Anyone done a corporate let on their property?

Weighing up options if we can't sell our house soon, one idea is to sit on it and rent it out, which would net us a decent income (and we have no mortgage to stop us), but we don't want to do have all the usual landlord hassles, and especially don't want to have to keep going back to the UK to look after the place.

This got me thinking about corporate letting, either through and agency or direct. Has anyone ever done this, and if so, what were the pros and cons?

Do you still have to bring the electrics up to 2018 standards, etc, as you do with private renting?

I have.

Corporate lets vary !

In all of the cases I have had them the tenancy has been in the name of the person who is spending a housing allowance given by the company.

One was Samsung and the other the German Government.

They stayed 4 years each which was the length of their secondment.

Yes I/ have let a few direct to various corporates directly, where the organisation is named as the tenant and are using the property to house staff etc, not to further let out for a profit. So any problem is the liability of the company, I have let 2 flats to the same company for almost 3 years now, without issue.

I would not entertain one of the “guaranteed” rent type arrangements. You have all the liability of a normal tenancy but very little control. The big problem is you grant a tenancy to them and they sublet, so you have no way of knowing if the company you rent to has sublet correctly. It can create absolute nightmare situations where you have tenants that are virtually un-evictable.

Can you Airbnb it? I do this also, via a company that manages everything organises cleaning, laundry, advertising etc etc. I even have the ability to “lock out” dates if I want to use it. They do not rent to tenants at all, they market on Airbnb booking.com etc etc and have their own corporates who they rent very short term let’s.

I think you will have to bring the electrics up to standards to get an ECIR.

I don’t see any advantage to a corporate let, every time I’ve been offered one they’ve gone 10% under on price too - and as mentioned above, unclear who would be living there.

I think you can run it with little need to return via a competent agent. If you have at least a few trade contacts and are prepared to take the call from a tenant (or WhatsApp generally nowadays) you can go for let only rather than managed.

Managed, which seems to be 6%+ in London, is the fee for taking the phone call and sending round an overpriced trade to fix it. My trade contacts say the agent puts 20% on whatever they quote. That might not be universal, but you’d think there was some mechanism at play.

However, given you have no mortgage, you’d still be making a good amount of money … depends if everyone taking a percentage would annoy.

I let my house out to a Lockheed Martin exec some years ago. They paid very good money for the 3 years they were there.