I had just let a property to one of my Southend landlords – a nice 3 bedroom semi-detached in southchurch to a young couple who had moved into the area for employment reasons. I was chatting to the landlord about, amongst other things, expanding his portfolio with another two properties; “What does the ideal southend tenant look like?”, he asked, and then proceeded to answer his own question; “Let me guess, a professional couple, both in their 30’s, flawlessly tidy, pay their rent on time, don’t complain or fuss, who have no plans to move and cheerfully accepts annual rent rises!”. We laughed!
So, what is the ideal tenant? Before I can answer that question properly, I have always believed that all a landlord expects of any tenant is to pay their rent on time and look after the property as if it were their own. In return, the landlord should provide a property that is warm, clean, and damp free and sort any issues quickly and without fuss.
Back to the tenants – tenants tend to fall into several groups… 20 something professionals; young and middle aged families; corporate tenants (i.e. their employer finds their employee a house to live in); students; older singles/couples and housing benefit claimants – and they come with different needs and wants. So, choosing who best suits your Burton property – and steering clear of bad tenants – is a big factor in making property investment a success.
One topic that I am often asked is should they, as a landlord, accept tenants on housing benefit?
It might interest the landlords of southend that of the 7,519 private rented properties in the local council area, 18.3% of the tenants are on some form of housing benefit.
… 2,501 properties to be exact. I know many landlords have suffered late rent payments with tenants on benefit, especially since 2008, when local authorities started paying housing benefit to tenants rather than directly to the landlords, but you can’t ignore the fact that housing benefit tenants make up a significant proportion of the Burton rental population. My opinion is that the final choice of accepting such tenants has to be the landlords but you can’t tar every tenant with the same brush as individual circumstances are different. I would suggest that a bigger picture must be painted before making a final decision.
Interestingly, it might surprise some readers of the Leigh Property Blog, that when we compare so to the national picture, southend housing benefit claimants are lower than the national average of private tenants claiming benefits. Nationally, 39.2% of the tenants of the 3,891,467 rental properties in Great Britain claim some form of housing benefit – 1,526,915 properties.
Now, let us look at the occupations of southend tenants, which makes even more fascinating reading. Of the 6,519 privately rented properties in the Burton area, 4,862 head tenants (the head tenant being classified as the head of the household) are in employment and the other 1,657 are either retired, long term sick, students or job seekers.
Splitting those 4,862 head tenants down into their relevant professions, 1,406 of them are managers, directors, senior officials or professionals. 364 are in administrative and secretarial occupations, 595 in skilled trades, 405 in the caring, leisure and other service occupations, 339 in sales and customer service occupations, 711 process, plant and machine operatives and finally, 1,042 in elementary occupations.
The one thing I have always known anecdotally, but until I did my research, never had anything to back it up with, was the high proportion of professionals and skilled trades renting property in southend – intriguing!
Maybe in future articles, I will look deeper into the corporate tenant market, young and middle aged families, students and older persons rental markets… but in the meantime, if you want more news, views and commentary about the leigh property market, please sign up to the blog!
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