Selling a UK Rental Property

[hughnique]

Are your tenants actually out of the house or still in situ as that throws a spanner in the works if they decide to stay put.

[niemeyjt]

I would never consider buying to let. I have been involved with too many renovations to sort out wanton destruction and neglect by tenants after the long legal battle to get the non-paying cretins evicted.

I guess it depends on your target clientele.

As I said above, a guarantor can avoid some of the issues.

[Veem]

Are your tenants actually out of the house or still in situ as that throws a spanner in the works if they decide to stay put.

They are still in the house and in the process of moving out. I gather they have had their names on some housing list and have finally come to the top.

[hughnique]

Lets hope you are right, we recently had a situation where tenants in my wife's cousins bungalow, stopped paying the rent, were going to move out, but were then told by the local council housing mob that if they did leave they would be deemed as having made themselves homeless. Subsequently they would not be given a council place, many months later, with no rental income legal costs and all the rest of it they upped sticks and slung their hooks, no notification, house in Worthing, cousin in Margate, her brother in Leicester, so not just round the corner. As has been said, get shot of it, a huge weight off your shoulders.

[Quiksilver]

I would never consider buying to let. I have been involved with too many renovations to sort out wanton destruction and neglect by tenants after the long legal battle to get the non-paying cretins evicted.

That's a bit harsh. We let out our former home in UK because, after a succession of broken chains and the chute of the housing market, it was the only option left. After a couple of false starts (largely due to the letting agent's ineptitude), we got very good tenants. We came to a mutually satisfactory arrangement whereby we ditched the agent and they did all the minor maintenance, not to mention improvements. We paid for the materials. That arrangement worked well for 12 years. Thanks to the complications caused by Brexit, everything from finance to travel to our new French status as migrants, it was time to sell, but overall it wasn't a bad experience.

[hughnique]

You are lucky if you get a good un, my son rents a place in Kent, landlord has to be squeezed to even meet his legal requirements, over £900 a month for a poorly converted 1st floor one bed flat.

[Quiksilver]

We specified to the agent that we were quite happy to forego a high rent in favour of correct tenants. In the long run, it's less hassle and expense

[L Austin France]

I've had my old offices/stores building let out since I sold the company about 20 years ago.
The building has been occupied by the same health care services company ,who use it as their head office, for about 18 years & are such brilliant tenants that I reduced the initial 5 year agreement rental on it's expiry & have maintained the same rent since then with a verbal agreement to maintain this rent when the current lease expires.
This arrangement suits us both as I realise times are tough for businesses & they reciprocate by realising I don't want hassle when living at distance from the property.
I sold our last residential letting property after the tenants turned into a drop in drug centre & had to be convinced it was time to leave & never regretted investing in commercial property with less demanding tenants.

[Niftyons]

….

Blaze, you are right. I said to Biggles earlier that I'll have something less to worry about if we sell the house.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

@ Veem
Am I to take it that you have considered what you are going to do with the proceeds?

[Loup-garou]

We moved to France and were renovating our UK home to rent out, albeit slowly. In truth, we would go back to the UK individually to do or oversee work but became more and more reluctant to leave France, plus it delayed work on our house here.

Our local authority realised the house was unoccupied and offered us interest free loans to get on with the work but we were not enthusiastic about that proposal. Then, in 2018ish the law changed and local authorities were allowed to double the local taxes on unoccupied houses. So we sold our UK house.

We had just reached the 25 year threshold so no CG Tax was payable in the UK - it was in France where there is a sort of reducing scale which goes up to (or did) 30 years. Not quite sure what to do I put a note on that year's tax return stating that I had sold the house and paid no CG in the UK. I got a response in my messagerie simply saying "noted".

We were very happy with that but even happier that we sold what was an asset but was turning into an imbuggerance!