Category Archives: Best Practice Guides for Landlords

Five Tips for New Landlords

Posted on 22nd February 2013

New Landlords – Buying your first property is a milestone, and those who have already passed it will remember the combined feelings of excitement and anxiety. The prospect of buying a property is exciting and opens up all sorts of opportunities for the future. It’s the beginning of a portfolio and if managed properly, a profitable empire. There are however a lot of questions to be asked when purchasing a new property. Here are a few tips to help first-time Landlords with their acquisition.

Renovating to Let

Posted on 18th February 2013

Back when the property market was booming, buying a wreck and doing it up was seen by many as a sure fire way to make some money. Even if the cost of renovating your wreck ended up being more than you predicted (as, of course, it usually does!), the steady increase in property prices would (hopefully) make up the shortfall.

Friday Five: Questions Asked By Investors

Posted on 1st February 2013

Here are the top five questions asked by property investors and Landlords, and here are the answers:
5. How can property management help me?
Landlords can really benefit from the services of a property management agent. The agent will have a lot of experience and information, as well as helping set up buy-to-let schemes, getting reliable tenants as well as organizing viewings. Getting a property management agent costs a small fee, but it is worth it and will make life a lot easier.

No-Smoking in your property?

Posted on 5th December 2012

No-Smoking in your property?
Any experienced landlord will know that post-tenant clean-ups can be a real challenge, especially if you’re doing it yourself. Certain parts of the house can get extremely dirty, especially if they are rarely used. Getting kitchens and in particular, ovens cleaned may even require costly professional work (getting an oven professionally cleaned costs around £60-80).
The worst of all cleaning nightmares is smoke. Removing the odour and stain of smoke is one of the most challenging cleaning tasks, so it is important that […]

How to Deal with Rent Arrears?

Posted on 26th September 2012

It is every landlord’s nightmare: a previously reliable tenant fails to pay their rent on time. This can leave landlords struggling to meet their mortgage repayments, and causes a huge amount of stress. Most landlords will have to deal with arrears at some stage, with around 9% of rent unpaid or late.
Rising rents are good news for landlords who want to grow their business, but combined with relatively high unemployment and growth in inflation outstripping growth in wages, they can mean that tenants struggle to […]

Tapping Pensions For Deposits

Posted on 24th September 2012

 
There’s been a lot of hot air this week: Yes, you guessed it, its Party conference season. Politicians have taken the week off to engage in their respective annual conferences and as per usual, there have been some crackers. Yesterday, Nick Clegg announced at the Liberal Democrat conference in Brighton of his audacious strategy to give the young a rung on the property ladder.
Rising costs
With the soaring price of property deposits and the average age of first-time-buyers rising to 35, Clegg has advocated releasing parent […]

Landlords and residents set to sign groundbreaking agreement

Posted on 24th November 2011

Social landlords in a village in the North East of England are setting out on a social experiment that could spread across the UK if it proves successful.
Groundbreaking document
Accent Foundation, the main housing provider in former colliery village Horden, near Newcastle, are launching a Good Landlord, Good Neighbour scheme that will require tenants to sign an agreement that will hopefully improve the austere conditions in the village. The agreement is still at the draft stage and local residents have been invited to input their own […]

Landlords should not be fooled by warm weather

Posted on 17th November 2011

What a difference a year makes! It was around this time last year that the UK found itself enveloped by atrocious weather conditions. Beginning with floods in the South West, these were quickly followed by Arctic conditions in Scotland which eventually moved progressively south and left the whole British Isles shivering for months. Landlords across the length and breadth of the country found themselves claiming on their landlords insurance policies for all manner of things related to the bad weather.
Balmy weather
Compare that to the balmy […]

Perfect storm gathering for rental sector

Posted on 26th April 2011

As the cap on Local Housing Allowance (LHA) starts to impact on tenants in cities across the UK, companies specialising in tenant evictions are warning that thousands of court actions against non payers of rent could put the legal system and landlords under terrific stress.
Trio of events
It is feared that the closure of almost 50 county courts in England and Wales coinciding with the caps in LHA and a possible rise in interest rates could have enormous consequences not only for tenants who can no […]

Glimmer of hope in loan figures

Posted on 21st April 2011

Figures just released by the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) suggest that residential landlords were particularly active in March searching out good deals on cheap property insurance.
City puts a dampener on the figures
According to the organisation, mortgage lending soared compared to the previous two months of 2011. The news radiated a warm glow on the cheeks of estate agents across the UK who have been dealing with a frozen house market for over 12 months now. Financial brokers in the City were still gloomy enough […]