Tenancy Agreements

LindaRenwick

My husband and I have a residential property and a business property that we rent out. We are fed up with paying a letting agency to renew the contract every 6 months. We manage the properties ourselves it's just the tenancy agreements we are stuck on. Has anyone any advice about going it alone??

Werdnal

In a residential tenancy, there is absolutely no need to renew every 6 months. Once the fixed term ends, a statutory periodic tenancy automatically arises, with all the same terms and conditions of the original agreement, other than the LL needs give 2 months notice seeking possession, and the tenant gives 1 month notice to quit.

Tell the agents to do one, and let the tenancies become SPTs.

For future reference, join a LL's association (fees are deductable from the tax on your rental income) and they will have standard agreements and any other legal docs you would need.

If you are leaving the agent, you must ensure the tenant's deposits are secured in a protection scheme and you have access to this without the agent's input.

I am not sure about the implications on your commercial let - sure someone else with more knowledge of this will reply in due course!

BitterAndTwisted

If you join a residential landlords association you would have access to sensible AST contracts to use. The cost of membership can be offset against the rental-income for tax-purposes as well. Commercial property is rather different.

Neither you nor your tenants are compelled to sign new fixed-term ASTs every six months unless both parties want the security.

Going it alone also means that you need to be ultra-confident that you know and understand how to credit-check and reference prospective tenants properly. Having said that, some agents manage to do an extremely poor job of it as well, as some friends of mine discovered after the fact.

G_M

Residenial property:

Ending/Renewing an AST

If getting rid of agents, this might help too:

New Landlords

Sorry - can't help with commercial property though.