How to Let Your House, Without an Agent, For Under £100

I wanted to post about letting out our property in Manchester. This post is LONG and is meaningless to anyone outside of the UK or anyone who’s not letting out their house in the future. It will probably be meaningless to people who are thinking of renting out their property too, because it’s so long you’ll probably be dead by the end of it and your house will have been given away in your will.

This was our main panic button when we realised we would be moving back down to London. After years of handing over keys to landlords and being done with places we’d live in, it felt really foreign knowing we’d still be responsible for our house in the north when we were living in the south.

I personally felt 3 things:

1) What? How do we even let it out?
2) What? Someone is going to live in OUR house? Walk on OUR floors? Shower in OUR shower? What about our lovely range cooker? What if they are mental or don’t pay the rent?
3) What? What happens if something breaks/leaks/catches on fire? We live in London? How are we going to lord over our house if we are all the way down there?

I’m sure everyone will feel differently about letting out their home. Someone people won’t give a crap, others might not be able to part with their house at all. I think I personally sit somewhere in the middle of those two. Ben, probably sat further down the fence nearer to not giving too much of a hoot as long as whoever we handed over our home to wasn’t going to burn it down.

Given that we have a pretty quick turn over (we found out we were moving, moved, let our property and Ben started his new job, within 30 days) we got cracking trying to figure out the best way to do things. There’s a LOT out there. Letting agents will tell you one thing, friends will tell you another, the internet something else. So we collated everything we could and made the best decisions possible and ended up at this crazy mind map:

We knew we wanted to try and let the house out ourselves, without having to pay a letting agent for the privilege. Letting agents typically charge 10% of the annual rent just to do a fraction of what I’m going to list below. 10% of our annual rent would amount to £700. We paid out £82.50 by doing it ourselves. That’s the kind of maths I can get on board with.

So without further ado, I give you our ‘How to let your house, cheaply, simply, safely and quickly in 8 easy steps’. Catchy.

1 - Mortgage:

-Before you do anything, if you have a mortgage on your house and it’s not a buy-to-let one, call your mortgage provider. What you are after is something called a ‘Consent To Let’. It’s basically the mortgage company saying that yes, you can let out your house even though when you bought your house you didn’t get a buy-to-let mortgage.

-For us all it took was a phone call, a quick over the phone questionnaire about who we were letting it out to (eg; not criminals). Then within 2 weeks they sent us our permission letter.

- It was free for us, but is can cost you depending on your mortgage provider/what type of mortgage you have/how far you are in to it. A friend of ours paid £100 for hers so it’s not end of the world stuff.

- Apparently they very rarely decline you consent to let. Said the man at Halifax.

2 – Certificates 

-To legally let out your property in the UK you need two certificates to show how safe the house is.

a) Gas Safety Certificate: If you have any gas appliances in your property they will need to be tested by a CORGI registered gas engineer. We have a gas boiler, hob and fire in our house, so all three needed testing.

-I went on to www.gassaferegister.co.uk, typed in my post code and found a local gas engineer who came over, tested everything and gave me a certificate (plus a copy for our tenants) for £60. Obviously where you live and how many gas appliances you have will alter this price, but for three gas appliances this is probably roughly what you are looking at.

b) Energy Performance Certificate (EPC): This is a certificate showing how energy features in your home perform.

-If you’ve bought your house relatively recently whoever sold you the house will have shown you one. They last for 10 years so it’s worth checking the EPC Register and putting in your post code, as you can download it for free it it’s still valid. This is what we did.

- If your property doesn’t already have an EPC you can go to the EPC Register and find a certified Energy Assessor in your area. EPC certificates start from £55.

3 – Promoting your Property

- We put up this ad on Gumtree. It was totally free to do:

 ‘Excellent unfurnished, two bed terraced property, close to all local amenities and local transport links. Situated on quiet cul-de-sac with ample street parking. 

 The property comprises of: 

 Living Room: Working fireplace, real wood floors 

Dining Room: Storage cupboard, huge under-stairs cupboard, real wood floors, fireplace, double patio doors out to back yard area. 

