The accidental landlord: is the sunshine making it easier to find tenants - or do they just have less choice?

Victoria Whitlock thanks glorious sunshine when her garden flat is snapped up within hours. It took ages to let the place in last summer’s rain.
£2,250 per month: a spacious two-bedroom flat at Mumford Mills, off Greenwich High Road in SE10, about half a mile from the DLR. Through Century 21 (020 8012 6106)
Victoria Whitlock23 July 2018

What a difference the weather makes when you’re trying to re-let a property. I really struggled a year ago to find tenants for a one-bedroom garden flat because every time I showed people round it rained, so they barely paid any attention when I tried to show them the lovely garden.

This year, the same flat let within hours of the advert going live, all due to the sun shining.

Most of us have very little imagination when it comes to viewing properties, so if we see a garden on a damp and dreary day it does nothing to inspire, but if we see it bathed in sunlight we immediately picture ourselves enjoying a lazy Sunday morning lying on the grass reading the papers, or sipping sundowners on a warm evening.

I am sure that when I showed the young couples round the flat on a baking hot Saturday afternoon as the sun beat down on the garden, they didn’t bother to look carefully at the inside of the property. All they could think about was G&Ts on the lawn.

They took the flat even though I think the living room and bedroom are on the small side of cosy, and didn’t seem to notice or care that the bathroom is really quite tiny. And they probably didn’t notice the single-glazed sash windows that let the traffic noise in and the heat out.

All three couples I showed round on that glorious afternoon raved about the garden and offered to put a deposit down on the flat. “Oh, this is amazing,” they said. “We can have barbecues,” and, “Wow, this will be great for parties.” One couple offered slightly less than the asking price in return for a three-year tenancy, but as they also wanted a six-month break clause I decided that the offer of a long let was a red herring.

After a bit of thought I went with the couple who didn’t quibble over the asking price, which was four or five per cent more than last year.

I was pretty chuffed to get such a good price when I had prepared myself to take less because a year ago rents seemed to be sliding. Of course, the swift offers might actually have nothing to do with the weather being so glorious. It could be that there are fewer rental properties available this summer.

The current thinking is that the recent tax changes for landlords have forced many to sell up, leading to a shortage of rental properties in certain pockets of London. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit.

The number of buy-to-let loans for new purchases fell 12.5 per cent in the year to April, according to UK Finance, which certainly suggests that fewer private landlords are entering the market.

Many will have been put off by the higher stamp duty on second homes introduced in April 2016, while others will almost certainly have been deterred by the loss of tax relief on buy-to-let loans.

Whatever the reason, it just goes to show that it’s hard to predict what might happen in the rental market, and that landlords who are in it for the long-term just have to be prepared to roll with it - whatever the weather.

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