Great tenant for 12 years but I need to sell?

Hi, My wife and I are keen to sell our final rental property. We are now fully retired, aged 78 & 66, and wish to sell so we can recover the cash to cover our retirement plans.

Our tenant has been in the house since we bought it around 12 years ago.  Her family have been excellent tenants who look after the house as if it was their own and the rent has always been paid on time. Her rent is £650 every 4 weeks (she gets council allowance which is paid direct to us, topped up by payments into our bank to cover the rent in full).

The rent averages around £700 per calendar month which is a decent return for the area and value of the property of circa £125k.

The house has been regularly updated, always had annual gas and electrical checks and is fully compliant.

We have tried to sell the house with the sitting tenant …. the family are wonderful and would continue to be a well proven and excellent tenant for any landlord.

However, the agencies who made offers to us wanted to increase the rent by another £175 per month! This after we accepted an offer of £15k off the assessed value to endure the rent would not be increased for the tenant for at least 1 year.

Dirty tricks and so unjust. Needless to say, we pulled out of the sale.

The second agency offered us £68k for the property to keep the tenant!

We would like advice from Property118 members on prospective buyers or investors who can be trusted not to rip us or the tenants off.

Thank you

Doug

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