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

tom9980

So i take it you have

• Made sure the property is safe.
• Ensured it complies with fire regulations.
• Done Gas safety checks.
• Legionnaires testing.
• Electrical safety testing will be a requirement soon but you should ensure everything is safe including PAT testing for supplied appliances.
• EPC energy performance certificate.
• Check what documents you must give new tenants including how to rent guide so that you comply with the law.
• Decided where and how you are to protect deposits.
• Found an agent who will let your property to your instruction rather than this current agent who only sees money.
• Right to rent checks.
• Referencing and tenant selection.
• Found out how to create a tenancy agreement.
• Landlord insurance.
• Who will use to fix things that break, sourcing trades.
• Inventory.

Sorry but i think you are likely to fail at being a landlord but i sense there is no convincing you.

Cakeguts

cherrytree123 said:

If we found that perfect family, we'd be very happy. We did run the numbers for that. True this is probably not the best investment option in comparison to others (but we don't know other options either!) and this is enough for us . We're near completion on the onward purchase so really hope we find that right tenant soon. I'm nearly done with the house ad now. :-)

You aren't listening are you?  You are not going to find a decent tenant for your property. It isn't the right property for a decent tenant. You are only going to get a heap of hassle and expense. It is going to cost you more than the rent you get in expense if you let that property. 

You seem to think that any property will let to a decent tenant and as an experienced landlord of 30 years I am telling you that this is not the case.

If you don't want to be forever paying money out much more than the rent you are getting in and if you cannot afford to keep that house vacant and still pay for it don't let it.  You are not looking at this realistically.  The realities are this. You let the house, the tenant stops paying rent and it takes you 6 to 9 months to evict them all while not getting any rent but still paying for repairs and then when you get possession in 9 months the house has been completely wrecked and you would have to spend at least £20,000 to make it habitable again.

You need to sell it.

Please listen very carefully to what the experienced landlords on this site are telling you.  We know how the letting market works. At the moment your posts are coming over to me as if you are telling me that I haven't done my job as a landlord properly for the last 30 years and I am telling you that I am very good at buying the right property for my business model and yours is not the right property and you don't even have a business model just a huge heap of wishful thinking that doesn't even border on reality.

cherrytree123

Cakeguts said:

cherrytree123 said:

Thanks all. We are definitely sentimentally attached to this house and never considered selling. But yes we also thought it would be a good investment - the agents were confident our house would rent out easily. We just didn't know they meant multi-lets / HMOs. If we had a nice family living here everything would work out well. 

But so far no families are interested, only these guaranteed rent companies. We looked into this and can see why our house would make a profitable HMO. 5 bedrooms 3 bathrooms (so only big families I guess), we're just 10mins walk from high street and the train station, there's lots of big companies here so professional houseshare would be in demand. The first company that made us an offer we can see from their active Facebook page they have launched their first houseshare in our town just last month, they spent a week putting in firedoors doing up the house furnishing it (they shared behind the scene videos), and  on spareroom website these rooms were all snapped up already at high prices.

So we're considering this company (we think/hope they're genuine and won't run off with our money!). There was no mention of personal guarantee or credit check in their offer, so we should request this via the agent if we decide to go with them, correct?

But you guys are right first and foremost we need to do our maths. Just learned the interest rate for Individual ASTs for the tenants lender will be much higher (nearly doubled) than All tenants named under one AST lender

Many thanks again for all your advice, appreciate the help here. I will be back with more questions.

First of all I have been a landlord for over 30 years I know exactly what kind of property lets to families because that is our business model and I did years and years of research before we bought any property.  You haven't done any research into your business at all.

Please look at this logically. You are moving because you have children and don't want to live on a busy road?  However you expect other families to want to live in a house that you have decided isn't suitable for families because of the road. Please explain why you think that this house that is not suitable for your family would be suitable for someone else's family?

What you have basically is a property that would be at the bottom of anyone's list of suitable rental properties and it is only suitable to be let to people who want a cheap room in a convenient area and who don't care about the road because the room is cheap. This is why you are only getting interest from Rent to Rent companies.  Those Rent to Rent companies are telling you what you want to hear because you are completely ignorant about all aspects of being a landlord. You have done absolutely no research. The agent is struggling because they know that they can't let your house to a family because it isn't suitable so they are trying to get anyone to take an interest so that they can make some money.

This property is not going to let to a good tenant family because it is in no way suitable for family because of the road so forget about letting to families who would be good trouble free tenants because that is not going to happen.  What a landlord wants is a trouble free let. Your house is in the category of problem let and it is only ever going to be a problem and it is going to cost you a lot of expense if it goes wrong. You are unlikely to make any money from it.It is completely the wrong property in the wrong place.