Kitchen: Range Cooker, brand new fridge/freezer, dishwasher 

Bathroom: Full bath and separate rain shower cubicle 

2 Large Bedrooms: Back bedroom has built in wardrobe 

Utility Room: Washing machine and tumble dryer 

Gardens front and back 

House Alarm/Gas Central Heating with Wireless Room Thermostat/Fully double glazed 

 No Housing Benefit or Students thank you. 

Suitable for professionals’

 - We included a few of the pictures of our house from the Hause Tour on this blog, which I think helped give people a picture of what we were offering. We also posted the ad on our personal Facebook pages to see if friends of friends were after a place to rent.

- In a week we had about ten emails requesting viewings, all through Gumtree. The first people who viewed the house asked to take it and we really liked them so went through to the next stage of the proceedings.

4 – Holding Deposits/Credit & Employment Checks

- We took a £100 holding deposit from the tenants on the day they asked if they could take the property subject to credit and employment check. Again this can be more of less based on the rental price of your property but it should be enough to stop anyone running off after offering to let your property!
- I used a site called Letting Ref to obtain credit checks and information on the tenants. It’s a really nice, clean and simple site, which allows the tenant to fill out all of their information and then you the landlord can log in and check their credit ratings. It tells you if the tenants will be a safe bet, recommends whether they should have a guarantor or if their credit ratings are too poor and you shouldn’t take them on as tenants. Prices go down the more checks you do, but we paid under £10 per check and the tenants footed the bill.
- Letting Ref obtains the tenants current employment details so I emailed both of the tenants places of work the following email to double check they were employed as they said they were:

I’d be grateful if you could answer the questions about ________’s employment below to the best of your knowledge and email them back to me. 

Many thanks

 

Position held:

 

Basic annual salary:

 

Is applicant permanently employed?:

 

Is applicant on a fixed term contract?:

 

If applicant is on a fixed term contract what is the duration of the contract left:?

 

I confirm that the information supplied is to the best of my knowledge and belief, true. 

 

Name:

 

Position held:

 

All information will be treated as confidential. Thank you for your assistance.

5 – Deposit and Deposit Schemes

- Once we were happy with the credit checks and had had confirmation back from both employers of the tenants we then asked for the full deposit. From all the info we had looked in to it appeared that 6 weeks plus the first months rent is now standard for a deposit. We asked the tenants to do a bank transfer with the full amount including the money for the credit checks, less the £100 holding deposit.

- By law in the UK as a landlord you must place the deposit for your property into a Tenancy Deposit Protection scheme within 30 days. The scheme basically protects both parties, but it’s mainly to protect the tenant from landlords who take money from tenants without good reason. The money is held (Custodial Scheme) or insured (Insured Scheme) until any disagreements are sorted out. We opted for the Insured Scheme as it meant the money stayed in our personal account and we felt more comfortable with that but it cost us £22.50 as opposed to the free Custodial Scheme.

6 – Contract

- You’re after an Assured Shorthold Tenancy Agreement (England & Wales)

- We were lucky enough to have a neighbour who had one on file, but you can buy them from WH Smith for under £7.

- Make sure you read the agreement from cover to cover.

- We then wrote a list of all the things we wanted to make sure were covered in the agreement ie; specifying the tenants couldn’t paint, specifying no animals etc and then went back and double checked we were covered in the agreement. A standard agreement should cover both the tenant and the landlord sufficiently, but it’s always best to check and double check to make sure your agreement suits your property.

- Once we were happy with the agreement we asked the tenants over (a good opportunity for them to ask any more questions about the property) to sign it. We were advised to go with either a 6 month or a 12 month contract but no longer as this was the first time we were letting out a property. We agreed a 12 month lease with the tenants, agreed a move in date and all signed two copies of the contract with a neighbour present as a witness. Then we gave a copy to the tenants and went on our merry way.

7 – Landlord’s Insurance

- If you have a mortgage you need Landlord’s insurance. If you don’t have a mortgage, still get it. Landlord’s insurance replaces the buildings insurance you had to get when you bought the house.

