Flex-Sell vs Guaranteed Rent — Which Suits You?

Both paths start from the same foundation

Whichever you choose, the underlying structure is identical: a corporate lease, not an AST. Contract law governs, and the Housing Act 1988 does not apply. The tenant on your lease is Total Housing Group — a company, not an individual. That is the precise legal reason the Renters' Rights Act 2025 does not apply to the tenancy: the Act governs individual residential tenancies, and yours is corporate.

The rent under both structures is near-guaranteed, and here is the mechanism that makes it effectively guaranteed in practice: the occupants of your properties are placed by a vetted housing association, CIC, or supported living provider, whose funding comes from local authority contracts, housing benefit, and government care packages, not from a private tenant's salary. That funding stream is why the rent arrives every month, including through voids. We name the specific provider before anything is signed.

Both structures also share the same day-to-day reality: zero calls, zero maintenance decisions, zero contact with occupants, for the full 3 to 5 year term. You retain ownership, and nothing else. Your name stays on the Land Registry under both. Neither structure involves us buying your property during the lease.

So the choice is not about the lease. It is about what you want to be true when the lease ends.

Side by side

Choose near-guaranteed rent if…

You recognise this landlord: 3 to 8 properties in London or the South East, self-managing for more than a decade, at least one genuinely bad tenant in the last two years. He does not want to sell. The portfolio is the pension, the properties are keepers, and the plan has always been to hold. What he cannot face is another ten years of 11pm phone calls, void periods, and compliance paperwork.

Near-guaranteed rent is built for exactly that position:

• You intend to keep the properties. There is no exit on your horizon; you want the income and the asset, without the job that currently comes attached to them.
• You value silence and certainty over the top rent figure. The rent is fixed below your open-market ceiling in exchange for a figure that arrives every month regardless of occupancy.
• You want every end-of-term option left open. When the lease ends you can renew, take the properties back, or sell on the open market. Nothing is priced or pre-agreed, because you did not ask for it to be.

If that is you, adding a fixed exit price buys you nothing. Read the full guide on the near-guaranteed rent corporate lease instead.

Choose Flex-Sell if…

Different landlord: 5 to 15 properties, and the question of selling has been on the table for a year or more. Not urgently. But the direction of travel is out, not on. What stalls the decision every time is the same pair of problems: disposing of a portfolio has serious tax consequences if it is timed badly, and selling ten properties individually is years of viewings, chains, and renegotiations. So the decision keeps sliding, and the management workload carries on in the meantime.

Flex-Sell is built for that stalemate:

• You are considering selling, but not ready to commit today. The fixed price settles what the exit is worth without obliging you to take it. You decide at term end, not now.
• You want the number in writing before you plan anything. The sale price is documented in the agreement before the lease begins and reviewed by your solicitor before you sign. A known figure at a known date is something your tax adviser can actually plan around; timing a sale has tax consequences, and that planning belongs with your adviser, not with us.
• You want income without involvement while you decide. The same corporate lease carries you through the 3 to 5 years: fixed rent, zero contact, your name on the Land Registry throughout.

The full mechanism is set out in the pillar guide: Flex-Sell: A Fixed Future Sale Price for Your Portfolio.

The honest costs of each

Both structures cost you the same two things, and neither cost is hidden:

• The rent is fixed below your open-market ceiling. Certainty and zero effort are what you are buying; the gap to the top of the market is what you are paying. If optimising the rent figure matters more to you than your time, neither product fits, and we will say so.
• You are locked in for 3 to 5 years. No mid-term rent reviews upward, no short-term flexibility. The term is the term under both structures.

Flex-Sell carries one additional cost that near-guaranteed rent does not: the fixed price trades certainty against possible market upside. If values rise above your fixed figure during the term, that difference was the price of knowing your number from day one. If values fall below it, the fixed figure protects you. You cannot have both the certainty and the upside; Flex-Sell asks you to choose the certainty, openly.

And because the sale is optional, the downside has a floor: if the fixed price no longer suits you at term end, you let it lapse and keep the property. What you spent, in that case, is nothing.

Still unsure? The first call decides it

You do not need to arrive with the answer. The first call is diagnostic, not sales, and it is where this comparison gets resolved against your actual portfolio. Before any pitch, we ask 5 questions: how many properties you have, where they are, your current situation, your timeline, and what you want at the end of the term. That last answer usually settles the near-guaranteed-rent-or-Flex-Sell question on its own.

Both structures need a minimum of 2+ properties in London or the South East. Both follow the same clear, documented process with legal review at every stage, and under both the placing housing association, CIC, or supported living provider is named before anything is signed. If neither fits (you want to stay hands-on, or you want the absolute top of the market), we will tell you that on the call. If one fits, the typical timeline is 28 days from first call to first payment.