Twelve Months, One Ledger: The Unvarnished Maths of Being a Brighton Landlord
Every so often, someone hands you a spreadsheet and says 'go on then, tell people the truth'. That's what happened last month, when a small landlord — let's call her Margaret, because that isn't her name — passed over twelve months of records for her three Brighton properties.
What follows is the honest version of a year in the life. No spin, no lobby-group framing. Just what went in, what went out, and where the surprises lurked.
The Headline Figure Nobody Agrees On
Margaret's three properties — a two-bed flat in Kemptown, a terraced house in Moulsecoomb, and a studio near the Level — collected £54,600 in rent over the year. Sounds healthy, doesn't it? On paper, a tidy income for three modest properties.
But rent collected is not rent kept. And that's where the ledger gets interesting.
Where the Money Actually Went
Here's the breakdown, roughly in order of pain:
- Mortgage interest and finance costs: £21,400. The single biggest line, and the one that's ballooned since rates moved. Margaret remortgaged mid-year and her monthly costs jumped by £380 across the portfolio.
- Repairs and maintenance: £7,850. A boiler gave up in February (naturally, the coldest week), a bathroom needed re-tiling, and the Kemptown flat — a period conversion — ate £2,000 in damp treatment alone.
- Letting and management fees: £5,300. Roughly 10% of income, plus fees for two tenant find services.
- Voids: £4,900. The Moulsecoomb house sat empty for seven weeks between tenancies. Two viewings fell through because applicants couldn't provide a guarantor.
- Insurance, licences, compliance: £2,750. Three EICRs, gas safety certificates, selective licensing in one ward, and buildings cover.
- Agents' compliance checks, deposits, sundries: around £1,600.
The takeaway? Gross rent of £54,600 became a pre-tax net of roughly £10,800. Spread across three properties, that's about £300 a month each — before a single hour of Margaret's own admin time is counted.
The Voids Nobody Budgets For
That seven-week gap in Moulsecoomb is worth dwelling on. At £795 a month, it cost more than the boiler. And it wasn't greed that caused it — the asking rent was actually dropped by £25 mid-void. It was timing, guarantor requirements, and a market where good tenants are pickier than ever.
For landlords reading this: the cheapest repair you'll ever do is avoiding a void. Flexibility on move-in dates, pets, or a fresh coat of paint will usually cost less than one lost month.
And the Tenants' Side of the Ledger
To be clear, this isn't a pity piece. Margaret's properties have all risen in value substantially since purchase, and tenants in Kemptown paid over £1,300 a month for a flat with a damp problem she didn't fix quickly. The ledger cuts both ways — her repair response times are logged too, and one of them took eleven weeks.
That's the honest picture. Property in Brighton is neither the gold mine landlords' critics imagine nor the charity some landlords claim they're running. It's a business with thin margins, lumpy costs, and real consequences on both sides of the tenancy agreement.
If you're weighing up your own property maths — whether that's rethinking what you let, converting a unit, or moving stock into storage and selling the rest — run your own ledger first. Twelve months of honest numbers beats a decade of assumptions.
