Do any of you haggle on the rent before moving in?

Thinking of leaving home to rent and wondered if it works the same as if you were buying, i.e knock them on the price.

Well, I would offer below the monthly asking price if I were you.

I rent out our own home, (we live in rented accomodation ourselves because of current work relocation), and when our last tenants moved out we accepted a lower 'offer' than advertised.

However, this also 'helped' us though, becuase we said if we did accept this lower offer we would not be renewing the carpets (which was originally offered in the advert .i.e new carpets in living rooms bed room etc).

The renter said fine and although was 'lost' £240 a year through the lower offer, we did not have to renew the carpets which were going to cost at least £750.

So, we are quids in!

You've nothing to lose and everything to gain. The only thing I would say though, is if this is your first tenancy, the landlord or management co may want more security or references from you.

Good Luck!

I have never paid the rent they have asked for. If it is £650 I always offer £550 if its £800 i offered £700 and more recently it was on for £1500 and i got it for the £1300 I offered. Nowadays depending on where you live it really is a tenants market. What I do is watch the websites every two days. If you notice a property that has been on there for over 4 weeks then strike. Usually they will prefer to rent rather than risk waiting further months and lose the rent. So in other words you either take my £600 now and lose £100 a month or you decline and your property could take a further 2 months to rent and you lose £1200+£100 council tax...your call

is kind of like when you buy a car - try and pick on the weaker elements and bring them to the fore in a bid to make the vendor nervous about prospect of losing a sale.

stuff like -

- fixtures and fittings not being as up to date as expected (got me 50GBP PM off my last rent)
- suss out the neighbours! arrive at the property 15 mins before your viewing appointment and look around - knock on doors and say hi if you feel comfortable enough. you will find out if they are noisy, or if they have kids likely to play around your place etc etc - very quickly. use any relevant info against the vendors!
- check out any furniture and equipment. rental vendors often try and skimp on ovens and fridges etc - be very picky here. to replace a washing machine might be more hassle than giving you an extra 20GBP off the rent.

If you can, offer to sign a 12 month contract instead of a 6 month one, on the condition they give you a discount on the rent. Worked for me.

You must haggle on price. If you're not embarrased by your offer, then you have offered too much.

Depending on the area you can get 10% off. Another tip is to be interested in 2 properties from the same agent - even if you hate 1 of them. That way the agent will be putting doubt into the vendor when mentioning the offer, providing he doesn't have a VI in property 2.

I knocked my landlord down from £700pcm to £650pcm. I just said 'how about £650' & he agreed & it's still the same 2 years later..

Why not use the carpet bombing method.

Find and view lots of properties offering what you think they are worth on each.

Someone always bites due to desperation/voids etc. If you cant get close to 20% off for 12 months your not trying enough.

Also you can often get reduction by increasing upfront rents too.

Another idea is to lie, I know it's immoral but the EAs do it all the time. Say you have secured (insert nearby property) for X per month can the vendor do the same as you'd prefer to rent through X agent , prefer the property etc.

Also dont forget to include fees in your calculations. Huge agency fees = lower offer. Make sure the agent knows this.

Finally remember that renting is currently a buyers marketplace with lots of properties empty.

Rather a sweeping generalisation about the state of the rental market! I'm a Jonny-cum-lately scumbag btl'er (Forum users description, please feel free to add more derisory names/expletives) and have just let a property and had 3 people "fighting" for it at the full asking price. I'm obviously not very good at this BTL thingy-me-jig stuff either because the potential rental income we used to calculate the purchase ended being 17% less than the rent we achieved.

Damn 'white' of you not to raise the asking price given that you had all these people "fighting" over your property

Asked for bigger deposit instead!!

Some good advice on here guys - advice I may be putting to good use in the near future.


Thanks

Although I agree broadly what you say in principle, when we did have two properties rented out (sold later), I asked Hampshire council if there was a period where I would NOT be charged council tax as we weren't living in it, they said yes, you could have up to six months.

Not sure if this STILL applies, but I understand your tactic.

i think this would be a good thread to make sticky - can evolve to a renter's guide of sorts

I'm currently in the same position as you... and I have been looking at places to rent over the past couple of weeks.

I've put in a couple of lower offers on new build apartments, but so far I haven't had much luck with negotiating the rent down.

In both cases, the properties were sitting vacant (for at least a month), and were asking for close to £800 pcm.

My strategy was to offer low, but to point out the strengths of my position, in that I could move in straight away and that I would be willing to go for a longer tenancy, 12 - 18 months.

I made offers of £725, but these were rejected. In one case, the agent told me that the landlord's mortgage was £850 a month.

I think the problem is that in these cases the landlords have overpaid for the properties, and they are looking to recover close to their mortgage interest payments. Of course, if they continue to remain empty then they may loose £850 a month for several months, rather than just £100 a month by accepting my lower offer.