If you cannot afford to keep it vacant when you move your only stress free expense free option is to sell it. Someone will buy it and either turn it into flats or an HMO and it will be their risk not yours.

Never ever let a property that you have an emotional attachment to or you will be absolutely devastated when you get it back and it is so damaged that you need to replace everything in it.

My advice to you regarding this property is that it is only a heap of bricks with a hole in the middle.  Memories are what you take with you when you move. Sell it and move on with your life.

Sorry somehow I missed your note earlier, my last comment was in response to tom9980. Assuming our agent hasn't been honest, we have hope some families will be interested. More than half our neighbors on this same row have young children as well and they're also happy here. We're on the main road but the noise isn't bad at all - once you're inside you'd hardly know. You wouldn't realize that until you're actually here. We had the same doubt before we bought the house but visited many times to make sure. Our children (oldest one is now 9) all grew up in this house, we've been here all this time and there's no problem at all. But yes it would be nicer being walking distance to the schools and leisure center, kids can go out on their bike etc..

So we'll put our ad on and fingers crossed some nice families will come along. If not, then yes we'll have to rethink our options.. Thanks again everyone.

cherrytree123

Cakeguts said:

cherrytree123 said:

If we found that perfect family, we'd be very happy. We did run the numbers for that. True this is probably not the best investment option in comparison to others (but we don't know other options either!) and this is enough for us . We're near completion on the onward purchase so really hope we find that right tenant soon. I'm nearly done with the house ad now. :-)

You aren't listening are you?  You are not going to find a decent tenant for your property. It isn't the right property for a decent tenant. You are only going to get a heap of hassle and expense. It is going to cost you more than the rent you get in expense if you let that property. 

You seem to think that any property will let to a decent tenant and as an experienced landlord of 30 years I am telling you that this is not the case.

If you don't want to be forever paying money out much more than the rent you are getting in and if you cannot afford to keep that house vacant and still pay for it don't let it.  You are not looking at this realistically.  The realities are this. You let the house, the tenant stops paying rent and it takes you 6 to 9 months to evict them all while not getting any rent but still paying for repairs and then when you get possession in 9 months the house has been completely wrecked and you would have to spend at least £20,000 to make it habitable again.

You need to sell it.

Please listen very carefully to what the experienced landlords on this site are telling you.  We know how the letting market works. At the moment your posts are coming over to me as if you are telling me that I haven't done my job as a landlord properly for the last 30 years and I am telling you that I am very good at buying the right property for my business model and yours is not the right property and you don't even have a business model just a huge heap of wishful thinking that doesn't even border on reality.

Sorry I didn't see this note either before my last post (maybe because I left the screen on and it doesn't refresh automatically). I assure you I do read all comments over carefully and take everyone's advice seriously.

csgohan4

OP you can't base your business on hope. you need hard numbers and crunch those numbers, Can you afford the mortgage when the tenant stops paying for 9 months including court costs?

TonyMMM

Sell it ....

cherrytree123

tom9980 said:

So i take it you have

• Made sure the property is safe.
• Ensured it complies with fire regulations.
• Done Gas safety checks.
• Legionnaires testing.
• Electrical safety testing will be a requirement soon but you should ensure everything is safe including PAT testing for supplied appliances.
• EPC energy performance certificate.
• Check what documents you must give new tenants including how to rent guide so that you comply with the law.
• Decided where and how you are to protect deposits.
• Found an agent who will let your property to your instruction rather than this current agent who only sees money.
• Right to rent checks.
• Referencing and tenant selection.
• Found out how to create a tenancy agreement.
• Landlord insurance.
• Who will use to fix things that break, sourcing trades.
• Inventory.

Sorry but i think you are likely to fail at being a landlord but i sense there is no convincing you.

That's a lot of info, thank you. We initially thought we'd go the Fully Managed option so the agent would help with most of that. We had the EPC & Gas safety certificate done last week but that's all we have done so far. We won't have the time or knowledge to do all on the list ourselves.. so assuming our Agent is really dishonest (still waiting on their reply), yes we'll find another agent and specifically ask them to look for tenant families only.

But if it turned out we don't get any families after all. Shouldn't we consider the company let through that first company at all? We did check and believe they're real people, and their business is transparent and successful. I know you said there's many fraudsters out there, but this one seems genuine.

SpiderLegs

How much is the mortgage and how much rent are you expecting?

cherrytree123

This was our spreadsheet (tenant family). Please do advise if we missed anything, many thanks

Rent	2000
Mortgage	350
Agents Fee	200
Landlord Insurance	25
Boiler & Electricity cover	40
Building & Content Insurance	50
Maintenance	50
Tax	654
Net Profit	631

Cakeguts

Well I think it is half term in some places now so they should be able to sort it out.