- You can then add things on like insurance against the tenants wrecking the place. It doesn’t cover wear and tear, so if the washing machine breaks of it’s own accord you can’t claim, but if the tenant covers the kitchen cupboard in black marker then you can. We didn’t opt for that, but we did opt for insurance against missed rent payments, just to be on the safe side. If our tenants stay on for another year and they’ve been brilliant for the first year then we will probably take that off of our policy as at the moment it’s preeeetty pricey at £38 a month.

- We could have gotten a better deal, but I’m a dick and wanted to get £75 worth of M&S vouchers from the insurer we were with originally.

8 – Inventory

- Do an inventory for god’s sake. It will make life so much easier on check out. A neighbour offered to do ours (it’s important to have an impartial person to do it) although he’s still not sent it to us and he’s been really bloody unreliable so pick your impartial person wisely.

- We rented out house unfurnished because we wanted to take all our stuff with us, although we left curtains, blinds, lampshades etc.

- We downloaded a standard inventory form for free here, and then adapted it to our house.

- We had the house professionally cleaned before the inventory, so if you’re planning on doing that make sure it’s noted and photos are taken of things like the oven, as the tenant will be obliged to leave the property how they found it.

- On the subject of cleaning, if you live in the North West, do NOT for the love of god use Clean Team North West. They didn’t show up and also shouted at me and put the phone down on me when I called to see where they were. They were literally the most stressful part of the whole move.

We put together a little house hand book to help the tenants understand any random quirks about the house like the control pad on the boiler being a bit confusing etc. We also mentioned things like ‘please trim the bush in the front garden from time to time, and make sure you clean out the filter in the tumble dryer’. To be honest it was probably me doing my best to be a control freak but I felt like it might help. We also left them a bottle of bubbly in the fridge so they would like us and not trash our house.

So there you have it. I genuinely hope this helps make someone’s life easier, cheaper and less scary when they are thinking of letting out their house. If Miss Nervous Breakdown over here can do it and survive unscathed, then literally anyone can.

And We’re In

We made it. We made it into the truck and up the six flights of stairs into our attic flat. We made it a whole week in Manchester with just a sofa bed, two plates and two glasses to our names. We made it through finding tenants and through cleaners who didn’t turn up and were mental.

The last month has been pretty insane.

Our tenants are going to be moving in on Saturday so until then I’m going to keep quiet about that just to be on the safe side. But I’m quite excited to write a semi boring post on how to be a landlord in a few steps. We waded through a lot of bumph to get to the point we are at now.

So yes, anyway, we left our house in Manchester on Sunday morning bright and early…

…and arrived in London at lunch time to get cracking on turning our little flat into our new abode. After about six hours of moving boxes around, hitting our heads too many times to mention and crashing on the sofa we were about here:

I love the light in this place, being so high up really gives you some perks. Great light, looking out of the window to see the tops of the trees, Canary Whaf AND the Shard. Is it worth the near-constant breathing difficulties I’m experiencing every time I climb the stairs, we will have to wait to find out.

They’re are a few things we need to do to this place before we can fully unpack. The living room is the main culprit, with its pea green walls and giant crack in one wall from when the building moved at point. The bedroom also had a delightful poo brown feature wall which I banished yesterday, so that’s one room ticked off the list although we still need to find some kind of storage that fits into the toddler sized space at the side of the room, but that can all wait for another post. The kitchen is a bit grim wall wise too, but I think it will shape up nicely when its had a lick of paint.

It’s a tricky one going from our own place to a rented property. You feel the pull to start spending money on things you can’t take with you and have to put the brakes on. But I’m excited about finding ways to make this place home without flashing too much cash.

Big News!

Sooooo…I didn’t keep my promise about writing more regularly again. You wanna know why? Because I’ve spent the last couple of weeks having tiny panic attacks about everything I can possibly think of, BECAUSE…dunnnn dunnn dunnnnnnnnn…we are moving house!

You heard!

