How long should your rent-free period be?
Find out how you can negotiate a rent-free period with your landlord.

How long should the rent-free period be?

This is a great question from Geraldine who has just taken on her first rent to rent property. Congratulations Geraldine.

When you first take on a property, there's often (not always) a period when it's empty and you determine with the landlords or the letting agent a period when you're going to start paying rent.

What we negotiate with most of our landlords is three weeks and people are sometimes quite surprised at that. But actually, another letting agent will not be paying them rent as soon as they take on the property to market it.

They will take the property on and then be charging the landlord money for things like tendency find and inventory for example.

So, landlords won't be making money straight away and some are fine with that and you having a period to tenant the property.

After the three-week period, even if the property is still empty, we pay the rent – that is what guaranteed rent means.

The period beforehand is very important, and I want to make it clear that this is not the refurb period. If a refurbishment was needed, then that is done before the three-week period starts.

The three-week period starts from the end of the refurbishment until the rent start date.

You don't have to ask for three weeks, but I know that in our Rent 2 Rent Kickstarter coaching people are often very nervous asking for a rent-free period.

But if you present it as a practical detail that you’re going to tenant the property before you start paying the rent – then the three-week period makes sense.

If your landlord is against it, obviously you can negotiate - anything is possible. You might even be able to negotiate a longer rent-free period.

Even if you tenant the property before three weeks, you can still pay the landlord after three weeks. If we tenant any of the rooms beforehand, we'll pay a partial payment.

For example, if it's one out of seven, we'll pay one seventh of the guaranteed rent for the period, even if it's before the three weeks of when the official rent starts.

That's what we feel is fair to us and our landlords and that's how we like to work it.

So, to answer the question in short, we ask for a three-week rent-free period. You can ask for longer or shorter – whatever works for you and your landlord.

If you've got a question for me, you can ask in the comments section on the video.

All the best,

Stephanie & Nicky

xx

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