Larissa

Hi all
Can anyone give me some advise/ their experience re renting out your house in the UK when going to Aus. Sounds like a good idea, but there could be lots of hidden pitfalls?
:scared:
Larissa
Had too much beer to write a better start to a thread...

steandleigh

Hi Larissa,

my aunt rented out her property when she moved to France. She rented it out privately without the use of an agent and it was a disaster. The tenant decided not to bother paying the rent and also ran up huge utility/catalogue/credit card bills. It took her almost a year to get the woman out and she had trouble with the gas board who had disconnected the supply and refused to reconnect until my aunt paid the outstanding amount. It was a nightmare. The house was also left in a s**t state by said tenant, I suppose as revenge for finally getting her out.
My aunt has since rented the property out again, but successfully this time. she went with an agent, who guaranteed an income from the property every month, even if it is untennanted. They checked regularly on the state of the property and all tenants are vetted beforehand. It's not all bad I think, but you have to be on the ball and also make sure that if things do go wrong then you have someone you can relie on to sort the mess out for you. otherwise it could be an expensive exercise and a long flight home to get it sorted out.

Good luck, Leigh.

leanda

Don't, we had nothing but hassle with a flat we rented out a few years ago, we used a agent to deal with everything and it was still a nightmare, we were lucky we were only 40 mins down the road to sort things out but if you are over in Oz it is a big responsibility to hand over to somebody to deal with and we only accepted professional couples etc no DHSS and still had hassle all the time.

owieb

We rented out two properties in the UK, both through agents and it was nightmare. Nothing but problems.

Because we weren't in the UK people would just take the p*ss knowing full well that we couldn't go round and sort things out.

When we came to sell the properties, the tennats were being really awkward and were refusing to let viewings happen, so we ended up having to wait till the tennants moved out before putting the properties up for sale.

To pay a UK mortgage whilst earning dollars is very difficult and the money suddenly disappears quickly.

During the sale process we feel we have basically been held to ransom on prices etc because we can't afford to continue paying the mortgage so have had to let the properties go cheaper. Mine was reduced by £50K to acheive the sale.

Some people have been fine renting, but we had tennats from hell.

But the good side is we got out here quicker than what we would have done had we waited for the properties to sell before we left.

tinaj

We thought about renting ours out, but have three friends who have all rented out properties with dire results. Lost lots of money, had to go to court to evict them etc. And to top it off got no rent in the process.

If you have a very basically done up house that they can't do a lot of damage to then it may be ok. If you have renovated or updated your home to a good spec then I wouldn't want to risk the damages that could occur.


There are people on this site that have rented theirs out successfully.