I put a photo up of our motorhome to show the scale of the downsize. Our motorhome is called Sassy – a name we decided on together as we love the mystery of the unexplained and enjoy watching discovery shows on Bigfoot. Hence, her name is Sassy (Sasquatch). The kids love the woods, fun camping stories and enjoy mystery with a bit of spookiness, so the name I hope is fitting.
Our house went onto the rental market and within a month we had found the perfect tenants. A professional couple with dogs. We are hoping that they stay long term as we don’t plan on coming back to the property anytime soon.
Some issues with renting our private home are as follows…
The government have now increased the amount of tax we pay on income from rental property – we obviously pay normal amounts of tax, but as it is from property specifically, the amount has increased.
The second issue is that for us to rent the house out we have to pay fees to an agency, which is normally about half of the first months rent, which for our personal house is about £1200. The government has recently changed the legislation so there are no fixed term contracts. In all my time as a landlord, we never had any issues with fixed term contracts. Normally tenants signed on for 6-12 months, then entered into a rolling contract and served a month or two notice when they wanted to vacate. On the couple of occasions a tenant wanted to leave early by a month or so, we just let them leave with no charge.
However, now, someone could move into our house, and immediately serve notice.
This means we will have paid the agency, a listing fee, tenant finding fee, check in report, inventory fee and a contract fee. So essentially we have very little control over the initial period of rent. Which is frustrating as we need the income from our home to pay for our travels. Plus, finding new tenants will ensure another fee of half the months rent again. So worst case scenario, pay £1200, new tentants move in, they immediately serve notice, house is vacant for a month or two, then another £1200 for the new tenants again.
I understand the government wanting to give more rights to tenants but this has made us question whether renting our home out is a long term solution to fund our travels for the medium to long term.