We are moving back to the big smoke, back to the lovely old streets of London. And I’m excited. But I am also soincrediblystressed. Everything has moved so quickly since Ben accepted a new job down south. We had to get cracking straight away so that we had somewhere to live for when he started work at the end of May. I mean, we had very kind offers from my family to house us both, but we really wanted to try as hard as we could to sort something as soon as we could.

And that we did.

The week after Ben accepted his new job I hopped on a train to spend the week in London viewing every possible flat I could handle. From living in London before I knew the two main rules:

1) Rent is HIGH
2) Good places go FAST and usually before they’ve even been formally advertised.

I was praying for one of these illusive good places. It’s very much right place right time. It’s also very much a case of the letting agent pinning you against a wall and screaming at you until you tell them you want the flat and handing over a holding deposit before you’ve even caught your breath.

I was very much prepared for all of this and yet it still made my head spin.

I spent my first day traipsing up and down the streets of Stoke Newington, going to to every letting agent I could, repeating my lines ‘can I give you my details, I’m after a 1 bedroom flat and my budget is max £1500 per month’. And without fail nearly every agent replied ‘there’s not much on the market at the moment, everything is going so far, but how about viewing this flat, which is in the ghetto and out of your price range?’.

I booked in a few viewing for the following day, none of which I was particularly excited about. They’d all been on the market for at least two or three weeks, so I knew they wouldn’t be up to much. The following morning I decided to do a bit more online searching. Gum Tree…nada. On to the letting agents. I found a place I liked the look of, right at the very top of our budget but in the perfect location. I gave the agent a call. Gone. ‘But there’s a flat that only came on two days ago and only had one viewing. Do you want to see it?’ Why not. Where is it? Three doors down from the very building I was sat in, my sister’s house. Creepy, but promising.

Literally 15 minutes later, I’d had my viewing, I’d Skyped Ben a mini flat tour and we’d handed over a holding deposit.

Things move that fast.

I’ve only got some rubbish photos that I took on my phone and some I took of the actual leaflet I was given by the agent…but here is our new home.

LIVING ROOM

KITCHEN

BEDROOM

BATHROOM

I do really love it. I mean, it’s on the 4th floor, in the attic of a town house, it needs some serious painting (which the landlord has agreed we can do), it’s one bedroom, so much smaller than our house right now and tall people may not cope well in there, but I can’t wait. It’s about 100 meters to a really brilliant park, about the same distance to one of the most ‘happening’ streets in North London and there are shops, busses, and pubs galore. It’s next door to my sister and down the road from my brother and one of my oldest friends. 

We are in the process of renting out our home in Manchester. We’ve just found some lovely tenants and so within the next month we should be moved in to our new London home. I’m going to write some posts about letting out your home and  also about moving in to our new one, so hold me to them.

The Whole World

I’m easing myself v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y back into the world of blogging.

I don’t think I can quite talk about our leaking shower (ripping all the tiles off the walls, replacing the walls, putting the tiles back and it NOT being covered by the insurance…anyone?) although I will do I promise. We’ve also painted our bedroom other such delights, but they all seem like big scary posts, so instead I’ll let you know this:

We bought the coolest tablecloth ever.

I was so sick of all the wood in the living room, and was lacking in much love for our dining room table. Then one weekend I was at my lovely friend Christina’s amazing Liverpool City Centre pad and on her tiny table for two was this map of the world tablecloth. And I copied her. Like, almost immediately. 

It’s from John Lewis and is £18 a metre. We needed two metres but I would have paid more because I love it that much. It’s made out of some kind of PVC wipe clean-ish material, but it’s matte and that’s the key here people. It’s actually pretty unassuming believe it or not. 

I, along with the rest of the planet, love a good map, and it means that if we run out of couples conversation over dinner we can just look at places we would rather be. ( I joke of course). 

Woops

Wow. I’ve neglected this bad boy for something like four months now. If it was a child I’d be in prison. If it was an animal I’d be on Pet Rescue.

I’m sorry.

