Guaranteed rent through Company Let. How do we pay high street agent Letting fee?

HRH_MUngo

Does the house have a garden? Are the tenants going to look after it as you would? What would you do if they didn't? 

cherrytree123

Yes it does but mainly artificial grass so very low maintenance. There's a big sand pit at the end of the garden, plus a plot for my husband's plants but he's going to take them all to the new house  

Cakeguts

You can't let to the 3 professional tenants who have turned up now because you haven't carried out the work on the property that needs to be done to turn it into a legal HMO.  The HMO rules apply to all HMOs not just the ones that need a licence.  You are not ready to let to those 3 who have turned up because the house needs a lot of work doing to it to turn it into an HMO.  You will have to turn down all the tenants that you have had and decide if you want to do the work on the property to turn it into an HMO. You will have to do this if you rent to the rent to rent companies although you can't afford to do that because of the commercial loan situation. 

None of the current set of tenants is suitable for the property now at this moment.  The three sharers because your house has not been updated to HMO standard.  The two families because they are both high risk as they all will be because of the location of the house.

In the case of damage there is also something called wear and tear.  This includes damage from use of decorations and paint work. You cannot redecorate at the tenants' expense using their deposit.  You have to pay for the whole cost of the decorating to keep the property looking good after each let and ready to market to new tenants.

cherrytree123

I will call the council tomorrow to find out. Hopefully I will get to speak to someone who can advise quickly and accurately what we need to make our house HMO compliant. Thank you.

cherrytree123

Update - I called the council and spoke to a lady from Environment Health and she said an HMO officer will call me back. Average response time is 7-10 days, but she noted our situation and said she will try her best to get the HMO officer to get in touch sooner. Fingers crossed.

We don't mind wear & tear then redecorating. We have 3 children and many playdates, so working professionals should cause less wear and tear than us!

Cakeguts

When the council get in touch about the HMO it would probably be worth just checking that you don't also need planning permission. For the big HMOs you often need planning permission for change of use.  I have no idea what your council policy is on losing family accommodation to shared accommodation so only you can find that out. 

cherrytree123

Will do. Thank you so much.

cherrytree123

Hi all, thought I'd sign in to update and thank you guys again for all your advice. It's been quite a journey.

Last weekend we had 2 viewings from 'good' tenant families and both wanted to move in! It was quite a nice surprise as we already gave up hope on this. We decided to proceed with one family who have 3 children just like us, and we were glad that a lovely family would be able to appreciate/enjoy this house as much as we do.

At the same time on Monday I finally got to speak to a HMO officer at the council office. I showed him our floorplan and house photos and he said on face value, 6 firedoors + possibly fire panel and heat detector in the kitchen would be all that's required (no planning permission & building control approval required in this case). We scheduled a site visit for next Monday so he could over and confirm. In the meantime we've got a rough estimate from a local builder for all this work and it's do-able, and we thought we'd get this done anyway as we may need to go the HMO way after the first tenancy is up.  

BUT then on the onward purchase side, our seller pulled out yesterday!! We were so close to exchanging contracts as well. Long story and it was a big surprise, but now we have no place to move to so will stay in our current home. We're of course disappointed after putting so much time and effort into this project, but then again maybe this is for the best. As you all said (and we were finally convinced), this house is not a good investment property. We do love this house and would happily live here till the kids move out, so we think our plan now will be to look for a smaller property in a nice residential area instead as a BTL investment.

I just wanted to say I'm really glad I came on to this forum and would like to thank you all again for all your advice. Your inputs and advice (even the harsh ones ) are much appreciated !