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Writer's pictureLisa Brown

How to lease your first supported living property 

Updated: Mar 26



A bungalow that could be used for supported living

7 tips to help you get property when you have no track record 


As a newly established supported living provider getting your first property to lease can be a real challenge.  


You may find you have tried to lease property but keep being told “no” because you have no track record, yet how do you get a track record when no-one will work with you? You know you need a property but how do you persuade a property investor to lease a property to you?  


Property investors may be reluctant to lease their property to you when you have never leased a property before.  Even if you find a property investor who is happy to lease their property to you, they may be prevented from doing so by their mortgage lender who will do their own due diligence on you.  


So what are new supported living providers do?  Here are some of the solutions I find that can help.  


Find a property investor who owns a property outright i.e. without a mortgage on the property.  You are then not at the mercy of the mortgage company and only need to persuade the property owner to work with you.  


Think about why a property investor will be concerned about leasing a property to you, they are concerned about protecting their asset, they want to know that you have the resources to pay the rent and look after the property. How can you do this when you have no track record?  


Make sure you clearly explain your background, if you, or any business partners, have had a career in nursing, social work or profession related to the service you are going to provide then clearly explain this.  


It may be helpful to write a document that explains your background, lay out your plans for the business, who you are going to be registered with, who you will be supporting, how you will achieve your plans, how you will protect and look after their property.  This makes you look professional and makes it easy for anyone wanting to work with you to understand what you and your company.  You could put this on your website.  


Offer a Personal Guarantee to the property owner as well as signing the lease. The lawyer helping you with the lease should be able to help you with this.  Obviously, a PG is not to be entered into lightly but it can provide additional assurance for a property investor and may mean they are willing to lease a property to you.  


Offer to pay 6 months rent up front (or longer if you have access to these funds).  This often alleviates the property owners concern around the financial viability of your new business and reassures them that the rent will be paid.  If you do this make sure you have a clear evidence trail that you have paid the rent ahead and when the monthly payments will start. 


Supply professional references, who could the property owner speak to, to reassure them of your good character? Maybe this could be a former manager or a senior colleague. 


Make sure you are informed about the property side of supported living. To protect your new business, you need to make sure you are leasing the right property, paying the right rent, signing the right lease and that you are working with the right property owners.  After speaking to lots of new supported living providers who had got themselves into trouble leasing the wrong property I decided to write a course to help keep supported living providers safe when finding property.  The Unlock Supported Living Property Course is just for you.  It is CPD accredited, contains 16 short videos so you can access them around your other commitments, it explains where you can get property, how to work with property investors and includes checklists you can use when viewing a property and when deciding if the property owner is the right person for you to work with.  You can find out more here: Unlock Supported Living Property.

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