We’ve actually done a fair bit to our bedroom in the last few months, but with Christmas, a huge bout of work on my plate, my total lack of a decent camera (still) and studying to become a make up artist (yo) I’ve fallen behind with my duties and feel a bit bad.

So, this is just to say I’ll be updating more regularly from now on innit.

Bye!

Swag

It was my birthday this weekend and I was INCREDIBLY lucky. I got to spend time with lovely friends and family AND I received some pretty epic presents and cakes. But this blog is about our house (hause) so I figured I would just share my housey type gifts… of which I had a few.

First up, this AMAZING Klippan blanket from my big sis.

Klippan is a Swedish brand of pure lambs wool blankets in loads of amazing designs and colours. I’d actually had my eye on almost this exact blanket and had pinned it on my Pinterest, but my lovely sister had no idea and obviously struck up some kind of psychic link instead. It really cosies up our living room and is so heavy and warm. I absolutely love it and reckon it will last a lifetime. 

Next up, a cute squirrel tea towel by Donna Wilson. He requests that you use his tail to dry your dishes. He doesn’t know what he’s asking. Ben has a habit of using clean tea towels to mop up spilled coffee and what-not and it really upsets me, so I’m hesitant to put this squirrel through that just yet.

Also from Donna Wilson came the Mog plate. Another thing I’ve been after for forever and another thing my sister stole from my brainwaves without even realising. Actually it was her boyfriend who bought it for me but I image she may have something to do with suggesting it. 

I’m trying to decide on the perfect spot for him and it’s giving me sleepless nights. 

And last but not least, I received this wicked little retro sugar bowl from Sagaform.

My mum had a dinner set very similar to this when I was growing up, although it was orange and brown and straight from the 70′s. That sentence makes me sound old. I’ve realised I’m starting a lot of sentences recently with “When I was younger…”. Shudder. 

So there you have it. Amazing homeware-y gifts for one very lucky 31 year old. Happy Birthday me. 

Flora

This is quite a girly post about flowers.

Someone told me once that buying flowers for your home is like showing your house you love it. I like that as an excuse.

I’m really getting in to buying flowers for our house. I think it stems (!) from the fact that I find it very difficult indeed to keep plants alive for long and flowers just die after a few weeks so I don’t feel too guilty about it. Obviously, alongside the fact that they are pretty and add colour and a bit of softness to your living environment.

I usually pick up a bunch when we go food shopping, which is once every few weeks as we never have any food in and live on a diet of McDonald’s and chips, cheese and gravy. These guys in the pic above were £1.50 from Aldi of all places. I think they are Gladiolus. 

I also bought another bunch in a different, amazing, coral colour. Again £1.50. 

Sometimes the act of going to buy flowers is actually just as nice as having the flowers themselves, so grabbing a cheap bunch of blooms in the local supermarket doesn’t quite cut it. My sister gets an inordinate amount of pleasure from going to little independent florists and finding out everything she can about the flowers she buys. I’m talking the kind of research you would do before adopting a pet. 

She bought me these lovely flowers this weekend from a florist in the Northern Quarter and I think it made her as happy as it made me. 

So there you go. A post about all of the flowers I have in my house at the moment. It does kind of look like someone has either had a wedding or died, but it makes me very happy having all these flowers around me while I work from home. 

Goodbye Beige Wonder

As I mentioned (understatement) in this post back in July, we no likey our fireplace.

So we finally decided to do something about it, bit the bullet and bought a pack of primer and stone coating in White Limestone from Stonelux. I’ve read every review they had on their site and Googled the hell out of it and to be honest there’s not a hue amount out there to reassure you that you’re doing the right thing. But the products themselves were only £32.44 (excluding P&P) so we figured our hatred of the fireplace outweighed the risk of it going wrong.

So I removed all our bits and bobs from the fireplace and gave it a bit of a clean.

Are you enjoying that veiny beigeness? How’s about that SHINE! Here’s a close up just because I’m nice like that. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, this update was going to have to be all about the surround. We don’t have the money to fully replace the whole shebang. Don’t get me wrong, we hate the insert just as much as the surround, but we are going to have to live with it for the time being.

