Corporate Letting

Fly_Away

We will be going to live abroad for a couple of years and would like to let our house out. It is a large house with a large garden and needs constant maintenance. The rent would be high due to it's size and location, therefore, we thought that leasing it to a company to use for accommodation or meetings would be ideal.

Has anybody got any experience of this? I've done some on line searches and been unable to find an agent who deals in this field - can anyone recommend one?

Thanks for your help.:beer:

Fly_Away

Addy1 wrote: »

Is it near London? Expats from other countries coming here to work for big companies for a couple of years get huge rent allowances (about 4k per month). I know this because we were expats from this country, living abroad a lot when I was a kid, and we rented our house out this way.
If it is not near london it might be more difficult.

Thanks Addy, unfortunately we're not in London, we're in Cardiff. We have our fair share of Politicos from the Welsh Asssembly and senior medics coming to the UHW. We also have the BBC and C4 here, but nothing like London....

devils_advocate

Ok here are the downsides. I've rented from both sides over about a ten year period, so this is based on my experience. If you can get around the downsides, you should be successful!

Firstly, the rent you get is dependent on local rents, not on capital values. I've rented out 2 places at the same time, about 3 miles apart. The bigger one was about three times the value of the smaller one, but the rent was only double the smaller one's rent.


Secondly, you're not going to rent it to a company for meetings. If they want somewhere, they'll use a hotel. You also are highly unlikely to rent it to acompany, which means a different lease. You could rent it to an individual or family, who will use a rent allowance to pay for it, but this involves marketing it to the individual. The other difficulty here is that to rent it to someone in these circumstances, you will need an agent who has contacts with the companies who are likely to transfer executives to Cardiff. These people will have only a few days generally to arrange accommodation when they first arrive in the area, and will want to take an empty place as soon as possible, so its difficult to arrange your own/ previos tenants departure.

If the rental is to a company for a specified executive, there is generally a 'diplomatic clause' in the agreement to say that if the executive is transferred away from teh area, they can give one months notice. So you can't rely on the length of the lease.

rents for executives tend to be higher, as you state. However, this is because they demand flexibility, and you may be told that they will rent on condition that the house is furnished in a particular way. You may have to buy extra things, or may have to put a lot in storage. You need to be agreeable to whatever they ask.

No company is going to pay for a gardner for the executive, but they will possibly do so through an increased rent. So therefore if you want the garden maintained, you'll have to arrange and pay for the gardner. Otherwise you can only generally expect the grass to be cut about 3 - 4 times per year. Sure, you can recover costs at the end of the lease, but there's no way your garden would look the same as when you left it.

Lastly, don't have any emotional attachment at to the house and garden at the start of the lease. Nobody is ever going to take care of your house in the same way as you would, so remenber that it's not your house, its a business asset.

Best of luck!

Fly_Away

Thanks Devils Advocate for your comprehensive reply.

We have limited experience of the lettings market as we have 2 BTL properties. However, they are easy to manage and easy to leave with an agent.

When I mentioned maintenance, I meant that we would have to pay for this and therefore it would have be a factor in the rent. We currently have to employ a gardener as we could not manage it alone. very probably, we could do with a handyman on a retainer too.

Corporate let is something which we know nothing about. Your info has highlighted some things which we hadn't considered. It looks like we might have to go down the traditional rental route. The only problem being that I do not really trust rental agents, (I currently manage my own 2 BTL myself without any problems.) Plus, I have never seen this sort of property for rent.

This is something we have only just started investigating, so once everyone is back at work on Tuesday, I will be able to get rental valuations etc underway.

Thanks again for your advice - it was much appreciated.:T