Believe it or not, this is the phrase I heard someone utter last night. Bumped into a mate who was telling me about his recent moves, he has lived in about three properties I can think of in the last year. He was extolling the virtues of renting to me, in reality he was simply moving from property to property to try and leave behind some of his debts. He was hoping that if the companies couldn’t find him, then they would write off his large credit card debts. Time will tell whether this works out for him, I doubt it very much.
But he did say that renting was the new black and everyone was doing it. Obviously not everyone, but I got the drift. He was telling me that the benefit was that you did not need to worry about maintenance or repairs. If you got a burst pipe you just phone up the landlord and demand it is fixed.
When we moved house in 2007 the recession did not exist, we were told it was a credit crunch at that time. The mortgage market was balanced precariously at the time and although we were buying in Scotland, which has a more stable property market, the chain we were involved snaked throughout England. There were 7 different properties being bought and sold and the whole chain was supported by a first time buyer. Thankfully it all went ahead with just a few hitches.
At the time we considered getting a buy to let mortgage on our old home, in case we could not sell. This is now commonplace, accidental or unintentional landlords are springing up all over the place. Now some of them will have demanding tenants like my mate. If they do, they need to make sure that the have a suitable landlord insurance policy in force. Therefore, when the tenant phones up and demands x or y is fixed, it is relatively easy to speak to your business insurance broker and, as long as you get a couple of estimates quickly, you can get the works undertaken pretty quickly.