The Bright Star Guide to letting your first property – Landlording 101

The day has come, you are getting to take home those keys. The excitement of getting the keys to your first rental property can be overwhelming – you are a Landlord now!

It is easy to let that excitement run away with you, but the reality is now you have to figure out what being a landlord means for you and how you are going to manage your property.

Step 1: Getting to grips with your new rental property.

Before you do anything else, have a really good look at the property with your practical head. You may find your practical head was not the one you were wearing when you chose the property in the first place. But don’t let that worry you.

You will most likely have selected your rental property based on size, location, value for money and rental return – all good business sense. But now you are looking over your property with a magnifying glass to make sure everything is right before letting the property. You need to consider what changes need to be made and in what order. It is unlikely that you have bought a rental property that is 100% as you want it to be so making a list of possible changes is a good start.

Step 2: Some Rental Legislation and Regulations to consider.

Now you have got your bearings, you will need to consider some of the big important stuff that being a landlord entails:

• You will need an EICR Electrical Certificate on the property (valid for 5 years)
• You will need a Gas Safety Certificate (if you have gas at the property – renewed every year)
• You will also need an Energy Performance Certificate (valid or 10 years).

Once those are in place you are ready to let your property … or are you?

Technically, completely the above tasks fulfil most of the legal requirements for renting a property. However, to be a good landlord there are plenty of other considerations you should make before running headlong into filling your property.

Step 3: Health and Safety

This step is really about looking at your property carefully and considering how the most unlucky and clumsy person could injure themselves.

• Are carpets worn or damaged on stairs?
• Are there loose slabs on the path?
• uneven steps?
• non-compliant safety glass on internal doors?
• Are the window-catches safe and secure?
• Spongy green decking?

Anything that is a potential issue will need addressing, better to sort it out now rather than dealing with it after someone has inevitably hurt themselves.

Step 4: The aesthetics – remember your practical head.

How the property looks, is of course important. But it is very easy to let your heart run away with the budget, especially on the small stuff. Try to keep your practical head on, and consider where you can make the biggest improvements for the least input (time and cost).

Presenting the property in a clean and tidy way with the bonus of some fresh paint (preferably not magnolia – I hate magnolia), will often be plenty enough to market the property successfully. Should you wish to do a little more, new lights in the kitchen and bathrooms are a good place to start. If your new property is feeling very much stuck in a distant decade you may at absolute most consider a refresh of the kitchen and bathrooms.

To be completely honest, for most tenants the key considerations beyond price and location are likely to be if they can fit their furniture in.

Step 5: Appliances – is it the landlord’s responsibility?

As a new landlord, you may not be aware of the responsibilities surrounding appliances. As a general rule of thumb if it is built in it’s the responsibility of the landlord to maintain and replace the appliance as required. If it is free-standing (not built-in) but comes with the property when renting it out, then its normally considered to be the responsibility of the landlord unless specifically stated in the tenancy agreement.

If you buy a property with appliances, not necessarily built-in ones but ones left from the previous occupier, you need to make a decision over them. Do you leave in property and then have a responsibility to replace and maintain them or do you remove?

The issue is you are unlikely to have any history on the appliances, when they were bought, if they have had issues and so on. Therefore, unless they look very new and you have tested each of them you may find it cheaper to remove them completely or where needed replace them before the tenants move in. This saves you from any unwanted surprises, like a tenant calling at 10 pm to say the dishwasher has flooded the kitchen.

Now when do you talk to me?

Realistically the day after you get the keys.

Once you have those keys it is so useful to get some proper advice on which bits to tweak and what to leave alone. And to get the rental property marketed!

Remember a tenant usually has to give a month’s notice minimum on their current property. So, allowing for viewings (good and bad) and time for referencing to be completed, it will take realistically 5-6 weeks to get a tenant in the property. Which means any improvements you need to do can be done in that time, it gives you a deadline, gets the property filled promptly and keeps you focused on being a landlord, not choosing between hundreds of shades of paint.

So let’s get that property on the market and filled! Give us a call today!