Good tenants, a slow market and a turnkey sale that worked for everyone

When Shirley decided to sell her four rental properties, she had two good reasons for choosing Landlord Sales Agency to do it for her: she didn’t want to disrupt her tenants’ lives, and she didn’t want to pay four mortgages while waiting for empty properties to sell.

“The property market was awfully slow,” she explains in her video testimonial. “You could see properties on the market for a year or 18 months and nothing happening.”

For Shirley, asking the tenants to leave before finding a buyer risked turning income-producing properties into a monthly expense – with no certainty about when that expense would end.

“I had four good tenants. I didn’t want to disrupt their lives.”

She wanted a discreet sale that wouldn’t unsettle her tenants and prompt them to leave of their own accord, leaving her “paying mortgages on empty properties”. Having seen other properties sit on the market for a year or 18 months, that was a risk she wasn’t prepared to take.

“I couldn’t really see a way to have a win-win for the tenants and me.”

She worried that selling the properties locally would leave them competing against each other for buyers in an already slow market and the process would drag on indefinitely. She wanted to sell them together and to reach more buyers, discreetly.

Landlord Sales Agency mainly operate in England and Wales but when Shirley approached us with exactly the type of landlord dilemma, we specialise in solving, we knew we could help.

Rather than advertise the properties to the public, we advertised them solely to our database of 30,000 buyers that includes incoming landlords, investors and cash buyers as an ‘off market opportunity’ using photographs of the property taken before the tenancies started.

We didn’t just put together the property details and find a buyer. We worked with the letting agent and solicitors to gather tenancy agreements, rental payment records, deposit information and safety certificates, and chased the renewal of out-of-date certificates. We also helped coordinate deposit transfers, rent apportionment and the handover of keys, giving the buyer a ready-running rental portfolio with the tenancy information needed to take over.

We sold all four properties to the same ‘incoming landlord’ without unsettling any tenants in the process in just 6 weeks. We arranged access for the buyer’s surveyors through her letting agent and the deal completed just over 15 weeks after securing the buyer.

“The speed with which David found me a buyer was astonishing”

Shirley received £218,500 – 17.5% below her own £265,000 estimate, (but only 8.4% below our local agent’s realistic valuation) – and the tenants remained in their homes, undisturbed and largely unaffected by the sale. The only thing they had to do was change their standing orders.

It was exactly the win-win Shirley dreamed of for her and her tenants and she was clear about the price trade-off:

“I had to take a little bit of a cut. And that was fine by me because it meant that I wasn’t paying mortgages for 18 months while I was waiting for properties to sell”

We handled the details so the buyer could take over and the tenants could carry on – the turnkey solution Shirley wanted

When one property needed an additional structural survey, we helped negotiate a shared cost between Shirley and the buyer so it could go ahead and keep the sale moving. The results were satisfactory, and we followed up on the detailed mining reports needed for two other properties and the remaining legal enquiries.

We created the turnkey sale Shirley had hoped for, completing all four sales just over 15 weeks after securing the buyer – with her tenants staying in their homes and rent continuing throughout, so she wasn’t left paying mortgages on empty properties.

Avoid Section 8 and the reletting ban

Like Shirley, sellers typically walk away with around 85-90% of a realistic vacant-possession value.

We have an extensive private database of over 30,000 registered buyers and sell a wide range of properties. Whether you have a single buy-to-let, an HMO or an entire portfolio, we can help you find the right route to sale.

We have a number of options if you want to sell your rental properties with minimum stress for your tenants. We can look for investors who want to keep them in place, explore ways to help them buy the property themselves, or help them find alternative accommodation and coordinate their move, including arranging removals and reducing costs.

We often liaise with councils and letting agents to make our options possible and deliver our turnkey solutions. Whatever route we take, we never lose sight of our sellers’ wishes and we keep them at the heart of our plans.

The majority of sellers approach us when they want to look after their tenants but we also have the legal backup and specialist teams that work well with incentives to convince unwanted tenants that voluntary surrender is better than going through courts. When communication has been replaced with confrontation, we provide landlords with a faster resolution and less likelihood of malicious ‘revenge’.

There’s another benefit to selling without eviction for landlords in England: avoiding the reletting ban triggered by the Section 8 sale ground. That ban could prevent you from letting the property again for around 16 months from serving notice – even if your tenants leave early and you haven’t found a buyer.

Complete the form below to find out how we can help you create a turnkey sale that is suitable for incoming investors or owner occupiers and avoid the costs of running empty property.