Albert Einstein has many famous quotes and I am quite fond of this one: “In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”. This is particularly true of the buy to let market right now and here are a couple of statistics to demonstrate opportunity: Gross buy to let mortgage advances grew by 23% in 2014, compared […]

Joint tenants signed 6 month AST, before the 6 months were up (November time) the couple broke up and the wife remained in the property. The husband was asked to write to me expressing his wishes to be removed from the AST, he never did. After the 6 months the wife stayed in the property […]

Last week I attended an eviction in East London with the Channel 5 film crew in tow.  This was not an ordinary case; the arrears were in excess of £20k as a result of rent not being paid for over 2 ½ years. The landlord was based overseas and had passed his portfolio of properties […]

I can see this was discussed last year but thought I would start a new thread rather than resurrect the old thread where the advice and guidance may now be out of date. The agents of my 3 bed residential rental property have just written to me to advise that “ACOP L8 now applies to […]

This is a strange one ,my Tenant has paid the letting agent, so she told me so I asked for bank statements to prove this story and from that I see she has paid. But the letting agent says she is in arrears by£1534.45, so they will not pay me. They say her Bank did […]

I am trying to ascertain the area and extent of the responsibility for the completion and assessment of this document and not finding it easy. The Leaseholders Information Form (LIF) is completed by a vendor and so far as I understand matters must answer honestly and has a duty to inform their solicitor of any […]

The National Landlords Association (NLA) has today (16 April 2015) launched its initiative to enable tenants to check if their landlord is accredited; the National Register of Accredited Landlords. The announcement was made by Chief Executive Officer, Richard Lambert who was speaking at the Chartered Institute of Housing’s annual South West Conference. The Register, which […]

I’VE just lost £205 on a single property because I didn’t have Landlords Emergency Cover in place. That’s a whole month’s profit for the property lost because I had put off buying the cover since December 2014. The Letting Agent called me up at around 1000 today  to say the tenants had complained the boiler […]

My tenant had his Housing Benefit stopped, he has provided the info the council requested, but they are taking forever to do the re-assessment. Consequently I am owed many weeks rent which is seriously affecting my cashflow. I’ve asked them several times to prioritise the matter, but I just get told there is a backlog […]

I live in Bury,Lancashire and am about to rent a property near Durham City. I incurred some expenses i.e. gas safety certificate, insulation and a visit to the property to facilitate these expenses last month which is also the last tax year when the property was not as yet let (it has never been let). […]

I have a tenant who has left the flat without giving notice and has moved into another house in the area. This tenant has stopped paying rent and has stopped responding to phonecalls, texts etc. I went to the property the other day to issue her with a Section 21 to end the tenancy and […]

On the back of the popularity in the number of downloads for the free PDF Guide to Enforcing Judgements we produced a new Guide to Evicting Tenants and Recovering Rent Arrears. This guide has been updated today, please complete the form below to download your free copy. As you may be aware, HMCTS recently provided […]

I am concerned about a letter received from our managing agent asking to indemnify them. We recently instructed agents to manage one of our BTL houses and since then they have found us tenants and they moved in on the 6th of March. However we have now received a letter from the agents head office […]

I have a Victorian terraced house that I let. It is a large two storey house with 4 tenants in individual rooms. They are all unrelated and have individual tenancy agreements. Last December I received a call from one of my current tenants to say bailiffs had attended the property for an unpaid council tax […]

I am planning to buy a property at auction and am lucky enough to have £350K liquid cash to do this.  My accountant tells me that if I remortgage after buying the property at auction and release £262,500 back to me (75% LTV), I will not be entiteled to any tax relief on the loan […]

Cotswold Barristers and Property118 are offering a course of action that will reward Early Adopters to fund a test case challenging the Financial Ombudsman Service (“FOS”) decisions relating to complaints raised in respect of the Bank of Ireland Tracker (“BoI”) Premium hike via a Judicial Review.  The purpose of the Judicial Review (“JR”) will be […]

Due to an unprecedented amount of interest from property investors, 85% of the apartments in Tower One have now been sold allowing for the early release of Tower Two. This is the North West’s largest residential development and offers assured net returns of 6% for 1 year. Following the same format at the first building, […]

A friend of mine owns an apartment in a Grade II medieval house. His neighbour, an owner occupier, is 94 and has set fire to her apartment 3 times in 11 months. The first two fires were minor, but the last badly affected 6 of the dwellings so the owners had to move out while […]

I have a tenant who is 73 years old. She has been my tenant for over 21 years. When she moved in, she had two grandchildren living with her (cousins). The girl moved out at age 17 and went to live with a boyfriend – had a child – subsequently moved in with another boyfriend […]

If nothing is changed post election on the 8th of May the Benefit cap will be reduced from £500 to £440 pw in London with a lower cap in other regions of £396, 90% of the London figure. As an example: A two parent household with three children receive £334 per week and then deduct […]

I am a landlord myself, but a friend of mine who is a tenant is at her wits end. She’s been in a ground floor conversion flat for nearly 2 years with a tenancy that ends in February with no break clause. She and her husband are disturbed night after night by the tenants upstairs […]