13% drop in rental value in N London 08-09

[JoceAndChris]

This is what's happened to us having just secured a new tenant for our Highgate flat. I'm just so relieved that it isn't going to be empty: according to our estate agent there's a real glut of flats- 60 with that agent alone in that area.

It's a dark one bed flat but extraordinarily posey, I realised this weekend on our repair/ cleaning marathon, and with a large (for London) front and back garden.

Can you believe that in one year the tenant damaged the curtain poles, heating system, washing machine, dishwasher, loo seat, bathroom tiles, chandelier, kitchen tap, bathroom door, and stair nosings. :shock: Unbelievably the fish are fine.

Any other landlords out there?

(sorry not a typical PPUk question, but I'll make the tenuous link that this flat is in a period property in a Conservation Area :wink: )

 

[another_richard]

Must be terrible for you....

Landlordism.

Mao had the right ideas.

 

[JoceAndChris]

:shock:

 

[JoceAndChris]

Didn't he kill rather a large number of people? Whereas we've just provided someone with a lovely home?

 

[jocelyn plummer]

Yes, I can believe what has happened to you. A friend of mine let out her house and found that the appliances had gone, the carpet was trashed, the small study had been sublet, the attic lock had been smashed and a bed had been put up there and some of her stored furniture re-arranged. The bannisters had been pulled off the wall. So much for the Agents responsibilities to ensure that all is well.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Crikey. That's a lot worse than ours. I'm going to have to redecorate the whole place in time; 20-something renters just don't notice or care about fixtures/fittings. Currently it's all Laura Ashley and Farrow and Ball (sorry Penners), last week the agent phoned me and asked me if I'd mind painting the whole thing white as the only people interested felt it was dated (they didn't get the vintage look). Fortunately those people have gone and a Health and Safety Officer's going in. Please please god don't let her notice Chris' wiring!

We get a cheaper deal with the agent by me managing it. Trouble is, I'm not there. This time I'm going to make an excuse to go every month.

 

[robgil]

to be fair joce if my land lord called here every month id have a restraining order put on her.
doesn't the deposit cover any breakages? most land lords nowadays ask for 6 weeks rent as a deposit and one month's rent in advance. perhaps you should try a different letting agency if they cant guarantee your house will be left as found when the tennant moves out? saying that though so far during my tenancy i have re-decorated top to bottom , hung new radiators in the kitchen and bathroom , turned a jungle into a reasonably nice garden , helped the land lord lay a new floor , re-plumbed the living room radiator and repaired the shower , shower door and all the bathroom taps as well as repairing the broken stairs. before i leave i will have to replace both upstairs carpets and re-paint every room in the house with a quick coat of emulsion in order to get my deposit back.
so , not only has this house cost me nearly £21,000 in rent since i have lived here , ive more or less turned what was a dump into a nice, clean living space.
needless to say i hate renting and i really do hope i never have to do it again.
if i do though can i rent your flat , it sounds really nice.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Oh Rob you're the perfect tenant! However is your landlord going to manage without your skills and generosity? To actually help redecorate and refit the place- that's amazingly kind. But you must admit you aren't the average normal guy! :wink: But if they were all like you, how easy and fun renting out would be.

Yeah, we've got a big fat deposit. But we're going to give it back, bar £120 for cleaning. This is because although I know that if we'd got tradesmen to fix all those things it would have cost all the deposit, in fact Chris has fixed them without incurring too much expense. And I feel guilty that the poor naive boy (a young banker, BTW) was paying a rent that was massively over the norm once the recession hit last autumn.

I also feel it's my own stupid fault to plant a cottage garden, all trembling roses, honeysuckle, passion flowers and birdsong, and expect a boy banker to keep it up- decking and cordylines here we come!

 

[Hatster]

Ah, letting to boy bankers, that's where you're going wrong. No wonder he broke the bannisters.

If you let only to Dutch lesbian couples with a passion for hygiene, you get the opposite problem - constant phone calls to report the tiniest of problems. But they did actually cause a bit of a damp problem by the constant washing and drying! We now let to some young Polish colleagues of my husbands who take every opportunity to tell me how much they adore the flat, and so far have broken only a tea cup.

 

[jocelyn plummer]

As I understand it, and in the ideal world, you are paying the Agent to sort out the legal mechanics of the rental, hold a check list and pics of appliances etc to be signed by the incoming Tenant. The Agent should inspect the property at the beginning and end of each Tenancy agreement, and alert you, as the Landlord to anything which is amiss---- do they do that-- not if they can get away without it, all too much trouble.

Having rented for a short time last year whilst we were house hunting I think that I would have found a monthly visit from the Landlord very annoying. What she did do though, during the first couple of weeks, was to phone requesting access to collect some odds and ends from her shed. This was a good way of sussing out the sort of Tenants we were likely to be. I also kept on at the Agent about things that were not left correctly by the previous chap, they'd not been checked out by the Agent who jolly well should have sorted it out before we went in.

 

[robgil]

i dont think i am the 'perfect' tenant Joce and i certainly wasn't doing it out of kindness. i was doing all the work because i had to , not because i wanted to.
when we first viewed the house ms robgil automatically looked through the hundreds of problems and viewed it as a lovely little cottage, the statement 'rob can sort that out' reared its head more than a few times. to me it was a dump that shouldn't even be on the letting market but i let her talk me into it. to be fair though we only expected to be here for less than a year and moving down from London we were just glad to have found somewhere.it has served its purpose though , even with all the ball ache that came with it.
i suppose even though i moan about it i do quite enjoy it , there is something really satisfying about turning a crappy old house into a not so crappy old house but even then , because its rented you have to know where the line is and try not to cross it , if the house were mine it would be in a much better state than it is in now. at least now with this new house , providing all goes well , we wont have any restraints and every thing we do to it we will be doing to our own house and not somebody else's.

