It’s not easy getting on to the housing ladder these days. Unless you have a large deposit and a decent income, most lenders will not give you a mortgage. As a result, Generation Rent has largely been priced out of the property market in many areas of the country, particularly London.
Many local authorities struggle with the problem of rogue landlords, but Cambridge City Council is no longer willing to turn a blind eye. A Level Playing Field Councillors responsible for housing in the city are determined to crack down on rogue landlords.
Some landlords will be familiar with the scenario of a filthy property at check-out and while the majority of tenants do look after their rental home, there are some who never lift a finger to clean the whole time they are in residence.
A landlord survey carried out by the website Rentify has revealed that more than half of landlords polled say they intend on raising rents to help cover their costs in the wake of George Osborne’s reduced tax breaks for private rental properties.
The budget delivered many surprises, but the biggest for landlords was the restriction of mortgage interest rate relief and the removal of the wear and tear allowance for anything other than provable expenditure.
With his distinctive blonde hair, Boris Johnson, mayor of London, is instantly recognisable on the streets of the capital. Unfortunately for him, his flagship scheme, the London Rental Standard, has failed to grab public attention in quite the same way.
Landlords making extra money from taking in lodgers or renting out a spare room to tourists enjoyed a big boost in last week’s budget. The tax-free “Rent-A-Room” allowance was increased from £4,250 to £7,500 – the first increase since the allowance was introduced 18 years ago.
The Bank of England is worried about the high level of buy to let funding and it says that it may have to place restrictions on the availability of BTL mortgages. Appetite for Risk According to a report recently published by the bank, buy to let lending now accounts for 18% of new mortgage lending.
Blackpool was once a pretty seaside town where families from the industrial heartland of the northern England came to spend their annual two-week summer holiday. Today the hotels are past their best and you are more likely to see a hen party stumbling up the promenade than a well-dressed couple enjoying a weekend break.
Conservative MP, Dame Angela Watkinson, has introduced a Draft Local Government Finance (Tenure Information) Bill to make it much easier for authorities to identify rogue landlords who are operating under the radar of local authority control.
An industry report has revealed that the average short-hold tenancy is now 2.7 years, in contrast to the average of 2.5 years recorded last autumn. The figures published in the annual Rent Check Report were based on a survey of more than 2,000 landlords in the UK.
Following the successful prosecution of an HMO landlord, owners and managers of other illegal unlicensed HMOs in Barnet and Capita have been given until July 31 to come forward and apply for a licence without fear of prosecution by local enforcement service, Re.
Illegal sub-letting is an increasingly popular scam in the current private rental market. With demand so high in many areas, tenants don’t always carry out checks to ensure the landlord is actually who they claim to be.
Short term lets that allow visitors to ’live like locals’ is becoming increasingly popular in major tourist cities. But it isn’t all good news, especially for locals. Camden Council is claiming that short-term rental website, Airbnb, is driving up rental prices in the area, which is making it increasingly hard for locals to find suitable […]
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