Guaranteed rent · 3–5 years · London & surrounding areas
We becomeyour tenant.You get paid.
We sign a lease on your property for 3–5 years and become your tenant. From the date in that agreement you receive the same sum on the same day every month. Occupied, empty, or between families. There is no management fee, no letting fee and no service fee, so nothing is taken out of the figure we quote. The first month is released on signature.
What comes out of your rent
- Management fee
- None
- Letting fee
- None
- Service fee
- None
- Renewal fee
- None
- Maintenance billed to you
- None
- Taken from the agreed figure
- Nothing
Our margin comes from our housing contracts, not from your rent. The figure we quote is the figure that reaches your account.
How the money actually works
Your rent is not paid out of your property. It is paid out of our contracts.
This is the part worth understanding before anything else, because it explains why the figure never moves and why we do not charge you for anything.
- 01
The placement is funded by a housing contract
We hold contracts with local authorities to provide temporary accommodation for families they have a duty to house. That is where our income comes from. Your rent is a cost we carry against those contracts, which is why we never need to charge you a fee on top of it.
- 02
You are paid on an agreed date, every calendar month
The date is written into the agreement before you sign and it does not move. One payment, one reference, one sender. If it falls on a Saturday, a Sunday or a bank holiday, the money reaches you on the next working day.
- 03
Occupancy never enters the calculation
Between one family leaving and the next arriving, the amount you receive is identical. Empty weeks are a cost to us and an event you do not need to hear about. Removing that variance is the entire reason the arrangement exists.
One detail we would rather you heard from us. We ask for a short set-up period at the start, before the property is occupied, while we deep clean it and prepare the inventory report. It is written into the agreement with a start and an end, and the first month’s rent is released to you on signature regardless.
What guaranteed actually means here
What we are actually promising.
Plenty of companies use this word and leave you to discover the shape of it later. We would rather you knew all five of these before you spoke to us, because a landlord who is still looking for the catch is not going to sign anything, and nor should they.
- We become your tenant, not your agent
- We sign a lease and take on a tenant’s obligations for the full term. An agent takes a percentage of your rent and hands the risk back to you the moment something goes wrong. The obligation to pay you is ours and it does not depend on anybody else performing first.
- Payment starts on the date in the agreement
- Not when we place a family, not when the local authority confirms, not when the property is occupied. The date is fixed before you sign, and the first month is released on signature.
- This is a commitment from this company, not an insurance policy
- Nobody underwrites it for us, which is the honest limit of the word guaranteed and the reason you should look us up before you sign. Signature Staycation LTD, company number 15682139, registered at 128 City Road, London EC1V 2NX. Ask us anything you would ask a tenant about their ability to pay.
- The full agreement is provided before you commit to anything
- You receive the lease in advance and in full, not a summary of it. Take it to your solicitor and take as long as you need. We will talk to them directly if that is quicker. Nothing is agreed on a phone call.
- Terms vary by property
- The rent, the term, the payment date and the length of the set-up period are specific to your property, and all four are written down before you sign. Anything we say on the phone should appear in the agreement. If it does not, ask us why.
What it replaces
A letting is never one number. It is a number, minus a list.
Set our figure against the rent an agent quotes you and ours will often look like the smaller one. Set it against what actually reaches your account across a year and the comparison changes, because the advertised rent is the number before the list.
The weeks a property sits between tenancies. The month spent re-letting it. Commission on the let, and again on the renewal. A percentage of every month for management. The certificates that come round each year whether or not anyone is living there. The repair you had not planned for. Arrears, and the length of time you carry them before you can do anything. And at the far end of the list, the cost of removing someone through the courts.
We are not going to put invented percentages next to those, because your figures are not your neighbour’s. You already know what they cost you. What we can tell you is which side of the line each one sits on once we sign.
| The thing itself | Letting it yourself | With us |
|---|---|---|
| Months between one tenancy and the next | Your loss | Ours |
| Rent arrears, and the months before you can act | Your risk | Ours |
| Commission on the let, and again on renewal | Payable | None |
| Monthly management commission | Payable | None |
| Repairs and day-to-day maintenance | Your cost | Our cost |
| An appliance that stops working | Your cost | First fault, ours |
| Annual safety certificates and compliance | Your job | Ours |
| Occupier contact, including out of hours | Yours | Ours |
| Removing an occupier through the courts | Your cost | Ours |
| What lands in your account each month | Varies | The same |
Both columns describe the same property on the same street. The difference is who carries the list.
Getting it back
Nothing attaches to your property that could outlive our agreement.
If you have read anything about this industry you will have read about owners who could not get their property back. It is the right thing to worry about, and the answer is structural rather than reassuring, so it is worth setting out precisely.
