Renting - Any negotiating?

cazuk11

Hi All,

Well, my search for the perfect house is over. I've given up.
So I thought I'd rent instead!

I've seen a house I think would be suitable on at £1550 per month.

Does it work like buying a house where you see the for sale price and then make your own figure up and offer another price? If so, what would be a good offer?

We would probably be in there for about a year, but would like a break out clause after 6 months just incase the perfect house comes along.

And also, what sort of deposit will we have to put down?

Any advice is appreciated.

Many thanks,
Caroline x

G_M

Sometimes you can negotiate on rent, sometimes not. Worth a try. Do research first: what are other similar properties renting for in the area?

Most LLs initially offer 6 month contracts till they know you're a 'good' tenant. Some may offer 12, some with/without break clause. Again, discuss what you'd prefer and hope the LL agrees.

Deposits are usually either = one month rent, or one & half. And rent is paid in advance so you'll initially need at least 2 months. There are sometimes admin/credit checking fees, especially if you go via an agency.

Shelter has useful advice here.

jimjames

At the moment depending on area there may be very little scope for any negotiation and if the press are to believed there have been instances of gazumping on rental properties. I would imagine if it is a popular property that they would easily get the rent if it is within the range for that class of property and area.

aliasojo

jimjames wrote: »

At the moment depending on area there may be very little scope for any negotiation and if the press are to believed there have been instances of gazumping on rental properties. I would imagine if it is a popular property that they would easily get the rent if it is within the range for that class of property and area.

Agree. And I can also confirm the gazumping thing, it happened to us last month and also to someone else we got talking to in the area we are to move to.

We routinely asked both letting agents and private landlords if there was any room for negotiation, frequently expressing our like for the property but citing the high council tax figures as a cause for our concern/hesitation.

Some laughed at us, some said they would consider a small reduction, no-one would drop any more than £100 per month and even then they would only go down that far if the property hadn't been let for some time.

We got £50 pcm knocked off the property we eventually signed up for. Not a great deal but every little helps.

I have to say though, most good properties were snapped up as soon as they came on the market, we missed out on loads by as little as half an hour in some cases. Clearly most LL or agents will get almost immediate tenants and will have no need to drop their price.

Always worth asking, the worst they can do is say no.

cazuk11

Wow! I thought renting would be simple compared to buying a house!! Thank you for your comments. I've only started looking at rental properties today so I'll keep an eye and see how quickly everything moves x

Aengil

I think it really depends on your area. I've managed to negotiate rents down a couple of times, but it's been based on checking the rents for similar properties on rightmove, zoopla, etc., and saying something along the lines of "we like the property, but it's just a bit over our budget and there are similar properties available for less..." (which was all true).

Even if the property is at a reasonable rate for the area, it might be worth negotiating if it's been sitting empty for a while, they might prefer to take someone now for a slightly lower rent than risk holding out for the full rent and having it continue to sit empty. Really depends on the supply and demand in the area though!

hellokitty08

It depends, is the property empty? Can you move in within a couple of days of the current tenant moving out? Do you have good references? All of these would work in your favour to negotiate on the rent.

daisygrabber

The last time we let, we built in room in the price to be able to drop a little (as this had happened the previous time we let) but the house was snapped up!

nzseries1

aliasojo wrote: »

I have to say though, most good properties were snapped up as soon as they came on the market, we missed out on loads by as little as half an hour in some cases. Clearly most LL or agents will get almost immediate tenants and will have no need to drop their price.

Are you completely sure of this?

How do you know that landlords are not advertising properties that don't exist? Or, perhaps they're still advertising as available properties that were already rented long ago.

sharpee

We managed to negotiate £150 off our rent, around 12.5% reduction on the rent.

It is always worth asking we first put an offer on our current house 6 weeks before they finally accepted out offer. We looked around and when we couldn't find anything went back with our final offer.

You never know till you ask!

aliasojo

How do you know that landlords are not advertising properties that don't exist? Or, perhaps they're still advertising as available properties that were already rented long ago.[/QUOTE]

I'm a bit confused. Why would anyone advertise a property that didn't exist?

Anyway I can only go on a) what we found personally and b) what we were told by agents, LL and other people in the same boat as us who we met during our trips to the area we wanted to move to.

We looked in various places for rentals, letting agents, private ads in newspapers, the internet, gumtree, ads in shop windows, word of mouth etc etc. A lot of the time we didn't even get to the viewing stage because they had been taken almost as soon as the ad hit. We were checking twice (sometimes 3 times a day on our desperate days) as we had just under 7 weeks to find something suitable in a good area 200 miles away from where we are now, and to set up school and other related things. There was just nothing available, nothing stayed around long enough.

We found that the good areas / good houses were snapped up asap and yes there were certain properties that stayed static for weeks/months but they were the ones that no-one wanted and were extremely poor with things such as holes in doors, broken kitchen units, ripped wallpaper etc.

I would add thought that this was 3 - 4 bed family houses we were looking at, mid market price £900 ish. I did see plenty 1 beds available and also various properties around the £1400 mark. It was also an area where people looked for accomodation as it was close to a University so perhaps that skewed things a little compared to other areas?