Hello
Has anyone experience of short lets? What are your thoughts/comments/advice?
Thank you
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try air b&B forums instead
Iâd suggest you tread very carefully. âShort letsâ only apply in very limited circumstances and unless you meet those very precisely, a court would rule you have a sham licence and declare the occupants as assured tenants, which means youâd have none of the required paperwork and may struggle to evict if the necessity arises.
We will all be running our letting businesses on short term lets when / if the RRB comes into force and term ASTâs are abolished.
How are you proposing to do that?
Thank you for your reply
I assume you mean you will be changing to a short let business model with new holiday / short stay customers, rather than the existing tenants? Your post makes it sound like youâll be running the same âlettingsâ business, hence my confusion.
As there is a max 90 day stay for any short let customer in many areas, I wouldnât want any other Landlord thinking there was an easy way to avoid RRB with the same tenants.
Itâs not what Iâm proposing, itâs what the government are imposing upon us with their abolition of term tenancies in the RRB.
I personally do not consider a tenant who can move out with only 2 months notice, i.e. a potential âshort termâ of only 2 months, with no further obligation / liability is anything but a short term tenant.
What are your contingency plans if the unforeseeable happens and they end up staying beyond 60 days?
You, David122 and Karl11 are clearly misunderstanding my post.
The government are set to impose periodic tenancies from day one of a tenants occupation, i.e. no more term tenancies are allowed. Therefore yours and my future tenancies are potentially as short as the 2 months notice as imposed under the new rules in the RRB.
There will be no requirement for tenants to enter into any such âshort termâ contracts, the government have set the rules to facilitate this avoidance in the RRB by default.
My point was / is that your future tenancies cannot be deemed any other than âpotentiallyâ short term tenancies by virtue of the fact it may last only the length of the notice period without any liability upon the departing tenant and no contractual safeguard for landlords to recover their costs of marketing, referencing, tenancy set up, inventories and letting agent fees.
In other words the government, in contradiction of their stated aims to create security of tenure, are in fact opening the floodgates for unscrupulous tenants who wish only to stay short term but falsely give the impression they are long term tenants to avoid the expense of a âshort termâ contract, i.e. there will never again be a need for short term contract arrangements for people wishing to stay only short term. However, landlords will still be constrained in their options to evict a tenant at short notice with the abolition of S21âs and the necessity to provide a valid cause for an S8.
Therefore, as per usual, the government is setting up landlords for the potential of abuse of their proposed system by the tenants, without any consideration of the impact on, or protection of, said landlords.
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Apologies that I misinterpreted your post.
Yes, I misinterpreted it too. However, given how difficult it is to find a tenancy at the moment, I dont foresee many tenants giving early notice. For one thing, an obvious question for landlords to add to their interviews will be how long weâre you at your last property.
Well, thanks for clarifying that I didnât misinterpret it at all. Thatâs exactly what I thought you were thinking. I think itâs a highly unlikely scenario.
But even if it were to happen to me, if someone I let to had the kind of character that would play the system like that for their own personal gain and they left after 2 months, Iâd be thankful that I escaped that lightly.
No apology necessary Karl, but appreciated all the same.
It is perfectly understandable that you and David122 misunderstood given the context of the original post. I should apologies to Adrian for hijacking the OP without contributing any constructive advice, and to yourselves for being somewhat obtuse.
I was simply having a good old whinge. Perhaps I should change my name to grumpy old man, for which Iâve earned the right to be after 40+ years as a landlord and now an OAPâŚ!
However, I still fail to see what the governments motivation / intention is with the abolition of term ASTâs, particularly as they claim to want security of tenure.
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Fair comment and a healthy pragmatic attitude.
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