Residential Landlords

I am in the innocuous position of being a landlord and a tenant. I own a house I have not been able to sell since moving out in the belief it would shift. Of course rather than let it lay empty for half of Eastern Europe to set up home (actually it's not that big, so perhaps 20 Lithuanian thugs), I rent it out. Fortunately, tenants have been generally house proud. Even that couple who stopped their direct debit after the first rental payment at least hoovered the place when I doorstepped them like clockwork. There's nothing like travelling 25 miles in the pretence of dropping by so not to antagonise them and collecting a post dated cheque, mainly because his fly tipping business wasn't such a cash cow as he had hoped. They left on their own accord strangely enough and (before the days of Tenancy Deposit Schemes) I kept their deposit to cover the rent remaining, and a few hundred quid for miscellaneous expenses (mostly the contract the sods had broken). The latter incurred the wrath of the ex-tenant until it was pointed out to him by the otherwise unscrupulous agent that I could sue them for the remaining rent.
Well, advice from that is, get rental insurance. http://www.simplelandlordsinsurance.com does a combined building and renter's insurance in one - I'm with them, but I have never needed to claim so do your own due diligence. Second thing I learned was, don't opt for paying an upfront tenant finder's fee rather than a percentage of rent unless you're sure you'll have tenants making it worthwhile. The estate agent I dealt with couldn't give a monkey's about the poor tenants they supposedly vetted. They got my money so why bother? In fact the lead tenant had a nice little trick to avoid credit history checks uncovering mountains of debt. He had his own (financial) Drain to maintain I guess. The trick was to delibrately misspell his name on the ID form. His aliases were Nile, Neon, and Noel when his name was actually Neil. Subsequent mail confirmed the imposters. So he had parallel credit history in all those names. Use and abuse one, move to the next. I can't believe the agency didn't spot that (let money not get in the way of duty) and I was naive/imbicilic to accept a credit report with Nile penned out with Neil.

As a tenant, this brings its own problems. What the hell do you put when a car insurance form asks if you're a tenant or a home owner? Am I not legally allowed to be both I ask myself since that option is never available. So there comes the dilemma. Choose the one that charges you less you might say. But then, what do you do when banks ask you this when applying for a credit card? Is it more advantage to be a home owner? To be up to your eyeballs in debt securitised by a building made of bricks, mortar and crap the builders chucked between the walls that wouldn't be discovered until they had long gone? Or a tenant who pays his rent on time and has no outstanding secured loans (unless you do a search on Experian that is)? Well, as it happens I don't think it has ever really mattered so I randomly select one or the other. I await a knock at the door at 4am by the anti-fraud police.

So, 2 years have passed and the faceless landlord through a faceless property manager, neither of whom I have ever met hence the 'faceless' bit, are wanting to increase the rent. As it was put to me, "other rents have gone up with RPI" as though my rent is linked to other people's poor negotiation skills. Well, my salary hasn't increased by the Retail Price Index (poor negotiation skills) let alone the government preferred and lower Consumer Price Index for the past 2 years. But I relented to a 3.1% increase and signed up for just another 6 months. This will bring us to the winter months where property should in theory be cheaper to rent or buy. I feel dirty having agreed to this, but I think it'll pay off.