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

SpiderLegs

Just remind me why you’re not just selling this house.
it isn’t purely on the basis that an estate agent told you it would let easily is it?

cherrytree123

No we don't want to sell this house. We love this house - 12 years and lots of memories, and the house itself is beautiful and just how we want it. We don't mind the location although yes it could be better. The new house will be as nice eventually (and in a better location) but it's going to take time for us to love it as much. We want both. But if we can't have both, we'll pick this current one.

SpiderLegs

cherrytree123 said:

No we don't want to sell this house. We love this house - 12 years and lots of memories, and the house itself is beautiful and just how we want it. We don't mind the location although yes it could be better. The new house will be as nice eventually (and in a better location) but it's going to take time for us to love it as much. We want both. But if we can't have both, we'll pick this current one.

Ah the very best reason for renting it out 🤦
I bet you won’t love it when it’s costing you a fortune and looks like a !!!!!! tip.

Slithery

Having an emotional attachment to the property is the worst reason for deciding to start a new business...

You do realise that your tenant can ruin the property and you won't get any money back...

Marvel1

cherrytree123 said:

would you consider our house a good 'investment'?

No:
1. You are too emotionally attached, this does not make good landlords and it's the tenents that suffer.

2. You don't anything about being a landlord, no research done, just saying leave it to the letting agent to be fully managed and forget it.  As I said if I was the tenent and my deposit was not protected I would be coming after you for 1x to 3x the deposit not the agent.

[Deleted User]

If you are almost at exchange point, and can't keep both properties going, what are you going to do when you reach that point of no return?  It seems to me like you aren't actually ready to move in your head.  Because if you move, one way or another you will have to leave the house you love so much, whether to tenants (who probably won't value it and look after it as well as you do which could be soul destroying) or to sell it (which is very very unlikely to happen in time).

I can't understand why you put your house up for sale when emotionally you are still so tied to the house and the reasons for the move don't negate that feeling.  I don't think you have really thought it through.  You are blocking yourself because you don't really want to give up the house so now you are nearly at exchange and still don't know what to do.  You have another party paying legal fees etc and you still don't know if you are going to be able to buy their house.  I'd stop wondering about letting or selling options and start looking at what is going on emotionally and what you really want, what you are prepared to do to get it.  You need to recognise that if you do buy this other house, one way or another you will be saying a final goodbye to the house you are living in presently.  And start to deal with that rather than telling yourself you won't have to if you rent it out.  This is what is getting in your way.

cherrytree123

First of all - I do hear you and thank you. Yes all experience landlords here are advising us the same - don't rent this house out if you're emotionally attached and can't treat it as an investment only.

But then again we should be ok if (1) the house can let out easily (2) to the right type of tenants. Cakeguts said 95% of his tenants are perfect tenants who maintain the properties like their own and pay rent on time and in full. The 3 working professionals would fall into this category. And we think the second family too (not too sure about the dog, and yes I'll ask about the bad credit history). Plus we'll be just a mile away and can pop in for inspection every now and again. If it's minor repair (caused by the dog for example) we can use the deposit to fix at the end of the tenancy.

So I think the question remains, (emotions aside) is this house a good rental property..

cherrytree123

deannatrois said:

If you are almost at exchange point, and can't keep both properties going, what are you going to do when you reach that point of no return?  It seems to me like you aren't actually ready to move in your head.  Because if you move, one way or another you will have to leave the house you love so much, whether to tenants (who probably won't value it and look after it as well as you do which could be soul destroying) or to sell it (which is very very unlikely to happen in time).

I can't understand why you put your house up for sale when emotionally you are still so tied to the house and the reasons for the move don't negate that feeling.  I don't think you have really thought it through.  You are blocking yourself because you don't really want to give up the house so now you are nearly at exchange and still don't know what to do.  You have another party paying legal fees etc and you still don't know if you are going to be able to buy their house.  I'd stop wondering about letting or selling options and start looking at what is going on emotionally and what you really want, what you are prepared to do to get it.  You need to recognise that if you do buy this other house, one way or another you will be saying a final goodbye to the house you are living in presently.  And start to deal with that rather than telling yourself you won't have to if you rent it out.  This is what is getting in your way.

We (well the agent) were confident all along that this house would let out easily. That was until 10 days ago when we found out we could not do the guaranteed rent because of high commercial mortgage rates. So here's the email we sent to the agents (same agency for the new purchase and letting)..

cherrytree123

Hi (letting manager),

As you know our house has been on the market for 4 weeks now and so far we have had no viewings from tenant families at all. We had a couple of guaranteed-rent offers and were keen to progress with (company1), but having looked into this it'd appear we would need a commercial let mortgage rather than the usual BLT mortgage. Commercial let rates are much higher so as it stands it is unlikely we'd be able to go the guaranteed-rent route. We did contact (financial company) per (company1) suggestion yesterday and are awaiting their response, fingers crossed they'll be able to find us a solution that works.

In the meantime we're considering a small reduction in the rental price hoping this would attract some tenant families. Unfortunately in order for us to do this we'll have to go without you to save on agency fees. We appreciate the time and effort you both have put into this, but we have to make numbers work on our end. So please could you take down our advertisement and we'll put one up ourselves via OpenRent.

Now if we still don't get many interests from tenant families even after reducing the rent, then it is clear our house due to its location does not make a good rental property. We're wary even if we found a nice family now, there may be long void periods when the tenancy is up and we definitely don't want to put ourselves in that position. We can not afford to keep this house vacant if we move, so if it turns out our house will not let out easily to tenant families even at the lower price, we'll choose to stay where we are. We appreciate this is not good news to any of us and can only hope situation will change with the price reduction.

We plan to advertise our house for 3 weeks, see how things go and make a decision at the end of this period.    

Hi (sales manager),

We appreciate (vendor of new house) have been very patient, and we would like to let them know exactly where we stand so they can decide for themselves what they'd like to do, please confirm if this is ok.

cherrytree123

So the vendors know. We have their contact details (they conducted the viewings themselves and we've been there 3 times) and we tell them exactly what's happening. They understand our situation but of course they can't wait much longer. They have put their house back up for sale last week following our email. It's fair. We don't have much time left and will have to decide one way or another soon, probably within the next week or two.