My First Rent-to-Rent deal.

When you start out in any business you are hopeful that things will go your way and often times, if you have done the research beforehand then you should be safe. Not always though!

For my first R2R deal in the Lincolnshire, England. I found a house on one of the rental websites and contacted the landlord via the website to arrange a call. Bear in mind this was my first property so I was nervous about trying to sell myself to the landlord and I sat by the phone for 10 minutes beforehand psyching myself up for the conversation. The call actually went rather well. The landlord was familiar with the serviced accommodation model and even had his own Rent-to-Rent business in the past so he was open to it from the start.

The house was a grade 2 listed building, a fairly well known house in the city of Lincoln as it sits right on the corner of 2 main roads and has more character than any other home around it. To me this was going to be a goldmine. I couldn't have been more wrong!

My naivety got the better of me and I failed to consider some important factors about the ongoing costs of the property. First of all the fact it had high ceilings and large rooms throughout meant the cleaning would take substantially longer than a modern 3 bedroom home and secondly it had an old electric heated boiler along with single glazed windows meaning the bills were going to cost way more than what I had accounted for.

Fortunately I took the property on in early spring so I didn’t have the cold weather to contend with for a few months at least. It worked well, I broke even on the investment within 6 months and was making £1000-£1800 profit per month…… UNTIL the first winter bill rolled in and had risen from our average £500 per month to £1500 per month!! As you can imagine this was a huge shock to the system and whilst I tried my best to keep things running, I had to decide, do I persist with it and hope that the landlord purchases a new boiler as I have requested or do I part ways with the property and take it as a lesson?

I wonder what would you have decided on?

I decided that despite the hard work put in to transform the home I had no choice but to take the lesson and move on with my life.