I'm not selling. Seriously considered it earlier in the year and the reason is largely because of the good advice here for which I am very grateful.
https://www.askaboutmoney.com/threa...sition-should-we-sell-rental-property.227038/
It's definitely been a hard decision, but as you say what you have you hold, it's a great little house, in a nice small development, we may live in it ourselves when retired, and there's a tracker mortgage on it so we've decided to keep going and just hope we continue to get good tenants as we have so far.
Part of what I was agonising over earlier in the year was increasing the rent - it was rented since 2019 at a very modest rent (800 for a 3 bed detached really nice warm house with a home office / second sitting room.). It's not in an RPZ but we know that's only a stroke of a pen so the stupid rules had me in a position where my preference would have been to leave the rent as is for my excellent tenants but if I did that it would be to my detriment as I couldn't increase it for others if they moved and RPZ landed. So I decided in the end to increase it just to 1,000 but now the tenants have bought their own place so I will give it to a letting agent and probably look for 1,200 and insulate myself a bit from RPZ landing and God knows what other changes. Similiar are asking 1,400-1,500.
My main concern now with tenancies of indefinite duration is getting good tenants. I thought that would be a simple call to the letting agent but turns out not! She said because there's such demand they find it difficult to even advertise a place because there's a deluge and how do you sort through so many people or what way do you do it. Sounds a bit to me like she doesn't want the job (weird? when she very successfully looks after another property for me which belongs to my deceased brother's estate). I might try another agent but thought it was an interesting point I hadn't thought of. I want to go with a letting agent because I just think tenants would not be as quick to mess around / leave the rent late etc. when there's a professional in the middle.