In this post, I look into the strange world of Lewisham’s selective licensing scheme for landlords – where nothing is as it seems. They seem confused at the town hall, but not as much as we are. Also, a Labour MP and architect of a different selective licensing scheme in London appears to have forgotten to have a valid license ..read more

How to do Viewings In my last post, I explained why I am not a fan of group viewings and why bidding wars for properties to let are most unlikely to happen in practice, (at least if a landlord or letting agent is doing their job properly). So, following on from that post, how should a landlord or letting agent ..read more

This article is about block viewings and bidding wars for rental property and why one rarely exists and the other is a unicorn, existing only in the imagination of out-of-touch politicos who don’t understand the private rented sector. Block Viewings and The Tenants Bidding War Unicorn I have seen some daft ideas touted about what could be Labour policy for ..read more

Property118 and a Tax Advice Battle There has been a challenge to a tax scheme promoted at Property 118. One wonders how this will turn out as it raises many questions, not least about HMRC. Some years ago, Mark Alexander of Property 118 secured a brilliant win against “The Man”. The Man was the West Bromwich Building Society, who like to style themselves at “The West Brom”, I guess that sounds more “relatable” to the common man. Essentially, West Brom had cheated on the terms of their mortgage contract – and had tried to renege on their mortgage contract terms with their buy to let mortgage c ..read more

Don’t Bother Paying for Credit Reports, Get Tenant Applicants to Get Their Own Detailed Reports and Send to You For many years I have used the credit check facility provided by the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA). The cost of this is £12 per tenant applicant (that is with the discount for NRLA members) and you pay a little extra for each additional address they need to check up on. However, a friend who is a mortgage broker, told me about another facility that is much better, provides the same information and more and is completely free of charge. It is provided by a firm cal ..read more

One result of the Tenant Fees Act was that landlords were reduced to only asking for a weeks’ equivalent rent as a “holding deposit” or to be strictly correct on terminology, (and so not to be confused with deposits against damages and non payment of rent), a “reservation fee”. In the old days, we used to charge tenants an equivalent of three weeks rent for this. And we only charged that once someone had passed all our checks and we had offered them a tenancy. When they paid this money over it was on the understanding, (which we put in writing, of course), that if they later changed their mind ..read more

I rather like the feature on online letting agent’s OpenRent system where their system is able to screen out all the applicants who have not read your conditions properly. So with OpenRent you have a “pre-screening” option where you can state things like No Pets, No DSS, Not Suitable for Students, Min Income Required from Applicants, Min Tenancy Length and whether the Property is Unfurnished or Furnished and finally the “Property is Only Available from X Date”. So, when someone enquires, they are presented with these bits of information and they have to confirm they do not have pets, are not i ..read more

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Earlier this year, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) reported on the housing market. It came at the end of a year long study. Competition and Markets Authority Report on Housebuilding is Another Missed Opportunity The report was a mixed bag, but there was nothing in it that will shock anyone over much. And nothing much will change. The CMA looked at the build quality of new homes and found that there was a lack of drive for homebuilders to compete on quality and that the routes to the home buyer to get snagging issues, as well as more serious problems, sorted were unclear. So, they r ..read more

Real Gurus in Property Should “Do” as well as “Teach” It has been four years since I updated my main book, “Successful Property Letting – How to Make Money in Buy to Let”. The other day I had a quick look at the book. I found that there is not that much that is out of date though, except for the tax chapter, where things inevitably move on fast. I decided to not update the book anymore four years ago. I will explain why. The reasons I am going to give here ought to tell you a lot about where you should get your learnings from, if you are starting out as a residential landlord (or if you just w ..read more