Councils offering five year leases to landlords?

This will not. For several years I rented out one of my properties to a company who used it as a serviced apartment - mainly to business people - but even this did not count as a business. So finance costs were not fully deductible at 40%, only 20%, which is the probably the reason you ask your question.
So unless you form a company or go for holiday lets, as far as I know, these are the only ways you can get full tax relief on a residential property.

Full repairing needs to be taken with a bucket, or skip, load of salt.

Just my personal experience and never doing a Council or Housing Authority rent to again

If you have a mortgage you need to looks at the terms and conditions. Most lenders , if not all, will not allow anything except AST’s of no longer than 12 months.
Another thing that has been overlooked in the renters reform bill.

Reply to the comment left by John at 23/06/2023 - 12:17
That's right. The lender's position is that for a mortgaged property they need to know that their investment is secured and that in the event of things going wrong they can get their investment back by forcing a sale. In theory if you could get a fixed interest rate for 5 years and had a contract showing the interest payments would be serviced for 5 years you might be able to show that a lender was protected in some way, but they would no doubt have an interest in the lease. I doubt any lender would be happy with a 5 year leasehold. If if I remember correctly anything more than a 3 year leasehold must be registered at the land registry against the property and the lender would need to agree to that. There will probably be solicitors on here who can correct me here if I'm wrong.

You will regret it......my advice is steer well clear of any council arrangements

Hi Nick,

I'm an independent mortgage broker, I can confirm most lenders will not accept a lease that is beyond 12-36 months maximum.

If you do have a lender that will accept a longer term (3yr) let to a council they will also want sight of the lease agreement & assurances that the property will not be let to vulnerable people.

Hope this helps

DO. NOT. TOUCH. AT. ALL !!!!
They will accommodate all the undesirables that nobody else wants and will wriggle out of all their responsibilities.

Reply to the comment left by Grumpy Doug at 23/06/2023 - 14:11
OK.....so that's a big no then from people who know more about this than I do. 🙂

I don't take benefits tenants and haven't taken benefits tenants UNLESS THEY PAY ME DIRECTLY since the government changed the law allowing councils to get their money back off the landlord if they find out that the tenant is not eligible for benefits. That applies to quite a lot of tenants, particularly those claiming benefits and selling drugs. The problem as a landlord is that you don't have the powers to verify that your tenants are eligible, or check that they are eligible once they are in your property.

Also, the only experience I ever had of renting *to* a council employee was that the council employee was constantly complaining, generating problems and asking for things to be fixed that didn't need fixing. As a consequence I'd extra careful in future of having any dealings with a council.

For many of us who don't run incorporated businesses with interest rates escalating, with us being unable to recover our finance costs, including recover the finance costs of EPC upgrades against rents, we aren't actually left with many options. In Nick's case he refers to "properties" (plural) so I wonder whether in his case he'd be able to incorporate and then deduct his costs, or sell within a company wrapper.

I looked at leasing my property to Serco. They wanted lots of silly changes to the property which would have cost thousands, the rent they offered was way below market value and it was fixed for the 5 years.

Reply to the comment left by Andrew57 at 23/06/2023 - 16:55
interestingly Clearspring (same as Serco but London/SE remit) has just been slated by London Councils for swiping what's left of any accommodation for homing asylum seekers, from under the Councils feet by offering more than the Councils get from the government!

The government clearly looking in total desperation to shift political focus off asylum seekers by just throwing money at the problem and housing them asap. Out of sight out of mind. Get the stats down.. then say what problem? Instead of looking at upping the LHA overall so Councils are on a level playing field, they have shafted waiting tenants over politically 'hot' ones fresh on the land.

This comes in the end in which the very same week the government stated that those 'home grown' on social hosing lists should take priority over asylum seekers!

Serco have been sniffing at my door (again). They clearly didn't take the hint last time when I said Not interested and gave a list as long as your arm for the reasons why. Now apparently the contracts are 'better'. I smell more than normal desperation now ...so me being me I just to see how low are they prepared to sink and how much they are trying to tempt landlords, I'm going to go to their next LL presentation...

I'll report back with what I find out!