paulry

Perfectly natural to have those kinds of worries to begin with - you being on the other side of the world. Will be so relieved when my house is all set up, tenanted and the payments rolling smoothly in .

Jen1977ni

These tenants have been in the house since I left, but it looks like they've now split up, which is what worried me in case he changed his mind about staying on! So fortunate that he pays 6 months upfront, not looking forward to a tenant who pays monthly and maybe pays late, EEK!

paulry

Have you taken out insurance to cover rental and eviction costs in case your tenants stop paying? For my house I believe it'll only cost around £100 PA. Probably money well spent, IMHO.

Jen1977ni

I will if/when he starts paying monthly...

coolshadows

Can take several months to evict a non paying tenant, and even then they can end up trashing the house (and stealing).

Believe me, I've found out the hard way.

killerhales

Compliments to PaddyO and Neil for good advice.

We recently became landlords in the UK. Just a couple of things to add:

Specialist landlord buildings/contents insurance from Hamilton Fraser covers the bases and we found it to be good value.

You can claim loads of expenses against your rental income, including interest. You have to put income and outgoings in your Aussie tax return. If you make a loss at least you can claim this against your overall income, so a bit less tax! Look for NAT 1729 on the ATO website.

We also joined the NLA for GBP88, not sure if this is worth it yet but they will help in event of any problems.

As the others said, a managing agent is a must. They will earn their 10% + VAT (I wouldn't pay more than this).

Good luck!

Alfresco

But then the Insurance Co wants to do a thorough and invasive credit checks (like 6 months bank statements etc...) on your tenants. At least that's what ours would have required. So we've decided against it.

They've passed the agency credit checks.

paulry

Sounds like you are just about all set to go . How many days do you have left?

Yesterday, I asked the estate agent (that it looks like I'll be using) about this and he said that the one which they recommend requires three months. I'll double check that. But It does occur to me that your area is better than mine so maybe you'll be less likely to have problems . Personally and having read some of the comments here, I'm not taking any risks. Sometimes the nicest looking people can turn out to be the worst .

Lisa and Martin

I used this website forum loads as a DIY landlord in the UK:

www.landlordzone.co.uk/forums

Absolute wealth of information on there, and better to learn from other people's mistakes than create your very own....

Alfresco

Thanks for the link.


Days to go is above my avatar.

Yeah I think you right! Anyway it's a risk we take.

I've never had problems with non paying tenants on any other property so far, so I think the risk is fairly small. (touch wood )