About thirty years ago I had a property in Plymouth which I'd bought for my wife to be, to use while she was working on a contract there. During the life of her contract I did quite a bit of work on the place. When she took her next contract it was in Bath, and I had the choice of selling the place in Plymouth at a very substantial profit, or renting it out.
As I was fond of sailing, and I had a yacht anchored in the Tamar, I thought it would make sense to rent the property out for a while.
I put it in the hands of a well-known local estate agent, both to manage the rental and to handle the maintenance for me as well.
The fees were a bit extra for the maintenance but I thought it was worth it for peace of mind, knowing that I wouldn't have to dash there to mend a broken light switch if I was working in Los Angeles -- which was the sort of thing that I was doing at the time; I was the guy that [famous company*] called on to make Websites work with all the different browsers of the day. [*] Sorry, non-disclosure agreement.
Well that was the worst property decision I've ever made, and I've made a few.
The agent flat out lied about everything they ever did, which was in fact practically nothing. When after five years I went to visit the property because I started getting letters from bailiffs about it, I found it was in an unbelievable state. I never knew nor met any of the tenants, but whoever they were at least some of them had been running criminal enterprises using a number of false names, making bogus loan agreements, and not paying any bills at all. Bailiffs had actually broken into the place and left a window hanging off its hinges, but the totally false reports from the agent claimed that everything was in good order. One of my businesses used to run a 3.5 tonne long wheelbase high roof Renault Master van, and from the property I took away in that van three very full loads of rubbish. The mess was just indescribable.
I fired the agent, tidied up the property as best I could, and sold it for what seemed like little more than it would have fetched five years earlier.
My advice if you're thinking of renting out a property is that you MUST be able to keep an eye on it yourself. I have friends who rent out property, but they go round to them personally, ostensibly to collect the rent but it's really because they can take a quick peek at the same time. I'd say you need to be there at least every month. If you're in Scotland I don't see how you would be able to do that. You can't just turn up unannounced and demand to look around the place - "quietly enjoy" it says in the contract. Getting a bad tenant out is a nightmare even now and it's going to get worse.
Think very long and very hard about it.