Anyway, I cracked open the primer which was included in the pack and painted one thin coat over the entire fire surround. I thought I might be a bit hesitant about finally covering the Beige Wonder, but I felt nothing if not a huge thrill. The primer went on like a dream given that it was being painted on to marble. 

After waiting over night for it to dry (it only specifies 3 hours, but I was watching season 3 of Fringe and got distracted) I was excited to get cracking with the actual stone covering. 

This is how much you get for your money:

Not exactly loads given that you have to paint three thin coats but it was actually enough, although I was a bit concerned when I saw the size of the pot. The consistency of the stone coating is so weird, it’s like painting your fireplace surround with sandy water. It smelt pretty strongly of PVC glue though so I’d imagine that’s an ingredient.

I’m not gonna lie, the first coat freaked me out. It looked rubbish! I didn’t take a picture because I was panicking and starting to regret messing with Her Royal Beigeness. It was pay back. But as I built up the coats they began to go on more easily and by the third coat I was pretty happy with the finish!

Check it out, don’t you think it actually looks like it’s real stone? Pretty cool no?

BEFORE

AFTER

Yeah I know, it’s not exactly a huge reveal, but you can really see the difference in real life. I think the matt effect of the stone coating is much less offensive than the shiny shiny beigey marble and the colour is just more neutral and from the cooler side of the colour family. I also painted Bob’s frame from cream to black to keep any beige/creamy tones from getting back in on the action. 

So there you go. I’d definitely recommend using Stonelux coverings if you are in a situation like us. They are way more affordable than buying a brand new fireplace and can give you a bit of light at the end of the home owning tunnel.

* I wasn’t perked in any way for this review, it’s all real brother.

A Home for the Black Mirror

Hi. I’ve been holidaying on a remote island in Croatia but now I am back and I am here to tell you about our TV cabinet. If that’s not going to draw the crowds I don’t know what will.

Remember this set up we had going on? (Hi there Michaela Strachan):

Well you will be pleased to know it has been rectified for a princely sum of £30. 

Everyone loves an Ikea Expedit bookcase as some point in their lives, don’t get me wrong, but that point was over for us (me). Our Expedit was too tall and too dark and too wrong for that space. I’d been hunting for an ideal cabinet that had taken residence in my imagination for approximately 8 months. Eight months of searching ebay every other day, trying to think countless different ways of searching ‘vintage-retro-tv-unit’. Finally it appeared, sent by the retro gods.

I love it.

It was actually sold to us by a charity shop in Sheffield so that kind of makes it even nicer…and it also makes us less annoyed that they sold it listed as G Plan when it clearly isn’t. But hey, it’s old and it has nice handles, fits the space, holds the telly and even all of our other technology boxes. What more can you ask for, for £30?

Boom. 

8 Hours

This bank holiday Monday just gone (in the UK) we decided to be as cliched as possible and tackle some DIY in the form of our bedroom. It’s finally getting a look-in after 11 months of living here and to be perfectly honest it wasn’t as grateful as I’d have hoped. I’ll explain…

Our bedroom has a feature wall consisting of this wallpaper:

Totally inoffensive but totally no our tastio. We knew it had to go from the moment we bought the house and after a successful experience using this technique to remove wallpaper from the living room, we decided to finally get cracking. I think our exact words were “let’s get this done this morning and then we can go out and do something fun in the afternoon”. 

Oh foolish, foolish, fools. 

Look how happy and short Ben looks (we have really high ceilings). 

Anyway 8 hour story short. It took 8 hours. 8 hours of scoring the paper, soaking the paper, scraping the paper and crying. At one point I heard Ben muttering “GET OUT OF MY HOUSE” directly to the wallpaper. 

It was hideous. And what’s even more depressing is that it has to look worse to look better, so now our room is sporting even more Crack Den Chic than usual.

But there you go. Real life DIY tribulations. 

We still have to go back and scrub all of the glue off of the wall and then see where we are at. We are hoping to paint as soon as possible but after that small ordeal we might have to take some time to recover.