I didn’t plan to be a landlord, what do I do?

Hi, I’m Phil from Sunshine. I’d like to talk to you about accidental landlords. You might be asking the question, what is an accidental landlord? It’s very important that you get this clear in your mind, accidental, by terminology, we mean someone, who didn’t intend to have a property to rent out, you could have inherited a property, you could have been left to look after a property on someone’s behalf or you might be a family or someone who can’t sell their

property and they need to move and therefore you have to let your property out. The one thing you have to bear in mind as an accidental landlord is the property that you know, you’ve lived in or you’ve inherited is not the same property, in terms of the law as the one you have to rent out, commercially it comes under commercial law and therefore there are a raft of restrictions, that you have to be aware of, before you actually let the property out, otherwise you can be in breach. You do need to speak to an expert to ascertain all of the information that is required, in terms of what legal requirements there are and also what practicalities there are, in terms of the property itself and what you need to do to make it safe for a tenant to move into, you will also need to, and we’ve referred to this before, think about the type of tenant, that you want in there, in terms of the amount of work you have to do to the property to make it safe for them to actually move into as a tenant.