Same reason as back home the standard TA is 12 months with a 6 month break clause. It’s a bit of a bugger, and fortunately a rare event, to have a tenant quit at six months. What with the move-in/out wear and tear (which can be the same whether after 6 months or 5 years), tenant referencing and admin (£), voids, and so on, at the bottom line a tenant quitting in under 12 months might wipe out a years potential net profit. It's added stress too, and IME something to be avoided at all costs.
I’ve tried letting on fixed 12Mo/TAs, i.e. without a break, but in a highly liquid market, you make the offering relatively less attractive.
I’ve also had tenants (in fact most) take a 12Mo TA, w/6Mo break, stay a year, and then subsequently ‘go Periodic’ [PST]. That is a tenure where they remain in situ with no new agreement, no additional paperwork required, the terms of the original TA automatically carry-over, and they and the landlord are simply subject to the original Notice periods (usually, the tenant must give 1 months, or, the landlord must give 2)*. If an agent wades in a that point they will likely want to issue some form of unnecessary Notice describing the matter, and stick you with a bill of perhaps a weeks rent.
It is interesting the number of tenants who in such circumstances stay and hence invisibly roll-over onto a PST, which gives them almost complete and perhaps enviable flexibility: And yet who don’t use it, and in fact rather paradoxically then stay for sometimes years. Go easy and modest on any annual rent increments, and year on year the tenants position gets harder for them to walk away from. It’s almost like now they’ve earned a right to a good thing, and ultimate flexibility, a rent simply adjusted annually with RPI inflation (which further depersonalises the matter, as it’s objective and stated at the outset) rather than adjusted to the current market conditions, they’re really reluctant to give it up, unless they have to. My loss (Opportunity Cost) in not raising rent to market for maybe three additional years is peanuts in comparison to a tenant quitting in the autumn and my subsequently getting a 6 month void until the market perks up again in the spring. I hope that doesn’t sound cynical, as it’s not intended to be. One key thing I've learned it that seeking a long-term mutually equitable, and beneficial, balance of interests beats planning on short term gain every single time. Perhaps you need to directly witness the tortoise beating the hare a few times, to really believe it (I did)
p.s. Tenants are often oblivious to a landlords frictional costs (‘oh is my quitting in October not good for you?’ lol). I don't blame them, if they've not been a landlord and through a few cycles, one can't expect them to understand anything of the landlord >< tenant financial dynamic.
* This applies in SG too, and indeed I have done it here. But agents might not be so happy (at all) with the arrangement, and perhaps even deny that it is possible, as they are not in line for fat renewal fees if you simply invisibly roll from a TA onto a PST.
