Sell or rent out?

Merrie

Due to family care needs i am planning to move closer to them, this move is likely to be permanent. We can probably afford to do this without selling our current home. The choice is to sell up anyway and have savings earning no interest or rent out this property, either privately of through an agent. we will be caring for 4 elderly relatives - all in their 70's who are becoming increasingly frail, so will need some income if i have to give up work in the future.
Reading horror stories of bad tenants puts me off, and it seems that Landlords are seen as money grabbing and hard hearted however i think we would be good landlords and have a decent house in a good area. Don't have to make a quick decision- looking to move in 6-9 months.

Knicknack

You state two choices, sell and put into savings or rent.

To me it's a broader choice: Save or Invest.

One way to "invest" is to rent out. However there are other ways to invest, depending on your attitude to risk youcould do better than zero interest on savings. If you don't like the idea of renting out, then consider other forms of investment.

smile88egc

You'd have to pay the higher rate stamp duty on the second property. Also being a landlord can take a lot of time/hassle which might be trulicky whilst also caring for 4 elderly relatives, which sounds like an undertaking in itself! You might be better of looking at other forms of investing.

Marvel1

From your post it suggests you are new landlords and may not have the overall knowledge of laws/rights etc, read some of the links provided here about renting first https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4930313

westernpromise

Merrie wrote: »

Reading horror stories of bad tenants puts me off, and it seems that Landlords are seen as money grabbing and hard hearted

Only by bad tenants.

bellaboo86

when all 4 relatives are no longer around (hopefully a long way in the future) are you likely to want to return to the area where your house is? Would you be able to afford to do so if you sold?

Merrie

We will be buying another property with an annexe/annexe potential, using a mix of our savings and mum's old house, which is currently on the market. I have to factor in Stamp duty and possible inheritance tax. I guess i am risk adverse - i do not want to speculate.
We would be able to sell the new house and move back if we wanted to so we are not looking to keep a house here to move back to. it is a wrench moving but we see no alternative, they have always looked after each other but have reached a position where increasingly they cannot cope. moving them all here is not feasible. We are 2 hours away.

emilywood

Have you thought about getting a management company to run your property on Airbnb? i know that this might seem here nor there but i was in a similar situation recently where i was in between a few things and it was making it really dififcult to make such a huge decision as to sell my house! I am based in Bristol and used a company called Air 360 who put my property up on Airbnb and i know there are similar companies in other big Cities. There was no long term contract so that i could have the place back when ever i needed it and they took care of it compleatly, i had a very hands-off aproach asd i had a lot on my plate and had no problems at all!. I could not believe the amount of money that the house was making, it was over double what i was getting when i was renting it long term (admittedly i do live very centrally in a good spot for tourists).

Good luck with it what ever you decide!

dekaspace

As a tenant its not that people automatically think landlords are greedy and evil it just seems theres a lot of greedy and evil people who are landlords often due to things like they think money gives them power, or makes them automatically in the right, even some nice landlords I had refused to do repairs and some nasty ones have done repairs if officials get involved.

So many times I heard lines like "I have been a landlord for over X years, that means I know more than you about the laws" OR

"its my property I can do what I want with it" as in enter when they feel like it, leave snotty notes saying the property is a mess when it could just be a pot and plate in sink.

You can get good landlords just as you can get good tenants, I am not perfect but I can honestly say out of 100 lets say 95 of the problems (or more) were the landlords fault not me causing problems, the few that were mine where like when a landlord starts pestering me for no reason, and/or when I left work and had to wait a few weeks for housing benefit and landlord gets nasty and calls me a bad tenant despite me having a spotless property and no complaints from neighbours and clean history until then, it creates a bad atmosphere between me and landlord as I am angry about being accused of this that and the other and they think they are the victims.

Or they think they can evict without giving notice etc its more ignorance and arrogance more than anything.
And tenants get just as bad a image as the landlords especially benefit claimaints, you can get a potential tenant in a good job from a good background who is a nightmare tenant just as you can get someone from a poor background or unemployed who will be a model tenant (generally if someone is on benefits long term i.e disabled they want to stay long term whilst a worker is more likely to move if they get a promotion etc)

Scum is scum either way, most say credit checks and references show a good tenant but if someone is poor in first place they can't build up credit score or if they do risk it they may do something like lose job and get into debt which could of been years ago and their credit rating is still affected and have bad previous landlords meaning no reference.

From what I read here its a bad idea to live far away as a landlord even if using an agency because theres nothing stopping tenant wrecking property and agent not caring, or a tenant with genuine issues getting nowhere with agency for repairs or whatever and as you are out of the loop you can't sort it

And if the agency charges you fees for work they don't do you have no way of telling.

By the way the poster above seems like an advert, as its a new user with 1 post just to talk about how good airbnb is.

Merrie

Thanks for the replies - it is food for thought. We don't need to make a quick decision.
There are a lot of people needing to rent, so how do we make good rented accommodation available? I believe the vast majority of tenants are decent people who will treat their home with respect.