Residents from US Military Bases

All US base staff who take a tenancy are required to have a military break clause in the tenancy agreement. On the face of it this is to allow the tenancy to end if there is a military issue, e.g. war, manoeuvres. In practice it can be used to end a tenancy for a variety of non-military reasons, including tenant preference.
Therefore the normal UK tenancy law which, provides for an assured shorthold tenancy to be a fixed term commitment, effectively does not apply to US base tenants, as they can terminate the tenancy with 30 days’ notice at any time. However Owners still need to honour the tenancy term. The base will not negotiate on this point.

With those applicants who are in the Military, we can only obtain a credit check if they have lived in the UK before. If they haven’t then this requirement is replaced by obtaining proof of their housing allowance from them.

Depending on the confidentiality of their job role we can also take an employment reference, so we also know what their income is. This is only needed where the rent they are paying will exceed the housing allowance – highly unlikely!

We then get the Base to provide an exemption letter for the Right to Rent check, plus we check their passport matches.

Where applicants are civilian staff at the Base we often are able to obtain more details, such as a detailed employment reference.

For those applicants who have rented in the UK before, we also seek a landlord reference.

US based people tend to have bigger furniture and come from homes with more space. Therefore if your house does not have the space they are familiar with, or will fit their furniture, then it is unlikely to be attractive to residents from the US.

The US bases have housing officers who will inspect each property before the tenancy can be agreed. The Base require they are accompanied on these visits, for which we make a charge.
They check the property against an extensive list of issues. Whilst the issues are usually best practice for landlords, not all are legal requirements, and often not routinely followed by all Owners. Therefore in addition to the cost for us to complete the extra visit with the Base Housing Officer, there may be costs to make changes to the property before US tenants can be confirmed.

In our experience residents from the US tend to have very high expectations of the condition of the property and what will be addressed by the Owner. They tend to require a great deal of time to help them manage their home, usually for a combination of reasons:

1. They are paying a premium rent and expect a premium service
2. They are in a new country, so many things are new
3. They can be accustomed to detailed property inductions when moving into properties in the US (where Owner fees are profoundly higher!)

The main consequence of this is Owners tend to have higher maintenance costs for US base residents, as they can require work or call outs where other residents may not.

There are a number of issues which arise at the end of a tenancy with base personnel:

Dilapidations

If the residents cause any damage to the property we would identify this when we complete the end of tenancy check-out meeting and then aim to recover the costs of this damage from the residents’ deposit, as we would on any tenancy. Many such dilapidations are a negotiation, e.g. a stain on the carpet rarely results in the cost of a replacement carpet. The Base Housing Officer is often involved in check-outs and can effectively act as an agent for the resident, which can make it harder to recover the level of costs for dilapidations to the level we would normally achieve.

The Base Housing Officers are also very keen that any remaining deposit is paid back to your resident within 10 days. In reality we normally resolve deposits within 7 days. However if there appears to be any delay, say for negotiation on a dilapidation, then the Base Housing Officers can refer the issue to the deposit protection scheme for adjudication more quickly than most UK residents. As this is costly and causes delays, we try to ensure we resolve issues directly and swiftly.

Professional clean

It is not possible to enforce the requirement of our tenancy that carpets are cleaned to a professional standard at the end of the tenancy unless there is proof (receipt from a reputable contactor) of a professional clean before the start of that tenancy. Therefore you may be left with some costs of cleaning to prepare the property for the subsequent residents.