 

[JoceAndChris]

I remember the bliss of that happy transition from tiptoeing round someone else's place to having your own! You're in for a treat!

Sorry to strike a negative note, but it's worth bearing in mind that unless you luckily have hit upon hundreds of thousands of pounds and don't have a mortage it belongs to the bank, not you. I try to remind myself of that, and that they could take both our properties back again. (it's part of my expectation management strategy of expecting the worst and preparing for life in a tent!) But until they do we're free to fart around with as much Farrow and Ball as we like! Yay!!!

Useful points about not hassling the tenants too much, thanks guys. I have a spy upstairs, my old neighbour, he gives a regular bulletin-I suppose it would be really evil to supply him with a key?

 

[Moo]

One small tip for landlords - arrange (and pay) for the windows to be cleaned regularly. The tenants will think you're a really nice person and the window-cleaner will be able to examine the condition of all the rooms and report back direct to you.**

We have a little house managed by a local agent who, as a matter of routine, inspects the house twice a year.




** I was mortified to learn that the tenants kept their accommodation in much better condition than I did mine.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Genius! I love it! will definitely do that- plus it means I won't have to face a whole year of accumulated grim!

You must have had exceptionally clean and tidy tenants Moo. :wink:

 

[Moo]

You must have had exceptionally clean and tidy tenants Moo. :wink:

Oh, we did!

A pair of 'trainee psychiatrists' (the agent's description) who moved in with quantities of wonderful pot plants and stayed for five years. Then one of them moved out, to make room for the other's boy-friend. The agent did his end-of-contract inspection and told us that there was really nothing that needed doing. We could, if we wanted, give the curtains a wash, but they didn't really need it. So we didn't.
The new couple stayed for another five years until they decided to buy a house of their own, and were replaced with a nice French doctor. He wasn't as assiduous as the earlier tenants, but even so when he left four years later all it needed was a lick of paint and a new shower tray.

I think we just have a wonderful agent.

 

[robgil]

I remember the bliss of that happy transition from tiptoeing round someone else's place to having your own! You're in for a treat!

Sorry to strike a negative note, but it's worth bearing in mind that unless you luckily have hit upon hundreds of thousands of pounds and don't have a mortage it belongs to the bank, not you. I try to remind myself of that, and that they could take both our properties back again. (it's part of my expectation management strategy of expecting the worst and preparing for life in a tent!) But until they do we're free to fart around with as much Farrow and Ball as we like! Yay!!!

Useful points about not hassling the tenants too much, thanks guys. I have a spy upstairs, my old neighbour, he gives a regular bulletin-I suppose it would be really evil to supply him with a key?

yup , i really cant wait , its all very exciting. we are lucky enough to be mortgage free but we have pretty much used up all our budget on buying the place and sorting out the roof so we may need a top up loan to get all the big works out of the way, or we could just work our asses off and put all our money into the house for the next few years. my new mcintosh hi-fi and cruising yacht will have to wait i think. probably until i am retired and unable to afford them anyway.

 

[yamin]

Must be terrible for you....

Landlordism.

Mao had the right ideas.

:?

Not sure where that came from??

Anyway, another hand in the air as a landlord! A nice little victorian 2 up 2 down in Birmingham, currently a very happy home, at a very fair rent, for a couple who couldn't otherwise buy. Not sure how that would be an issue......? Not read rest of thread yet, so don't flame me if this one already 'put to bed' - sorry!

 

[yamin]

As I understand it, and in the ideal world, you are paying the Agent to sort out the legal mechanics of the rental, hold a check list and pics of appliances etc to be signed by the incoming Tenant. The Agent should inspect the property at the beginning and end of each Tenancy agreement, and alert you, as the Landlord to anything which is amiss---- do they do that-- not if they can get away without it, all too much trouble.

.

Sorry, just random thoughts as I get them Joce. We pulled out from having our rental property managed, as they do very little for the money! Through the landlords building insurance we have also taken a policy that

1. Gives Home Emergency Cover, for gas, electric, water etc, all those things that might get you a call in the middle of the night!
2. Covers us specifically for damage, accidental or malicious/careless, done to the property during the let - i.e. if tenants leave the place wrecked. This means we do not hold a deposit at all.
3. Insures us for any legal costs should we need to evict the tenants.

All this for about £22 per month, vs £60 per month for the letting agency.

Its very flexible, for a cost you can also build in rental guarantee for any empty months etc.

Finally, if not already mentioned, I would be tempted to try and find a local handyman, who you can trust (theres the rub, eh????!), that can be there to sort out little repair jobs, to your satisfaction, when needed.

 

[JoceAndChris]

Maybe our archaeologist friend has thought twice about his attack on landlordism!

Useful advice there yamin, thanks! I don't think our insurance is like that... we should get it changed.

Finally, if not already mentioned, I would be tempted to try and find a local handyman, who you can trust (theres the rub, eh????!), that can be there to sort out little repair jobs, to your satisfaction, when needed.

Just impossible in Highgate, I tried and tried over the years and never found anyone I'd want to use twice. I remember one carpenter turning up in his Mercedes and effectively telling me that the job I wanted doing- new skirting- was far too boring and unlucrative, he was off to Spain to work on new properties! A 10k quote to paint the house is the norm. No, it's actually so much quicker and cheaper to spend 5 hours driving and do it ourselves. But, yes, brilliant if you can find such a person.