What a void month really costs

Voids · Yield

What a void month
really costs.

Landlords tend to price a void as one month’s lost rent. It is reliably more than that, and understanding the true figure changes how you think about asking rent.

The arithmetic

Take a property let at £1,000 a month. An empty month is not £1,000. It is the rent, plus council tax, which becomes your liability the moment the tenancy ends, plus standing charges on the utilities, plus the cost of re-letting, cleaning, any touch-up decorating, and the re-let fee. Realistically you are looking at £1,300 to £1,500 for that month.

Now compare that with pricing. If you hold out for £1,050 instead of £1,000 and it takes an extra month to let, you have spent roughly £1,400 to gain £600 over the following year. You do not get back to where you started until month twenty-eight, and that assumes the tenant stays that long.

Why over-pricing is the most expensive mistake

This is the single most common way we see landlords lose money, and it rarely feels like a mistake at the time. An ambitious asking rent produces fewer enquiries, and the enquiries it does produce are more likely to be from applicants who cannot pass referencing but are willing to agree a high figure. So you wait longer and your applicant pool gets worse. A property that is priced correctly typically lets from the first weekend of viewings.

Timing matters more than most people think

Manchester’s rental market has a rhythm. Student and young-professional demand concentrates heavily around summer; family lets move more in spring. A property that comes free in December will sit empty longer than the same property coming free in June, and the asking rent should reflect the month it comes back to market.

Keeping a good tenant is cheaper than finding a new one

Now that tenancies are periodic and a tenant can leave on two months’ notice, retention is worth more than it used to be. Answering the phone, fixing things quickly and being reasonable about rent reviews are not soft skills. They are the cheapest void insurance available. A tenant who stays three years instead of one saves you two re-lets and two voids.

We price from lettings we have actually agreed nearby this year, not from portal asking prices, which are a record of what people hoped for. We start marketing before the current tenancy ends where the tenant allows access, and we tell you honestly if we think your figure will cost you a void.