost to me, without even questioning whether it was reasonable; I didn't mind necessary things being done at all, but every 2 months they asked for the shower curtain to be replaced, needed an electrician to come out when all they'd done was trip a circuit breaker and just needed to flick a switch (the 2 mins work cost about 90 pounds!), and various other bits and pieces which ended up costing me hundreds of pounds I hadn't counted on.

At the final inspection, the LA said the house had been returned perfectly, so I agreed for the full deposit to be returned ... when I got back to the UK a week later, I found the kitchen cupboards had all been broken (not normal wear and tear), the tenants hadn't cut the grass once in the whole year, and they'd even nicked all the plugs from the sinks and the bath!

As well as the financial hit and the worry, I also felt pretty bad that I'd left my neighbours with tenants who'd just let the grass grow a couple of feet tall and hadn't cared how it made the road look.

I don't know whether renting it out through the council would be any better (and you'll need to check on your council website to see if it's a type they're currently looking for as they only take on a limited number). Personally I wouldn't rent a house out again unless I lived close enough to deal with things myself.

Jowo_2

It's been pointed out before that local council/housing association leases where a landlord hands over their property to be managed by them, really only works where

-there is no emotional involvement with the property
- where the terms of the lease is understood so the landlord knows exactly how much risk there is compared to normal contracts between landlord/tenants (i.e. reviewed by a solicitor).


Essentially, the reason why these leases can be a disaster is that there are two levels of not-caring for the property.

The first is that the social housing landlord will promise the world about the management of repairs and tenant to get the landlord to hand over the promise and then not deliver. Frankly, they then don't care because its not their stock, nor are these people their actual secure tenants (they have them on ASTs). My friend encountered incredible indifference and apathy by the council who couldn't even be bothered to return phone calls or respond to emails

The second that the social housing tenants have no stake in the property, its not really their place, its only temporary, they receive benefits so don't pay the rent. This means they are more inclined not to care about it.

They are also most likely to include vulnerable tenants - addicts, newly released prisoners, women fleeing domestic abuse and so forth, who may not always make great tenants because of their personal or social problems.

In my friends case, there were 30+ reports of tenant behaviour problems and the council never opened an investigation into it, dismissing everything through lack of evidence. The flat was half trashed and the council didn't even seem to know when the tenant had broken things - generally it was the neighbours or visiting workmen who reported the damage.

Any landlord going into it must be aware that their properties can be dumping grounds by lazy councils/HAs that don't want to house unsuitable tenants in their own properties...

pinarelloman

Again, loving all the information - I AM NOT GOING TO GO THE - RENT TO THE LOCAL AUTHORITY THING- I get it.

So... I am not going to sell. If I get stung by rubbish tenants than so be it - I will have to deal with that. I was hoping that looking through the ARLA site and getting a reference from them about complaints with certain Letting Agents might be a start.

I thought I would get a reference list from the letting agent so I could ring up other landlords and see what the issues are and if a particular manager is better than another.

I also thought about using a solicitors firm such as w w w rentmanagement and pay the 35 a month for piece of mind. Expensive but for the first one or two tenants and the need for calm and secure payments I thought this might be the way forward.

Thoughts?

Also - E14 area - anyone know of a decent LA?????