Looking at the cost of buying vs renting in my area, renting is definitely the better deal even if I were to pay full asking. If we take one of the properties I was looking at.

New build 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment

Cost to buy approx £200,000
Monthly Mortgage Interest (on 100% LTV), fixed rate 3 years @ 5.35% = £890 (interest only) per month
Service Charge and Ground Rent = £100 per month
Total monthly charges = £990

Compared to the rental of £795 a month.

Essentially the landlord is taking a gamble on increasing capital values, and paying £200 a month for the priviledge.

[quote name='paulm' date='Sep 30 2006, 12:09 PM' post='459019']
"My strategy was to offer low, but to point out the strengths of my position, in that I could move in straight away and that I would be willing to go for a longer tenancy, 12 - 18 months.

I made offers of £725, but these were rejected. In one case, the agent told me that the landlord's mortgage was £850 a month.

I think the problem is that in these cases the landlords have overpaid for the properties, and they are looking to recover close to their mortgage interest payments. Of course, if they continue to remain empty then they may loose £850 a month for several months, rather than just £100 a month by accepting my lower offer."


Yeap, you are right IMHO.

Keep to landlords which HAVE NOT bought in the last 3- 4 years and you should be able to negotiate a discount.

As for those which OVERPAID, let them twist in the wind!

Good Luck

I'm moving soon into a rented property.
Secured a 5% discount under the asking rental.
In retrospect I think I should have asked for 10% - might have got about 7% off.

This is in a town where the local students union said:


Source: local free newspaper.

There is more room for manouever than you might think.

Thanks for all the great advice here!

I think that's a very good strategy so I will try it out over the next week or so, and report back with my results!

FrozenOut > It would be good if you could let us know on hear how your rent search goes as well.

Paul

Got a discount from £750 to £700

Did this by scouting rightmove for weeks, and recognising properties that had not rented for some time.

I think the carpet-bombing tactic may be a mistake if you want decent accomodation. I turned down 90% of places without having to view based on poor location, lack of parking and stupid room sizes. This left me with too few properties to carpet bomb.

The haggling was too easy. Just said "The most I can afford is 700". The agent asked the landlord and he said yes. Why wouldn't he - the property was vacant for a month.

As an aside, it amazes me that letting agents have the audacity to describe a 7 foot by 8 foot room as a double. Yes technically you can get a 6'6" by 5" bed frame in there, but you ain't gonna get a lot else in! I think the correct description is "Cupboard"

Hope this helps.

Does anyone have any specific advice for haggling on rent in flatshares?

Thanks,

B.

Money up front often works. Didn't for me last time, but it was already cheap...

In flatshares, people will love the idea of having the cash there and then particularly.

Anyone let me know what they think about this.

Rental £600 pcm (1 bed flat, very nice area)

My first move, offer 525 pcm

If landlord accepts this offer £475 with rent for contract paid upfront in one lump sum.

Comments please.

They should accept that. It really depends on the desirability of the property and how long it has been on for. If it has been on now for more than a few weeks the landlord will be starting to sweat. When a landlord sweats the rent drops accordingly. I would say most landlords add £100 on to what they hope to achieve.

I paid £500/month all-in rent for 6 months. Then landlord said it had to go up to £550/month from now on- blaming rising interest rates, bills etc.
I responded by handing in a 1-month notice.
I had for a while thought I was paying £50-100 more than what I should have for that flatshare, before this rise, but was too busy with other things to look elsewhere seriously.
A week later, I noticed someone else advertising for tennant in the same block same kind of flat for £450 all-in... but this flat has broadband and sky also.
£100pcm drop in rent by just moving upstairs & I'd get sky and broadband there.

Just been told by an Agent not to offer 'rents up front' through fear of not knowing the landlords financial status, i.e I pay for 12 months up from, and he goes bankrupt on month 3 of the contract and I'm out on my ear by month 5 and lose 7 months money.

Any thoughts anyone?

Offering 12 months upfront is asking for trouble. Maybe 3 months should be enough to obtain all the reduction.

Also you could stick you rent in an decent savings account to make more.

Going to be renting for at least 12 months depends how the market goes does anyone know any good agents or sites where i could get an half decent 12 month deal from around the south yorkshire area.

I'm in Sheffield so you shouldnt have an issue finding a ncie flat for 450 a month.. Or a 3 bed house for about 550.

Give me a PM and we'll discuss!

Just secured a 2 bed top floor duplex apartment. Got the rent reduced from £700 - £560 pcm.

Scouted Rightmove for a month, and watched local online adverts. Recognised the nice accom with desperate Landlords.

Waited for rent to drop to circa £600, then made a £550 offer, he said £575, we settled on £560. His IO mortgage is £585!!!

