Press Article
PROPERTY SQUARE MAGAZINE - May 2008
Find me a property... To Rent
Jo Eccles, an ex-banker and property PR professional, set up her property search company Sourcing Property in June 2006. Sourcing Property, which specialises in central London, acts for time-poor buyers and tenants, offering a comprehensive search service designed to eliminate the time and stress associated with finding dream a property.
Further information t: 020 7834 1343 w: www.sourcingproperty.co.uk
The property market is hardly out of the front pages of late with a lot of speculation about what will happen to prices. The current uncertainty in the sales market coupled with tighter lending criteria and fewer available mortgage products has prompted many buyers to put their purchase on hold and choose to rent instead, leading to strong competition in the rental market.
We have certainly noticed a u-turn in our current client mix – a year ago approximately 70% of our clients were buyers, compared to now where approximately 70% are tenants and only 30% are buyers.
The heightened competition in the rental market means that many of the good rental properties in all price ranges are being tied up before their details are even released onto estate agents’ websites or property portals, leaving tenants who don’t have access to inside information with limited choice.
The competition means that as a tenant, you need to act quickly, often putting a deposit down immediately in order to secure the property you like. Once you’ve found the right property, you need to make sure you read the paper work carefully. One of my recent rental clients had a lot of problems when she came to give notice on her old flat. Unfortunately, she had signed a very ambiguous contract directly with her landlord several years previously, so we had to contend with various issues relating to her notice period – her landlord was trying to unreasonably hold her to giving notice on a certain day of the month and extract more money, despite the contract not explicitly stating this. A few stern letters soon sorted this out! However, this can be a common problem and not being up to date with the terms of the contract you’ve signed can add unwanted stress to the move.
The difficulty for tenants is that when searching for and trying to secure a property, they have little advice, unlike when buying a property, where professionals such as a solicitor and surveyor work on the buyer’s behalf to check the property and paperwork. When renting, you often have less time to deliberate and no one to independently advise you, so the more you know about the area and the process, the better.
A great perk of the rental market, however, is that it gives you a huge amount of flexibility. For example, if you know that you want to buy but the right property hasn’t come up yet, renting in the meantime can really take the pressure off. It can also be a great way of test-driving an area you don’t know very well before you commit to buying there.