I’ve been to my fair share of disastrous inspections. Truth is, no matter how well you’ve vetted your tenant, you can’t be sure that their standard of living will be the same as yours. Remember, cleanliness is subjective. What looks dirty to you and I may look clean to someone else…
What makes a property management software great, isn’t how many tenancies it can store or how it looks (while those things are, of course, important), what tends to really matter is what it can actually do. How often have you read up on a software, found it has all kinds of interesting titbits, but somehow […]
Most landlords ask tenants to pay a deposit when they start a tenancy. New rules in England means this is typically 5 week’s rent, but where the annual rent exceeds £50,000, a 6 week deposit can be taken. The deposit is there to cover any accidental damage or other issues, so the landlord can deduct […]
Landlords come in all shapes and sizes. Some landlords treat the buy to let sector as a business. For them, it’s a hands-on approach. Others end up as accidental landlords, perhaps because they moved in with a partner and didn’t want to sell their home or because they inherited a home from a family member.
Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell has announced a radical new scheme that targets property owned by buy to let landlords. If Labour gets into power, it will give tenants the right to buy their rental property at a discounted price. John McDonnell says this will tackle the problem of rogue landlords, as well as making it […]
Following a recent court case where a landlord was denied an eviction order because he didn’t give the tenant a Gas Safe Certificate before the tenancy began, the RLA launched a crowdfunding campaign to help pay for an appeal. In the week since the crowdfunding campaign was launched, it has already attracted more than £4,400 […]
A buy to let investment property is not a guaranteed investment. Various government policies, combined with rising house prices, have made it increasingly hard to make a profit in the private rental sector. But all is not lost.
Record keeping is an onerous but essential part of running a business. Whether you manage one property or 50, you must keep adequate records of your business transactions. If you don’t, you could be in for a nasty shock one day soon…
A property inspection should be carried out at the start of a tenancy, when a tenancy ends, and at periodic intervals during the tenancy. Failing to carry out a regular property inspection is inadvisable for many reasons, not least the fact you could end up missing a host of serious problems.
The RLA is supporting a landlord’s appeal against a judgment that says he can’t evict a tenant using a Section 21 notice because the tenant was not given a gas safety certificate before the tenancy began. The court has ruled that not doing so invalidates a Section 21 notice.
Social housing is in short supply, which is why the buy to let sector has grown so large in the last 20 years. Most landlords buy a second home with a view to generating an income; they don’t usually rent one property while letting out another. However, one landlord decided to apply for a council […]
Decorating a buy to let property is very different from decorating your own home. The point of decorating a rental property is to make it more attractive to tenants.
Not all landlords need to use a letting agent, but unless you have the time and experience to manage your own portfolio, a letting agent is often useful.
Have you ever read a full insurance policy booklet from cover to cover? You wouldn’t be alone if you said no, but you sure wouldn’t be in a majority if you said yes.
Back to blog