"If you're not embarassed by the offer, then its not low enough!" That was a tip I picked up from here and have just used successfully.

When haggling/negotiating why not just try to offer as low a price as you like and seeing how it goes.

It's good practice and you are not really going to lose out (the LL is hardly giong to charge you more)

I find that it's easy to negotiate for things that i don't want - for practice before i negotiate for what i do want.
I am not a good poker player and need the dry-run to steady my nereves.

I'd also say that you should find out about who you are renting from esp. how long they have been in the game and how many properties they have and also info. on their problems e.g. dhss, voidage, damage done by students etc...
Paying by Direct debit is a good way to reduce costs - or if he is dodgy and insists on cash (in which case i would not rent from him) make out that the cash option is not what you want and insist on a discount. -

If you get a decent LL you can say that you are prepared to pay up front- with deposit - take care of the place - and should be able to negotiate a discount.
try to get a note from your previous LL as reference and also from your work.

LL's would prefer a no nonsense letter than anything else really - lower rent is better than a month's voidage cos he throws you out for being a spaz.

We're having to leave the 3 bedroom house we have been renting for the last 12 months, because the landlord has put the house on the market. Our current rent is £600 per month and the house is on the market for 198k. This equates to a gross rental yield for the landlord of 3.6%, so no wonder he is selling.

In any case, we have been looking for a similar size property with a similar rent, but everything advertised around the £600 mark is much worse than our current place. We did find a house that we like advertised for £695 per month and coincidentally this house is also for sale and is on the market for 200k. I used our current rent and the fact that the houses are on the market for a similar price as a bargaining tool and initially offered £600 per month for the house. This was knocked back by the letting agent, because he told me there was no way the landlord would do £600, so I told him to offer the landlord £625 for a 12 month contract. The landlord rejected this, but said we could have it for £650 on a 12 month contract. I'm happy enough with that, because it was our first choice of house and a 6.5% discount off the advertised rent is a reasonable result. The gross rental yield on this house is still only 3.9%, so renting is at least 50% less than the cost of an interest only mortgage. I'm comfortable that I'm getting a much better deal than the landlord.

I was in a position to offer 6 or 12 months rent up front, but I felt that this probably wasn't worth it for the potential danger of losing the money if the landlord got into financial difficulty. It is a big gamble to take if you don't know the financial position of the landlord. I also thought that it would only get me another £25 maximum per month off the rent, so not worth the hassle.

I would say that it is always a good idea to haggle on the rent. You have nothing to lose, and the chances are that you will be able to obtain a discount of up to 10% without having to negociate too hard.

[quote name='donall' date='Jan 31 2007, 01:54 PM' post='540797']
When haggling/negotiating why not just try to offer as low a price as you like and seeing how it goes.



Definately! We did this last March when we took up a property in Kingston, my quick thinking wife offered 10% less on the monthly rent and the landlady agreed - no haggling.

Now one year on, she 'apologised' for asking for an increase for the next years rent, but still much less than the original advertised price!

I am new to this, but so far I have found little acceptance of below asking price. On two instances the LL was unwilling to go down at all - both remain on the market. I dont understand it at all - a 5% discount on £550 and I would sign for a year - In the couple of weeks since viewing, the guy has lost money on this decision!

I'm currently looking at properties to rent, as I'm having to move. I found a great one, but wanted to haggle a little on the rent as I felt it was a little bit more than I was wanting to pay. However when I spoke to the agent he said that I wasn't allowed to negotiate on the rent - it was at the price it was and that was that.

Is he allowed to say that? Surely he should take any offer to the landlord (who can say no, obviously)?

He never even gave me the chance to say that I'm looking for a long-term let of a minimum of 12 months, so would be a good tenant ...

Looking at this from the other side of the fence (I have a modest BTL portfolio) I have to endorse the views expressed here.

The approach we use when a tenant gives notice is -

1) Discuss, with the letting agent, the current market against rent currently being charged to determine what rent we 'should' be getting. This becomes the initial asking price.
2) We hold this asking price while the tenant is still in the property.
3) Once the property is vacant (i.e. if we don't already have a new tenant lined up when the old one leaves) we reduce the asking price for the rent by £25 - £50 per month for each week the property is vacant (the amount depends on the 'history' of the particular property in question, and our initial asking price). We will consider serious offers at all times. This allows us to arrive very, very quickly at the 'true' market rental value. Tenants aren't stupid. They can assess the relative value of everything on the market in a given area at a given time far more effectively than we can.
4) As a result, when we have use the above, we have never have a property empty for more than 3 weeks.

But then we consider ourselves to be good landlords. We have been doing this for nearly a decade now.

I didn't haggle on my rent this time because we had one saturday to look and made an offer at 5.00pm.

