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

cherrytree123

Marvel1 said:
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.

The tenants deposit would be protected. The high street agent would have done that if we had gone through them, and OpenRent includes deposit registration as part of the package.

Cakeguts

cherrytree123 said:

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..

No. None of your possible  tenants would  be considered for any of our properties as they are all too high risk. We don't have any HMOs either. We have family homes in very sought after residential areas and not on main roads. We get the pick of any tenants looking because of the areas that the houses are in.  Our business model does not include properties in difficult locations like main roads. We would not buy a house in the kind of location that you are saying yours is in.  We would not consider a house on a main road because of the limited market it has for letting due to the unpopularity of the location.

We do not have any emotional attachment to any of our properties they are just business tools.

Your house is not a good rental property. This has been demonstrated to you by the agents only getting rent to rent companies being interested and you only getting high risk possible tenants or tenants wanting an HMO. 

The experienced landlords on here are telling you that if you let this property it will not end well.  You are too emotionally attached to it.  The chances are that it is going to get damaged because you cannot get the right kind of tenant to rent it.  The only people who will rent a property like this will be those who can't get anything anywhere else.

Unless you are quite happy to be able to pay two mortgages without getting any rent coming in and then to spend £1000s at the end of a tenancy on repairs don't let it.

Cakeguts

Reducing the rent will not make any difference. It is the location that is putting people off not the level of rent.  All that will happen if you reduce the rent is that you will still get unsuitable tenants. You won't get suitable family tenants because of the location.

cherrytree123

Thank you Cakeguts. You're right this house hasn't attracted any perfect tenant families even at reduced price.

What about HMOs.. the guaranteed rent companies want it - they know it will rent out easily to working professionals (we have checked them out and know for sure they are successful). And we saw these 3 professionals ourselves and believe they'll make great tenants. There are many big companies here - these 3 tenants work for different companies, all reputable ones. We also bought this house 12 years ago because it was a 8-min walk to my office back then. We were worried about the main road back then too but the house was lovely and we visited many times and realized the noise wasn't bad at all so we decided to buy it. 

Skibunny40

Why are you so determined to keep the house? Do you eventually want to move back in? You say you're listening to EVERYONE on this thread who is telling you it's a bad idea but you can't be, otherwise you'd be putting it up for sale - or continuing to live there.

cherrytree123

We will continue to live here if the house won't let out easily to good tenants. 

So what does everyone think about HMO for working professionals? Generally speaking they'd make good tenants, won't they? Or is that a bad idea too..

Marvel1

Ok a scenerio as you said you would inspect every now and again.

You inspect the property, it's a mess (not trashed or damaged) just messy - like say loads of dust, needs a good hoover, rubbish on the floor, clothes on the floor, on the sofa.  What you do? How would you feel?

cherrytree123

I would not like that but my husband would be ok with it. We talked about this before and he said at the end of the tenancy we can just get the house professionally cleaned. Even if there's a little damage we can use the deposit to fix things.

Skibunny40

What if you find your "perfect" tenants and you move into your new home... then the "perfect" tenants move out after 6 months. How long can you afford to wait for the next set of "perfect" tenants to appear? 
Regarding damage that you think the deposit will cover, here's a likely scenario - the lounge carpet gets damaged and needs to be completely replaced - you will pay the full cost for a new carpet, the tenant will only pay a fraction of that because they've only used the carpet for a fraction of the time that carpet has been laid, etc etc

cherrytree123

True, we never thought about that.. If the dog destroys the carpet, the deposit won't cover the cost at all

With professional tenants we should be ok? Generally speaking they would be good, low risk tenants, won't they? We were thinking/hoping if we go with the 3 professional tenants (they want to sign a year contract first), if someone leaves, they could bring in a colleague or find like-minded people to move in. It will be a single AST to start with and we hope it will continue like that. But if not we would have some landlord experience by the time the tenancy ends and should be able to handle individual ASTs too. 

Would that work or am I too optimistic?