Rental property scouting trip to Leamington Spa
I didn’t really know what to expect with trying to rent a house in the UK. Or, more specifically, trying to rent a house when we don’t live in the UK yet and don’t have any recent credit history there.
Awhile ago, we planned for my husband to fly over to Leamington Spa to talk to letting agents in person and hopefully tour some rentals. He just got back last week, and it was a success!
Before he went, he reached out to a bunch of random letting agents/property managers, not really expecting to hear back. But the feedback turned out to be pretty great! Maybe it’s that he’s good at networking or that he’s a UK citizen (more legit than us Americans, ahem), but he made several connections who started sending him listings to check out. He booked viewings at five or so places and took video tours to send me while I was back at home with the kids.
The first place he looked at was the clear winner: great location, tons of space (too much space?), a garden, multiple bathrooms, a dishwasher, and a lease starting in May. We won’t be there until July, but we’re fine to pay extra rent if it means having an address lined up ahead of time. There’s only on-street parking but we can deal. And although it’s closer to the downtown than a family with small kids probably wants, hopefully it’s something we can lean into while we live there. We can walk everywhere, get to know the city and hopefully meet some people - as opposed to living in a suburb, cut off from the action.
I was a bit nervous about the size - it’s five bedrooms and unfurnished, and we aren’t planning on bringing much furniture with us - but the letting agent put us in touch with the current tenants so we could ask about buying any of their furniture. Turns out they are merging households and were planning on selling a bunch of things (big beds, couches, jackpot!). That’s a huge weight lifted - I was worried about moving into an empty house and having to frantically buy (and assemble, blehhh) a truckload of IKEA furniture. Update: I started writing this a couple days ago and the tenants are now ghosting us after we said we’d buy all that stuff from them, so who knows. It’s truly a roller coaster.
So how does the rental process work?
Hubby talked to letting agents and registered viewings at several places that fit the bill. He didn’t need to provide anything upfront to do this. One agent asked about a paystub, but he pushed back and it was fine.
We told the agent we wanted to rent the place, and she sent over the application to sign and application fee to make.
Here’s where it gets tricky: the UK has a thing called Right to Rent, which means the letting agency has to do a background check on every new tenant to make sure they are allowed to rent (i.e., their citizenship status).
After some back and forth with the estate agent where I explained that my visa didn’t start until June, so I couldn’t legally rent a place in May, they agreed to sort of look the other way and just put my husband’s name on the lease for now. I can be added later.
We paid the application fee, which goes toward the deposit and means they take the listing off the market. The fee had to be made from a UK bank account. Luckily we still have an account there with a few pounds in it, but they also had Wise as an option if that didn’t work.
Now they’ll do all the background checks. We’re expecting there to not be much there since we haven’t lived in the country for 10 years. If they end up needing reassurance, we can provide bank statements to show we have funds to pay for the rental. I was anticipating we’d have to provide several months’ rent upfront, so if we can avoid that and just show bank statements, that’d be ideal. The other option was adding a guarantor, but that makes me feel like I took a step back 20 years.
As long as everything checks out and we get approved, then we’ll need to pay the full deposit and set up the utilities in our name, plus get the standing order ready for rent every month, which means transferring some money over to the UK account. (If there’s one takeaway from all this - it’s that if you have a foreign checking account, never close it because you never know when you might need it again.)
Go in person ahead of time if you can
After all this, I’d say it was definitely worth a trip over to the UK to view places in person. We don’t know Leamington Spa very well, which means we don’t know things like which streets to avoid or where all the students live. And, of course, pictures don’t do it justice. Lots of the rentals just use the photos they have on file, so you don’t know what the current condition is. Besides it’s just helpful to see how big or small a place is, how much light it gets, if it’s near any rowdy pubs, etc. If we were only looking for a short-term let, maybe we could roll with whatever, but we’re hoping we can stay in this place until we find a house to buy, so really want to get it right on the first try. The timing was also pretty perfect too. Although a July start would’ve been even better, getting a lease that starts in May works well. And having my visa lined up means we can sign the lease feeling more confident about our move timeline.
Just know that culture confusion will happen
One cultural thing I navigated during this - in the US, leases are pretty firm. If you want to break a lease, you have to find someone to sublet or keep paying rent or there’s some other punitive action. In the UK (according to my husband, so tbd on how up to date he is with UK norms) it’s much easier to break a lease. You just give notice (like, a month) and you leave. So anyhoo, in my Stateside brain, I wanted a six-month lease that then went month-to-month. Everyone was fine so we moved forward with it like that. However, I then noticed the listing updated to advertise for new tenants in six months. Not ideal as we probably want to keep living there until we buy a place, which will probably take more than six months. The letting agent assured us that the landlords would prefer to keep us as tenants but maybe 12 months would be better for peace of mind. So I guess we’ll just do a 12-month lease? I dunno, it’s all Greek to me and it’s feeling like we’re in a pressure cooker navigating stuff like this that we haven’t had to think about in years - leases and renting and what’s normal in the UK versus the US.
How are the rental prices in Leamington Spa?
I was hoping to find a three-bed, two-bath house in the £1,500-£2,000 per month range - and the cheaper the better, obviously. The place we ended up with is £2,100 per month. For the size and location, it seems like a fair price. But it’s going to be a shock to our budget since our mortgage now is about $2,000 per month. Especially if I’m not able to keep my job after the move. But, again, this is hopefully for around a year until we can buy a place of our own. And I think it’ll be a really fun experience for the girls, being in a big old townhouse with fireplaces and creaky wooden floors and a whole new city on their doorstep to explore. The countdown is truly on!