However, I have since looked at OurProperty.co.uk and note that the landlord bought the flat for approx £250k in January 2007.

We are paying £1,100 pcm so this equates to (drumroll please) a 5.3% yield. I am getting 6.05% on my Yorkshire BS e-ISA. Bear in mind that he has had to pay for new carpets on us moving in as well.

Somehow I can't see him making any medium-term capital gains in South East London on this property.

I have also tried haggling against a rent increase using the argument that if the property is empty for just 1 month he would lose more money then not increasing my rent, landlord is hard as stone and didnt budge one bit.

There seem to be goups of flats (all new builds in my experience) where the LL's and EA's have joined together in a cartel to keep up the rents.

As i've said before my current block of flats is largely owned by overseas investors. The local EA's rent out the flats at very similar rents. I tried to rent/haggle on a few before I got this one. I just kept trying until I found a LL who would do this.

The foreign LL's here are in it for the long term investments (or so they say...) so they don't care about having a tenant there all year.

The EA's mainly rent them to companies and as holiday lets at well above the market value. Most of the flats here are empty.

Unfortunately my experience in the Wokingham area seems to support what Moneymaid has said.
We are currently looking at rental properties, with a view to a bigger place. My experience was exactly the same the last time I looked, about 4 years ago.
The decent ones in decent areas get snapped up pretty fast, so every time I have tried to haggle on the rent on a place that I have liked, by the time the EA has contacted the LL and got back to me, a tenant has been found who is willing to pay the full rent and I have lost out.

Or, very annoyingly, at the viewing, the EA appears somewhat disinterested and when you tell him you want to make an offer on the rent, he tells you that the previous viewers were extremely interested and were on their way to the office to pay the deposit. I have tried calling the EA office to find out if it was a lie, and am usually told that the property has been let.

Yes, me again.
This is becoming VERY depressing.
We are looking more seriously for a bigger house to move to now and for the past three or four weeks I have been been scouring Rightmove for properties to let.
Each time I find one that looks ok, is in a reasonable area and is asking a reasonable rent (3-bed for under £900 pcm) I ring up the agent to ask for a viewing, most of the time to be told that it has already been let.
The only landlord who was willing to negotiate on rent was asking £1150 pcm for an OK 3-bed, then was unwilling to drop below £1K, which we can't afford.
It's becoming a problem to find a nice place to rent full stop. We can forget even thinking about haggling on houses asking less than £900pm!
We are currently in a small 2-bed house in a lovely quiet area paying £750pm.
Does anyone else have the same experience?

Yes, but when he does it will be on his AND THE BANKS MONEY, you are earning 6.05 on your money alone. Imagine if you took out an 0% interest CC and put it in your savings account for a year.

Not sure being leveraged makes any difference when you look at rent/dividends.

It cost 250K which he either had to borrow form the bank at the baserate + a bit or spend his own cash where it could have been earning interest in the bank at he base rate - a bit


Everything I am looking at in Wales has much lower yeilds. Two places are on right now for sale and for rent at
479k for 1500 3.8 % or 375 for 1100 3.5%. Admitedly these are asking prices but that applys for the rents as well.

I rent in Ireland right now and ratio is about 2.75% and we are paying over ther odds on the rent as i was in a rush and it already seemed so cheap. Even with returns that low people were snapping up BTLs only 6 months ago and telling us rent was dead money.

We've always haggled & subsequently never paid full price, we always bring up the extortionate upfront costs (in a PC way of course) plus that we're wanting to sign a years contract etc etc.

Only fools pay the full price

Currently pay £750 for a detached (with integral garage) 3 bed house, just signed up for a 3rd year with no change in rental cost

Live in hope what would yo do if all landlords you haggled with stood firm or if you had no time to haggle you either agree a price today or you homeless tommorow? would you be a fool then?

Chrysalis I make sure that I have plenty of time to go through this process, so I don't end up looking like a fool as at the end of the day its my money.

Don't let EAs bully you !

Your answer assumes one EA/landlord somewhere would drop asking price and also assumes you dont have limited time.

Well good for you.
Let me guess. You don't live in Wokingham. Or in or any other area with a high demand for rental properties.

Finding the opposite, I've just negotiated a 19% off my monthly rental for a 4yr old 3bed new build in Norwich for £650 a month. Its even bigger than the 3bed I've moved out of.

Theres an over supply of property in Norwich especially loads of empty flats and plenty of housing developments around the city, and houses that havent sold for a few years as well. Throw in the tougher lending criteria and a good amount of Norwich could never afford to buy the property thats for sale here and you can see why houses have been advertised at 20% plus off based on previous years.

I work in wokingham, though don't live their why would I put myself in an overpopulated rat hole where I can't negotiate ?

I commute, i.e. I get up early in the morning & get home late