No assured shorthold tenancy is granted
Not by us, and not by anyone else, at any point in the arrangement.
Families occupy as licensed occupiers
They are placed by the local authority under its temporary accommodation duty. A licence is permission to stay, not an interest in the property. It is closer to how a guest occupies a hotel room, except that the stay runs months or years rather than nights.
There is nothing for you to inherit
Because no assured sub-tenancy is created, nothing exists that could survive the end of our agreement and become yours to deal with. You cannot be left with a tenant we never made.
The property is handed back
That is the ordinary end of the term, written into the agreement rather than promised on a page.
Send us your solicitor’s details, or send them ours. We will walk them through the structure clause by clause before you commit to anything.
Once the keys change hands
Everything that used to arrive as a phone call.
- Repairs and maintenance
- Arranged and paid for by us. You are not sent an invoice and, for most things, you are not sent a message either. Anything structural or significant, you hear about the same day.
- Appliances
- If an appliance fails, the first fault is replaced like-for-like at our cost. Repeat faults and damage through misuse sit with the occupier, never with you.
- Inspections
- Quarterly inspections, with at least twenty-four hours’ notice to the family. Every room photographed (walls, ceilings, flooring, doors, windows, fixtures) and condition-rated, with a written report sent to you. You are welcome to attend any of them.
- Occupier contact
- Check-in, house rules, day-to-day problems, out-of-hours calls and the end of the stay are all ours. You have one number to ring and it is ours.
- Compliance and certification
- Certificates, the local authority relationship and the paperwork that goes with both are handled by us and copied to you, so your file is complete if you are ever asked to produce it.
- The record of condition
- A full inventory is prepared before anyone moves in, so the state the property was handed over in is a document rather than a matter of memory.
What we are looking for
1–4 bedrooms, in good condition, well connected.
The families we house are placed by local authorities, so the property has to work for ordinary life: near enough to transport, schools and shops, and sound enough to live in from the first day. Two bedrooms and above suits small families best, though we take smaller stock too.
Studios
Taken for single occupancy placements where the location is right.
Flats
Purpose-built or converted. Leasehold is fine, with your freeholder informed.
Houses
The strongest fit. Two to four bedrooms is what we are asked for most.
HMOs
Considered where the property is properly configured and licensed.
If the property is not one we can place, we will tell you on the first call rather than leave you waiting on an answer. That is a faster no than most agents will give you.
Before anyone signs
The questions that decide it.
These are the ones landlords ask on the first call. If yours is not here, ring us and ask it. We would rather answer it now than have you find the answer somewhere less reliable.
When do the payments start?
The first month is released when the agreement is signed. After that you are paid the same sum on the same date every calendar month, from the date written into the agreement, not from the day we place a family. We ask for one thing in return: a short set-up period at the beginning while we deep clean the property and prepare the inventory report.
What happens if you cannot place anyone in it?
You are paid exactly the same. We took the property on as your tenant, so an empty month is our loss and not yours. It is the only promise on this page that matters, and it is why we are careful about which properties we take on in the first place.
Can I sell during the term?
Yes, and there are two routes. A property with a fixed income agreement attached is straightforward to sell to an investor, and the agreement simply carries over to the new owner. If you need it back with vacant possession instead, an early end is possible by written agreement between us. There is a notice structure and a fixed fee for ending early, both set out in the lease before you sign. Tell us early and we will work to your timetable rather than ours.
Who holds the property licence?
We deal with the licensing requirement as part of taking the property on, and we send you the paperwork rather than filing it away. We will not tell you the legal duty stops being yours, because for some licences it does not. A property owner can remain in scope whatever the arrangement. Keeping you copied in is what makes that safe for you, so that is what we do.
Do I need to tell my mortgage lender and my freeholder?
Yes, you should tell both, and we would rather you did it before signing than after. A company agreement of this kind usually needs consent, and consent that was never asked for is the thing most likely to cause you a problem later. We will speak to your lender, your broker or your freeholder directly and explain the structure to them if that helps. We do it often.
What condition does the property come back in?
The condition it was handed over in, fair wear and tear excepted. The inventory taken before the first family moves in sets the baseline, and the quarterly reports track it the whole way through, photographed and condition-rated. There is no argument at the end because there is a record from the beginning.
What happens at the end of the term?
The property is handed back to you. No assured shorthold tenancy was ever granted, so there is no occupier with rights in your property and nothing for you to inherit. If you would rather continue, we will talk about a new term well before the current one ends, so the decision is never made under time pressure.
Get your figure
Find out what we would pay for your property.
Tell us the address, the number of bedrooms and the condition it is in. We will come back with a monthly rent and a term. No valuation fee, no obligation, and no follow-up you did not ask for.