Renting Out Our House - Can We Credit Check Prospective Tenants?

lumencreative

Hi all, 
We are looking to move house and the easiest way for us to move would be to rent our current house out and then rent somewhere else. Not a long term solution but I don't want to risk selling our house now and then being unable to get back onto the property ladder later on.
Anyway, the reason for my post is that I'm undecided about whether to use a letting agent or not. I quite like the idea of meeting the prospective tenants before handing them the keys to my £200k house, but I also get that letting agents are more likely to due a better job of vetting tenants than I am. 
One thing I wondered was whether I can credit check prospective tenants? I know I can use Letsure to obtain employer references etc (as I've used them before when renting out my first house before finally selling it), but can Letsure do a full credit check to see if the applicant has ccjs/defaults/etc? I feel that this would be the best possible way of knowing if a tenant is likely to pay their rent or not.
Thanks in advance

moneysavinghero

https://www.letssafe.com/tenantreferencing 
Let you credit check tenants for £7

boxer234

I enquired about a property through a letting agent who told me the landlord liked to meet tenants prior (house was on his land) so you can do both. 

FindMyWayBack

I am pretty sure the credit checks available to prospective landlords only check for CCJ's/Bankruptcy etc., not defaults. It is not the same info as provided to prospective lenders.
You are quite within your rights to ask for previous landlord info and employment info etc. guarantor, and a meet up of course, it's your property and you should do whatever makes you feel reassured.
https://www.checkmyfile.com/articles/which-credit-report-information-can-landlords-see.htm

Cakeguts

Why can't you sell your house now?

How are you going to sell it if it wrecked by your tenants?

You do realise that you will have to evict your tenants before you sell the house?  This could take nearly a year to achieve.

It seems a very complicated way to me to move house and you risk tenants not paying the rent. Credit checking doesn't guarantee that they will pay the rent it just shows you what their credit reference is.

You will need to pay for all the safety checks and buildings insurance as well as all of the repairs.  Rental income is taxable. This is not a cheap option that you are thinking of.  It all seems very very much more complicated than just selling your house and moving to another one.

lonibra

I use OpenRent. In addition to the referencing I politely request prospective tenants to share a copy of their CMF reports or their statutory Experian / Equifax reports. Most of them are fine with it as it doesn't involve a cost to them.

Obviously, they don't HAVE to do it, but in that case I'll make my own assumptions based on the rest of their details. Of course this may only work if your property is in a high-demand area.

lumencreative

Cakeguts said:

Why can't you sell your house now?

How are you going to sell it if it wrecked by your tenants?

You do realise that you will have to evict your tenants before you sell the house?  This could take nearly a year to achieve.

It seems a very complicated way to me to move house and you risk tenants not paying the rent. Credit checking doesn't guarantee that they will pay the rent it just shows you what their credit reference is.

You will need to pay for all the safety checks and buildings insurance as well as all of the repairs.  Rental income is taxable. This is not a cheap option that you are thinking of.  It all seems very very much more complicated than just selling your house and moving to another one.

To put it bluntly, we don't want to sell yet. When looking at our options, the kind of house we would want to buy, we wouldn't get a mortgage for at present as we've ploughed most of our money into building a successful company for the past 5 years, so If we were to sell our house now, we would have a nice nest egg in the bank but we wouldn't be able to buy what we want for a few years and may struggle to get back onto the property ladder in 4-5 years time. The other consideration we have is that house prices may (or may not!) increase further in the next 4-5 years so keeping the money in the house with the view of releasing it when we are ready to buy makes better sense.

With regards to evicting tenants, if we get good tenants that want to stay, we may actually consider renting the house on a longer term. Either that or we could sell the house when a tenant decides they want to move. Not saying either of those options will be particularly easy but it is something we have thought of.

This isn't something we've just dreamed up and thought 'ah I want to move, lets rent our house out'. We know about taxes, landlord obligations, etc. We've rented out a property before, and there will be enough 'profit' over what our mortgage payment is to give us the ability to deal with any issues if they arise. 

lumencreative

Cakeguts said:

t all seems very very much more complicated than just selling your house and moving to another one.

Out of interest, what makes you think selling a house to buy another house is any less complicated? We have sold a house previously (after renting it out actually), and it was the most stressful experience I've ever encountered.

theartfullodger

You can ASK to credit check prospective tenants, but they don't have to agree to it 

In exactly the same way a prospective tenant could ask to credit check a prospective Landlord.

Shame more don't.  Remarkable the arrogance of some landlords.

Artful: Landlord since 2000.

lookstraightahead

The thought of a landlord knowing all my credit details makes my toes curl. Would you be happy to show your creditworthiness to your tenants? 

Let an agent do the financial checks they are entitled to do instead. And let them do the inspections too.

Cakeguts

lumencreative said:

Cakeguts said:

t all seems very very much more complicated than just selling your house and moving to another one.

Out of interest, what makes you think selling a house to buy another house is any less complicated? We have sold a house previously (after renting it out actually), and it was the most stressful experience I've ever encountered.

This is what the OP is wanting to do. They want to let their current house, then move and then sometime in the future sell their current house after as you say renting it out.  

I just wanted to point out that in order to sell a rented house you do better if you first have vacant possession. Getting vacant possession could take the best part of a year during which time if you have a non paying tenant you will not be getting any rent.  You could also find that when you get possession the tenant has trashed the house or the house is in such bad repair that you need to replace the kitchen and bathroom and all the floor coverings before you can sell it.  Worst case you can finish up with a damaged interior and no rent for about a year.  Who wants that with a property if they have moved over 100 miles away?