On Wednesday 5th April 2017 evening BBC1 Panorama featured “The Benefit Cap: Is It Working?” Seminar details:  The programme was similar to Dispatches Benefit Families recently featured on Channel 4. The reporter followed 5 families over 5 months to see how they were affected by the benefit cap and whether they were coping. Caroline Nokes […]

Have you ever wondered how it is that each decade or so seems to have reported house price growth exceeding all our other economic  numbers? Doesn’t seem right somehow does it ?. If that were really the case, then by now houses just wouldn’t be within the reach of maybe 95% of the population and […]

Did you know that 55% of UK landlords own only one investment property? So many start with the intentions of building a portfolio – they start to ascend the learning curve, but never get the advantages of using those initial learnings again and again to build an ever expanding property portfolio. Warren Buffett is often […]

Next week we will be sending the following to all UK Councils.   Please Support Our Work Freedom of Information Request To Whom It May Concern We are attempting to quantify the impact on homelessness over the next 5 years in the [merge in name of Council] area. A survey carried out in November 2016 […]

Those who claim Universal Credit will apparently see a vital change to the “taper rate” which came into force on the 11th April 2017, the claimant’s UC award will be reduced by 63p for every £1 of net earning in excess of their work allowance, as opposed to by 65p for every £1.  Please follow […]

Scottish Government have published a consultation on both minimum energy standards and standards on homes in the private rented sector (and now including Furnished Holiday Lets and Serviced Apartments). The aim is to bring the private sector in line with social housing, although some requirements for PRS are much stricter than Social Housing, but excluded […]

I have 2 buy to lets in West Yorkshire.  I have a salary of £30k from a full time job. Each property annual turnover is 6000. I also have a vitamin company with net profit £20k Will I be high tax band or low? Thanks Amjed  

I have a house that has been converted into two self-contained flats recently. The flats have achieved building regulation certification for the conversion BUT NOT planning permission. My current insurers don’t specifically ask about planning permission even though they know it’s a house split into two flats but when, in the interests of full disclosure, […]

While the private sector must turn a profit in order to pay it’s staff and management team, things are very different in Local authority world. The Prime minister is left behind by approx. 539 heads of local authorities around the country who earn more than her salary of £150k. Surely this cannot be right. How […]

My husband and I have been married for 25 years, separated for 8 years. I have now decided to divorce him because of his unreasonable behaviour. We have several buy to let properties and also land with planning permission to build houses. Would it be possible for me to put an uplift clause or similar […]

HOUSE prices are set to boom 25% over the next four yours according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr). The Cebr are predicting an increase in house prices of £52,000 to an average home price £272,000 by 2021 as confidence in the UK housing market remains high. The current average house price […]

I own a small flat in a Victorian Block and over the last 3 years the management company have constantly been requesting improvements fees, to the tune of around £30,000 over the last 3 years. As they do not accept credit cards, I usually wait till their solicitor writes me a letter then I pay […]

I recently exchanged a number of emails with someone who supports Section 24 of the Finance (No. 2) Act 2015.  The emails are self-explanatory. The challenge for you is to guess who my correspondent is? EDITORS NOTE This is a very long article which you will not want to stop reading once you get into […]

Ten years ago this month (April 2007) tenancy deposit schemes were first introduced in England and Wales. You need to go a little further back to understand why they were brought in, though. Rewind to June 1998 and the National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux (NACAB) published a damning report based on CAB clients’ experience […]

Staff at Glasgow-based tenancy deposit scheme SafeDeposits Scotland have tracked down their biggest ever ‘missing’ tenant, who took more than a year to claim back a deposit of £5,250. The tenant moved out of their central Edinburgh property in Spring 2016 and left the money unclaimed for over a year. Deposit and rent on the […]

I was informed last week that one of my tenants had passed away in my property. There are no suspicious circumstances, although I was informed by the chap who lived in the flat above (he does my Gas Safety Checks so I knew him) that he believes she died from a diabetic coma. She was […]

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Please read the Treasury letter below and then our response: Correspondence & Enquiry Unit 1 Horse Guards Road London SW1A 2HQ [email protected] Dr Rosalind Beck April 2017      Our reference: TO2017/06948 Dear Dr Beck  Thank you for your correspondence dated 23 February to the Minister of State for Housing, Planning and London about the […]

I’m looking at upgrading my solid-wall Victorian rental property in order to ensure it hits at least level ‘E’ (which it might already do – I have an assessor coming out soon). It is solid wall (so no possibility of cavity insulation), single-glazed sash windows (that’s an obvious upgrade, but will come to many £1,000s […]

A property recently sold without informing buyer that there is an ongoing interest in the property that could later affect the new owner due to reported fraud over the original purchase forged documentation. Could the seller be sued by the new buyer over non disclosure as if the seller were to be taken to court […]

I have a tenancy agreement with an Individual who turns out to be a letting agent. He has been subletting the property out for a while, his actually not living there and there is no deposit involved hence no deposit protection required. His tenancy agreement is now a periodic one as his tenancy ended in […]