With generation rent becoming more and more predominant in the market many are trying to squeeze as much as they can from their properties. Some are doing this by letting their properties to sub letters.
What does it Involve?
The landlord has a guaranteed rent from the sub letter that then turns as many of the rooms possible into bedrooms and lets out each room. Daniel Burton is just 25 and collects £35,000 in rent each month even though he doesn’t own a property. He lets out over 200 rooms in 40 properties in London and usually just leaves a kitchen and a bathroom for all the other tenants to share. This is now known as “rent-to-rent”, “rent the rented” and “multi-let.”
Burton isn’t the only one to be doing this; there are blogs, books, seminars and courses on how to rent the rented with many boasting that they make £10,000 a month without even having to purchase a property of their own.
However, there are concerns over the huge rents that the London market is seeing and the overcrowding of properties. Year on year the increase in rent has been around 8% compared to the average wage increase which is very close to 0%.
Is it Legal?
Burton, among others, insists that the way they are making their money is completely legal and that the landlords know exactly what is going on. He says most of the time they are happy to have a guaranteed income and the sub letter is the one that performs the routine maintenance checks.
Whether or not this new middle man system is legal or not, may not be the point. The fact is there is a question over whether or not it is ethical because the whole point of this scheme is to get as many people into one property as possible.
David Smith is from Gold Solicitors and he has said, “If the landlord lets to a rent to renter they are creating a commercial tenancy which is subject to different laws than a residential tenancy. At the end of the tenancy the sub tenants have the right to demand a new tenancy under a law designed to protect commercial tenants such as shop owners. Landlords can lose control o their property this way.”
Victims
There are many issues with this new system and in effect will make victims of landlords and tenants. It could make landlord insurance policies invalid and even could be breaching buy to let mortgage terms which could mean that the mortgage is called in by the lender.
Although there is a huge risk financially for landlords, tenants are the biggest victims having to live in overcrowded properties and paying large rents only dreaming of a property of their own.
