Selling Tenanted - Unspoken reality

Thought I'd share this here because my tenant had been in the property for over 5 years and, with rents where they are now, I really didn't want selling the property to automatically mean kicking her out.

I've sold investment properties before and normally I've sold them vacant. This time I decided to try selling it tenanted.

I'd been absolutely bombarded with Facebook ads from Let Property, so eventually gave them a go.

I actually approached them with two properties and they rejected one because the yield was too low and they didn't think they'd get enough interest at the price I wanted. They accepted the other one.

First downside: you sign an 8-week exclusivity agreement, which I wasn't particularly keen on.

Then the offers started coming in.

Most of the early ones were defo on the lowerside.

I wanted £140k and eventually, after about 3 weeks and plenty of back and forth, reduced my minimum to £134k. There was definitely pressure to reduce the price, although they did show me comparables/data rather than just pulling a figure out of thin air.

It eventually sold after 37 days.

So I'd take any "sell in 7 days" type advertising with a massive pinch of salt. Finding a buyer and actually having the money in your bank are two completely different things.

The surprising part was the tenant experience.

Someone came round for about an hour to take photos and that was literally it. Not a single viewing. My tenant stayed in the property throughout and eventually just ended up with a new landlord.

The worst part by far was completion.

Once solicitors got involved everything slowed down massively. You can chase them all you want, but when someone's solicitor takes days to deal with something, you're basically stuck waiting.

Eventually it completed and the money landed.

Would I do it again? Probably, if I had another good long-term tenant I didn't want to displace.

It wasn't as quick or effortless as the ads make it sound, I accepted a price slightly less than I originally wanted and the completion was frustrating. But ultimately I sold the property without having to kick out someone who'd lived there for 5+ years.

Interested to know if anyone else has sold a rental with the tenant staying in situ and how it went.