Your Tenant Brings Their Own Furniture: Where Should Yours Go?

Your flat has been let furnished for years, and now the next tenant has one condition: they're bringing their own sofa, bed, dining table and even their washing machine. They want the four walls, nothing more. A tenant who settles in with their own furniture tends to stay a long time, so it's a good deal. There's just one catch: the flat has to be emptied within a few weeks. At home, you don't have a square metre to spare. The garage is already overflowing with bikes and boxes. As for the building's cellar, anyone who knows Anglet or Bayonne knows how damp those get: hardly the place to leave a mattress or a wooden sideboard sitting for long. Here's how one landlord in the Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz area sorted it out, and what other landlords and small letting agencies can take from it.

A good tenant is worth holding on to

On the Basque coast, there's no shortage of people looking for a year-round rental. Finding the right one, reliable, stable and careful with the place, is another matter. Between Anglet and Bayonne you meet a lot of people in transition: couples relocated for work, families leaving a house to move closer to town, young professionals finally putting down roots. Most of them already have a full home's worth of furniture. Living among the landlord's things holds no appeal for them at all.

That leaves the landlord with three options, none of them great. Turn down the application to keep the furnished let. Sell everything in a hurry, usually at a loss. Or cram the furniture into a relative's place or an already full garage, and risk damaging it. And if some of those pieces are worth something, or you plan to go back to furnished letting in a few years, none of these really holds up.

The reverse happens too. You have an unfurnished flat you want to furnish again: you buy or collect furniture well before the tenant moves in, and it has to go somewhere in the meantime. Either way, the need is the same: a safe, dry, temporary place to make the switch. A self-storage unit, rented by the month in a secure building and handed back when you no longer need it, does exactly that.

Philippe, a two-bedroom flat near Cinq-Cantons and a storage unit just down the road

Philippe owns a two-bedroom flat near Cinq-Cantons in Anglet, let furnished for several years. In the spring, a couple relocating to Bayonne for work applies with a solid file and all their own furniture. Philippe agrees to let it unfurnished, but refuses to give everything away. He walks through each room, notebook in hand. The worn-out sofa bed, two mismatched chairs and a cheap TV unit get sold or given away. He keeps the oak table, the antique sideboard, the bed with its recent mattress, the washing machine, the crockery and the household linen. He checks our storage unit size guide, then books a medium unit at our Anglet storage facility, a few minutes' drive from the flat. On moving day, a hired van is all he needs. The whole site is on the ground floor: no stairs, no goods lift, and trolleys free for anyone to use, so the sideboard rolls straight to the unit. With 2.5 m of ceiling height, it stands upright without any trouble. The washing machine travels switched off, drained and thoroughly dried, with the door left ajar.

What Philippe gets out of it, a few months on:

• His tenant, signed without delay: he never had to choose between a good applicant and his furniture.
• Furniture kept safe: the table and sideboard sit in a clean, dry, ventilated space, well away from a damp, salt-stained cellar or the temperature swings of an open garage.
• A rental period that follows the lease: the storage contract is monthly, with no commitment. He keeps the unit as long as the flat is let unfurnished and will give 15 days' notice before handing it back.
• Ready to go furnished again: the day the couple moves out, everything will be there, stored and listed. No need to buy a whole new interior.
• Flexible access: in Anglet, units are accessible from 6 am to 10 pm every day, Sundays included, with a personal access code. Picking up a lamp on a Sunday morning is no problem.

On security, what Philippe wanted most was peace of mind. CCTV, fire alarm, an electronic lock on every unit: nobody but him gets in. He also checked that his insurance covered belongings kept outside the home, since cover of at least €5,000 is compulsory. If yours doesn't, Dans Mon Box can arrange it for you, from €15 a month for that minimum.

For landlords and agencies: the right habits

Whether you own two or three flats or manage properties on behalf of owners, this comes up more often than you'd think. Here's what we tell people, at the Arènes front desk or over the phone:

• Inventory first, storage unit second. Photograph each piece, note its condition and decide straight away: keep, sell or give away. Storing furniture nobody will ever want means paying rent for nothing.
• Prioritise what's expensive to replace. A good mattress, solid wood, recent appliances: that's what makes a future furnished let worth having. A small flat-pack unit, on the other hand, is easy to replace.
• Dismantle, protect, label. Take the legs off the table, tape the screws in a bag under the tabletop, put a cover on the mattress and blankets over fragile surfaces. A quick plan of the unit (what's at the back, what's at the front) will save you a good hour when it's time to put everything back.
• Think in volume, not number of items. A two-bedroom flat cleared of its tired furniture often fits in a smaller unit than you'd expect. And if you get it wrong, switching units during your rental is free.
• Follow the lease calendar. There's no fixed term to set in advance. When the tenant gives notice, plan to bring your furniture back a few days before the next tenant's check-in inventory.
• For agencies, think "one holder, one code". Each unit is rented in the name of a single person or company, and the access code can't be shared. To rent as a company, you'll need the company registration certificate (K-bis), the director's ID and bank details. VAT is recoverable.

Is your property in Bidart or Biarritz? Nothing stops you storing in Anglet or Bayonne: the drive is short and you park right by the unit, which matters when you're unloading a sideboard.

Further reading

• Estimate the volume of your furniture before booking
• Landlords in Bidart: storage nearby
• All our storage tips for the French Basque Country

• A tenant who brings their own furniture doesn't mean you have to sell yours off cheap.
• Sort first (keep, sell, give away), then choose your storage unit size.
• A private, dry, ventilated unit protects wood and bedding far better than a damp cellar.
• The monthly, no-commitment contract follows the actual length of the lease.
• Dismantling, covers and labels make going furnished again much easier.
• Agencies and companies: one holder per unit, VAT recoverable.

Is your next tenant moving in with their own furniture? Book your storage unit online, no credit card needed, or give us a call: our local team will help you find the right size to keep your furniture safe for the length of the lease.