Renting out a leasehold council property

Arjy

I have a business, which has a flat above it, that i am concidering renting out. I am leasing from the council.

What should i know before renting it out, other than the legal stuff. Do i need to contact the council about this? Do i have to get some sort of special insurance, even though the property is owned by the council? I have my gas certificate ready.

What would be the best place to market a small two bedroom flat?

hazyjo

First off, what does your lease say? Can you sub-let?

Jx

Werdnal

Questions about how to let a property come up here almost daily, but just to briefly recap:

You need permission to let from freeholder
Permission to let from mortgage
Landlord insurance
You already have GSC, but a PAT test on portable electrical items if you are providing them, is also wise.

You need to research how to:
Vet and credit check tenants
Draw up a legally binding tenancy agreement
Prepare a full and thorough inventory for the property
Take and secure a deposit from the tenant
Issue notice for them to leave
Handle eviction procedures
Declare income for tax
Adide by your repair and maintenance obligations as a LL.

poorlittlefish

I've worked for 13 years dealing with local authority leasehold properties and yes, it's almost certain you'd need the Council's permission to sublet. Technically, if the lease says that permission is required and you don't obtain it, you are breaching the lease terms and risk forfeiture. In real life this doesn't really happen, but failure to disclose subletting will also affect the buildings insurance that is normally paid as part of the service charges and that could have a very bad effect, should your tenants burn the place down ;-)

Some local authority leases will specify that you can only rent the property to members of one family (ie no letting out individual rooms), stipulate that you must go through a proper letting agent or enter a Deed of Covenant if the tenancy agreement is to be for longer than, say, a year.

There is an awful lot of legislation that you need to follow if you rent out your property, as highlighted by Werdnal (I can think of more), and leaving the work to an accredited letting agent would be the easier route to take. Yes, you'd pay a management fee, but I think it would be a small price to pay for letting them sort everything out. Go for one accredited to an organisation such as ARLA (Assocation of Residential Letting Agents) as member firms have to abide by their code of practice and staff have to have passed a qualification (one I'm doing myself).

Jeffrey_Shaw

I agree; but the fact that the freehold reversion is owned by the Council makes no difference.
Their role is just the same, in this context, as that of any other freehold reversioner.