UK Landlord Forum / Life

I am sitting here with a coffee on a Sunday morning. I have 5 properties all let with decent tenants. I am pondering what could be done to maximise rental returns in the event I have an empty property.

I have not looked into anything as yet but the first thing that springs to mind is letting as room lets or shared housing rather than whole house lets. The properties I have are 2/3 beds and so the first thing that I consider is the need to furnish the property ready for tenants. To what level of furnishing do the existing shared housing landlords furnish to. I guess most of the stuff could be picked up on ebay, auctions.

Also, do you find that letting like this is more hassle, or do the extra returns make this worthwhile?

What other methods do you guys use to make the most from your investment?

Hello Urban,

I have only second hand advice for you:
1 - Be careful you don't find yourself inside HMO regs by accident.
2 - Be sure what kind of singe room occupiers you're going for.  Is it young professionals?  Or the lower end like economic migrants, DSS, etc.

A frield let out to this latter group and got to hate it, and eventually them.  Demanding in ways you don't imagine.  He once got a call at 2am saying he had to drive over and change the light bulb in the hall because it had blown.  He said no.  A few days later he cot a "claims for you" letter saying he was being sued by that tenant.  They had fallen down the stairs at 3am and it was his fault the light was not working properly.  Of course the tenant stood no chance of winning, but it's all hassle you have to deal with.

Indeed and thanks for that

Where there is blame there is a claim, but that could happen at any time.

I'm not sure (I havent looked to far into it yet) but having a small number of people and properties of only two floors keeps me out of the multi occupancy regs, but again Id have to look at this more.

As for tenants, all professional :-)