Making offers on rental properties

gazfocus

Is it normal to offer full asking price for rental properties or should we be looking to make an offer? We've going to view a house today that's up for £575pcm but wondering what kind of figure to offer considering it needs a fair bit of decoration and possibly new carpets as the carpets are look very worn from the photos.

DannyboyMidlands

I always make offers on rental properties. What's the worst that can happen?

Presumably the landlord would sort out the decoration rather than yourselves.

I'd try to work out how long the place has been empty and therefore how much rental income the LL is "losing" each month. Say it's been empty for a couple of months, in my experience most LL would happily knock £50 per month off in order to get it occupied.

I would actively try to sniff out places that have been empty for a while.

gazfocus

Thanks, however, this particular house (according to property-bee) has only been listed since 6th July, but is empty and has a new conservatory (money I think would've been better spent on the rest of the house). I'll try and gauge how friendly the letting agent is and see if they think we'd have any success with a lower offer. We were thinking of offering £25 less than the asking but then we noticed that on property-bee the price was originally £550 but has been increased to £575!

DannyboyMidlands

In that case offer £50 less then you can negotiate and settle on £25. Good luck.

DannyboyMidlands

Remember that every empty week is costing £130.

money.saving.convert.

Hi, i started renting in October last year and went to view my flat a month before whilst the old tenants were there.

Anyway the rental price was £650 and we cheekily offered £600 but the lovely landlady said she could do £630 which we agreed on.

Anyway, don't worry, be cheeky and give it a go... maybe use the extra money towards a treat every month.

gazfocus

Very true indeed. I was thinking that maybe they want £550 so bumped the price up knowing people will offer lower than asking so was thinking of going in at £540 but no harm in asking as you say

prudryden

5% will generally work. Anymore and you may get let someone else get in ahead of you. There is good demand these days for rental property i.e. at least in London.

moesasji

prudryden wrote: »

5% will generally work. Anymore and you may get let someone else get in ahead of you. There is good demand these days for rental property i.e. at least in London.

The room for negotiation depends on a lot of different things. One of those is how reliable you appear to be as a tenant. For me personally asking for 10% off has always been accepted.

Loughton_Monkey

Just come back from a week in Cyprus. I met a Scottish lady who lives there and has done for a while.

A friend back in UK wanted to move there for a long period, and asked this lady to help him find and negotiate a flat/apartment - since she knows the 'lie of the land'.

She found a property that fitted the bill. Visited it. Had been empty for quite a while. Negotiated a rent of €490 a month. Bang on what was required.

Friend flew to Cyprus. Met with landlord. Landlord wouldn't accept a penny less than €950 a month! Kept saying that the €490 is the 'fair' rent but he has no choice but to charge €950 in order to get back the lost rent over the last few years when it was empty!

That was almost 2 years ago, and property remains empty!

If this mentality comes from 'Greek' origins then maybe there is some guidance on why Greece is financially in the 'Mousaka'.

Callie22

We left our last property because the landlady wouldn't spend a penny on repairs or redecoration - the house was a 'nice' house in a 'nice' area, but it was looking a mess because it needed money spent on it - stuff like new fences, new gutters, new windows etc. Anyway, we were paying £725 a month. The landlady put it back on the market at £725. Five months later, she dropped the rent to £595 - the propery finally let but I can't help but think how stupid she was to lose good tenants for the sake of a few hundred pounds on repairs, when it cost her over three grand in lost rent and an ongoing 'loss' of £130 a month ...

So the longer the property's been on the market, the harder you can negotiate.