We become your tenant, and the rent does not depend on occupancy
- The lease
- Bluebell is your tenant
- Rent
- Paid whether or not it is occupied
Five steps, in the order they happen. Most of the work is at step two, and a property that does not pass it is not taken on and improved later.
Who does what
The four questions a solicitor asks about any lease. They are answered here in plain English so you know what you are looking for when you read the document itself.
Written into the lease, and it varies
Typically the day-to-day and internal repairs sit with Bluebell and the structure, the roof and the major systems stay with the freeholder — but that is a negotiation rather than a standard form, and the version that binds you is the one in your lease. TBD: Bluebell has not confirmed the split it offers.Yours stays yours, and your insurer must be told
Photography TBD
A hallway of an ordinary let property photographed straight on in daylight — front door, meter cupboard, smoke alarm on the ceiling. Empty, clean, unstaged. Nothing that identifies an address.
Buildings insurance stays with the owner, and the policy has to be told the property is let to a company and occupied by people it houses. A policy taken out for a family let will not respond to this use, and finding that out at claim stage is the expensive way to find it out. Bluebell carries its own contents and liability cover.They deal with us, not with you
The occupier’s agreement is with Bluebell. Rent, repairs, complaints, anti-social behaviour and anything else go through us, and you are not asked to be part of it. That is the trade for not choosing who is there.How many properties, and where
Photography TBD
A pair of keys and a signed lease on a kitchen worktop in an empty property, daylight through the window behind. No faces, no handshake, and no readable name, address or figure on the document.
TBD — the number of properties Bluebell holds, the areas it takes them in, and its company details and accounts have not been supplied to this project. Ask for all of it before you sign anything, and check the company at Companies House yourself. We would rather you did.
What a lease with Bluebell actually is
You grant a lease of the whole property to the company for a fixed term. From that point Bluebell is your tenant: it pays you rent under the lease, it takes on the obligations the lease gives it, and it is the organisation you deal with. Bluebell then allows the people it houses to occupy under agreements it grants — so the residents are not your tenants, they do not pay you, and you are not the person they ring. It is closer to a commercial letting than to a buy-to-let, and it should be read by a solicitor as one.
What you get, and what you give up
Four things. Two of them are the reason to do this and two of them are the reason not to. A page that prints only the first two is not worth the time it takes to read.
- What you get
Rent that does not depend on occupancy
The rent is due under the lease, not out of what the property happens to earn that month. A void, a turnover, a resident moving on — none of it changes what lands in your account, because the lease is with the company and not with whoever is in the room.
- What you get
One tenant, and one number to ring
No viewings, no tenant-find fees, no deposit schemes, no chasing arrears, no midnight call about a boiler. Day-to-day management and the relationship with the occupier sit with us, and you deal with one organisation about one agreement.
- What you give up
You do not choose who lives there
That is the point of the model and it is not negotiable. The people housed are adults who need somewhere safe to live, referred through the routes this organisation works with. You will not be selecting them, vetoing them, or being consulted about them.
- What you give up
You are not the occupier’s landlord
There is no tenancy between you and the person in the property, so none of the routes a buy-to-let landlord knows apply. Section 21 no-fault eviction was abolished on 1 May 2026 in any event. You get the property back at the end of the lease term, on the lease’s own terms, and those terms are what you are actually negotiating.
How a property is taken on
- First
A conversation about the property, not about you
Where it is, what it is, how many rooms, what condition it is in, what it is currently earning and what is outstanding on it. Ten minutes usually settles whether there is anything to discuss.
- The survey
Condition, and the certificates that prove it
An inspection of the property against the standard below, and sight of the paperwork: a valid gas safety record, a satisfactory electrical installation condition report, an energy performance certificate, working alarms, and any licence the local authority requires for the property or the area.
- Heads of terms
What is being proposed, in writing, before solicitors
Term, rent, the repairing split, the break, the yield-up condition. On paper and readable, so your solicitor is reviewing a proposal rather than reconstructing one from emails.
- Consents
Your lender, your insurer, and your freeholder
A lease to a company usually needs the mortgage lender’s consent, needs the buildings insurer to be told what the property is being used for, and — if you are leasehold — needs checking against your own lease. This is the step that kills deals late when it is left until late.
- Completion
The lease, then the handover
Signed, keys across, an inventory and a schedule of condition agreed by both sides. The schedule of condition is what decides the argument at the end of the term, so it is worth doing properly at the start of it.
The money
No figure here. A rent quoted before we have seen the property is worthless.
What follows is how a lease of this kind is normally structured, so you can interrogate our proposal — and anyone else’s — with the right questions. The longer version, including the parts of this arrangement landlords most often find out about late, is in leasing to a supported housing provider.
None of it is advice, and this page is not an investment offer. A lease binds you for years, its obligations outlive whoever signed it, and what you actually keep depends on your mortgage, your tax position and your own circumstances — none of which is knowable from here. Take your own legal and tax advice before you sign anything, and do not rely on a website, ours included, for either.
