I am about to put a flat in London on the market and am dreading it. Looking around property websites, in a 3 mile radius there are only 2 other similar 2 bed flats for £1,500/month (last tenants £1,300 so already an increase). You could say I should put rent up to say £1,600 but the price is getting crazy, this is an ex-council flat on a rough estate albeit with a nice view from 7th floor. I’m not sure I want to handle the deluge of interest. I know I can add lots of screening questions but most people ignore these in my previous experience. Last time I made it clear the rent was above the local housing benefit cap and still about half the people replying wanted to use housing benefit. Any advice? I am going to do open mornings rather than individual viewings to save time, but anything else I can do to get through this as quick as possible? Any sedatives anyone can recommend?
If you can’t face letting it then you could use an agent on a let only basis. However, can you face managing it?
Copious amounts of wine should help you through. Plus a brutal pre screening questionnaire that you enforce…no proper answers, no viewing.
It’s not something I relish either, so many desperate people let down by the social housing sector.
Definitely set firm screening questions set your expectations and stick to it.
If you don’t receive full response then dismiss.
You can’t afford to have flaky tenants in this market.
Arrive a bit earlier than the viewing so as to observe applicants.
I have caught out smokers this way. Trust your Gut instinct at meeting.
Don’t feel pressured into making a decision the beauty of Openrent is it’s only £49 for three months advertising, If you don’t find anyone your happy with then simply pay to re advertise
I was in a similar position a couple of weeks ago, had 2 properties to let in London. It wasn’t as bad as I was dreading and they were both let within a few days without too much fuss. The automated pre-screening questions helped a lot, and while there were a lot of enquiries initially, I only offered viewings to those who already met my criteria. I also did block viewing sessions which saved time. As Steve mentioned, a large glass wine will help!
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