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TonyA · 08-10-2012, 02:07 PM

I have had bad experiences with undergraduates in HMOs, such as never cleaning, having parties and trashing the house, all blaming each other if there is damage, not paying rent in the last month, expecting to pay no rent over the summer, etc etc, so even though I know all students are not the same, I've given upon undergraduates: let them trash halls of residence instead!

Postgraduates are much better - more mature, stick around for several years, want a place they can call home. They are really little different from working graduates, and the two groups mix perfectly well, except for the never-ending bugbear that students for some reason don't have to pay council tax, which means higher bills for the others or you have to cover their council tax yourself. As with most HMOs, it helps to find a tenant with the right temperament who is prepared to act as "house mother/father", paying the bills, taking responsibility for house management, meetings and so on. A humanities postgrad who works from home a lot is ideal for this, and worth rewarding with a reduced rent in exchange for helping to look after the house.

I don't understand why there is this special category of "student lets" as far as mortgage lenders are concerned: in my experience students are no different from their peers in terms of risk profile, and I've never seen any differences in regulation from councils - a "student house" is the same as an HMO in their eyes.

Ashley Clarke · 12-10-2012, 10:06 PM

In my experience, which is renting to undergraduates you have two sides of the coin.

The pro’s are that you get the rent paid up front each term, set out to coincide with their student loan checks. If you’re nice enough as a landlord they’ll stick around for 2-3 years and they yields can be great when you have 4 rooms in a standard 3 bed house.

The Con’s are that you’ll generally have to spend more in upkeep and maintenance, parties will happen, things will get broken and you'll get a lot more calls about minor things because a lot of them, patrically first years have no life exsprience and will phone you up if a light bulb goes out .But at the end of the day you take deposits for a reason so most major things can be covered.

In short, they tend to me more hassle day to day but they pay well.

Vanessa Warwick · 06-11-2012, 12:27 PM

Our latest mortgage market intelligence for Q3 2012 reveals some interesting information about student lets:

“Average rents have stayed strong so far during 2012 as tenant demand remains high, and the average monthly income was again over £1000 a month during quarter three. However, there is always a wide variation in rental income depending on property and tenant type.

According to the Index, student tenants provide the highest rental yields for tenant type (often from HMO properties) with an average yield of 8.23%.

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