- A fixed rent for a fixed term, paid monthly, whether or not the property is occupied. The figure is set per property, against its condition, its size and its location, and it is never published.
- Rent is not yield. What you actually keep depends on your mortgage, your tax position and what the lease leaves you liable for — and none of those is knowable from a web page. Anyone publishing a guaranteed return is describing an investment, which this is not.
- There is normally no management fee on top, because Bluebell is your tenant rather than your agent. You are not paying anyone a percentage; you are accepting a rent set at a level that reflects who is carrying the voids and the management.
- Expect the rent to sit below what an open-market letting might achieve in a good year. That is the trade for occupancy risk and management moving off you, and a proposal that claims both is a proposal to read twice.
- TBD — no term, break clause, rent review, fitting-out period or repairing split is published on this site. Those come from Bluebell and its solicitor, in heads of terms, per property.
Photography TBD
A solicitor’s desk with a lease open at the schedule of condition, a pen resting on it, daylight from a window. No people, no handshake, and no readable name, address, figure or date on the document.
Regulation and registration
This is a commercial agreement between you and a company, and it is the lease that decides almost everything. What it cannot decide is which statutory duties travel with it. Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 — the repairing obligation on structure, exterior and the water, gas, electricity, sanitation, heating and hot water installations — is implied into a lease of a dwelling granted for less than seven years and cannot be contracted out of. A longer lease, or a lease to a company, can sit outside it, which is precisely why the repairing split has to be written down rather than assumed.
The safety duties follow the person who is the landlord for the purpose of each instrument, and that is usually decided by who holds the repairing obligation and who is receiving the rent. The Gas Safety (Installation and Use) Regulations 1998, the electrical safety regulations for rented homes, the smoke and carbon monoxide alarm regulations and Part 1 of the Housing Act 2004 all apply to the property whoever is managing it. Under Part 2 of the Housing Act 2004 a local authority can act against the person having control of a property or the person managing it, and a lease does not by itself decide which of you that is. Where the property is a house in multiple occupation, licensing is a question to settle before completion and not after it: Schedule 14 to that Act exempts buildings managed by local authorities and by registered providers of social housing, and there is no general supported housing exemption, so a shared scheme is very likely licensable. No licence and no exemption is claimed anywhere on this site.
The regime around supported housing itself is changing. The Supported Housing (Regulatory Oversight) Act 2023 provides for local authority licensing of supported housing and for national supported housing standards. Neither has been made: no licensing regulations exist, so there is no licence anyone can hold today, and the standards have not been published. The Government published its consultation response in 2026 and expects to consult on draft regulations in late 2026 — what the Act does, and what is coming sets out the detail. It is a reason to take advice on the lease rather than a reason to avoid the sector — but a landlord entering this market should know the rules are being written, and should be wary of anyone who tells them otherwise. TBD — Bluebell holds no licence, no registration with the Regulator of Social Housing and no confirmed Housing Ombudsman Scheme membership, and none of the three is claimed anywhere on this site.
Before you get in touch
The questions landlords and agents ask, answered as straight as we can while the commercial terms are still open.
- How long is the term?
- TBD — no term length is published on this site. The lease term, any break clause, the rent review mechanism, any rent-free fitting-out period, and the repairing split Bluebell will actually offer. All are commercial terms that must come from Bluebell and its solicitor, evidenced by a signed heads of terms, before any of them appears on this site. The sector habitually prints “three to five years” on a page like this one, and it is filler: the term is negotiated per property and a number here would be a commitment nobody has signed. Ask us, get it in heads of terms, and have your solicitor read the break clause before the headline.
- What condition does the property have to be in?
- Safe, warm, dry and lettable on the day of handover. In practice: a valid gas safety record, a satisfactory electrical installation condition report, an energy performance certificate with a rating that allows the property to be let lawfully, a smoke alarm on every storey and a carbon monoxide alarm in every room with a fixed combustion appliance, no category 1 hazard under the housing health and safety rating system, no outstanding damp, and any licence the local authority requires. A property that does not meet that is not taken on and put right afterwards.
- What happens if a resident damages the property?
- It is repaired, and the lease and the schedule of condition decide who carries the cost of what. That is the mechanism to read: agree a proper schedule of condition at handover, with photographs, and the argument at the end of the term is a short one. Without it, it is a long one.
- Can I get my property back?
- At the end of the term, yes, on the terms the lease sets out — and earlier only if there is a break clause and you operate it correctly. This is the single most important difference from a buy-to-let and it should be the first thing your solicitor looks at. It matters more since the Renters’ Rights Act 2025 removed section 21 from the private rented sector on 1 May 2026; what the Renters’ Rights Act changed, and what has not happened yet is the short version. TBD — Bluebell has not confirmed whether its leases carry a break clause.
- Do I need to tell my lender and my insurer?
- Almost certainly both, and it is worth doing before anything else. Most buy-to-let mortgages restrict letting to a company or require consent for it, most buildings policies are written for a family let and will not respond to this use, and a leasehold flat may be restricted by its own head lease. None of those is a reason not to proceed. All of them are a reason to check at the start rather than at completion.
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