With days to go until the 2014 Budget, time is running out for Osborne to make a real difference. Naomi Heaton, CEO of London Central Portfolio, highlights a four point plan which could help the Conservatives get back in favour, whilst providing some much needed Viagra to the UK economy. Listen closely George; it is […]

My name is Tony Wilson. I have today committed £15,000.00 to the fund to enable Mark Alexander and Mark Smith carry on the superb work they are doing on behalf of buy to let landlords who are being (in my view) mistreated by the West Bromwich Mortgage Company. As a solicitor who has been in […]

I was approached this week to give a reference to an outgoing tenant by an Agency in Beverley. I answered all their questions honestly. Whilst this tenant has created us some problems they were minor compared to what some tenants do.  I summarised by stating that I would have no hesitation renewing a tenancy agreement […]

The data, published jointly between Shelter and British Gas suggest that over the last year, 200,000 tenants in the private rented sector have “faced eviction” because they asked their landlord to fix a problem in their home. However Shelter has ignored the inconvenient truths. Based on Shelter’s data, which indicates that there are  9 million […]

When you’re selling your property, you naturally want to get the most you possibly can for it. Paying expensive estate agents fees can sometimes seem like a waste. It can be tempting to go it alone but the benefits that an estate agent offers could very well make up for the fee they charge. You […]

Over the last few weeks there has been a steady string of press releases by individual members of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) commenting with their own thoughts of how Base Rate may rise when and to what point. I think it is safe to assume that this has been choreographed by […]

Would you guys mind giving me a landlords perspective on a tenancy problem my ex wife is experiencing at the moment? She and my son have been tenants in a property for just over 3 years. There are no arrears and not one payment has ever been late.  The landlord now wants to sell the […]

I have owned four single family cash flowing rental properties since 2006 and last year started looking for ways to expand my portfolio where I could invest in a property, add value (perhaps through refurb), recycle the deposit and invest in another etc. My current portfolio, small though it is, cash flows for me and […]

This report from Channel 4 investigates London Housing Solutions, a Rent to Rent company which is believed to have ripped off over 100 landlords for more than £400,000.  Advice from Property118 is that if you are contemplating renting your property to a Rent to Rent company then make sure you ask them to use a […]

UPDATE All of our upgrades have now taken affect – Property118 is now running at Warp Factor 🙂 The growth of the Property118 community has certainly caught us off guard in recent months and has been much greater than we could ever have anticipated. For this reason we have been swimming against the tide in […]

Ever since I took out my buy to let mortgage, I have availed of the lender’s building’s insurance, but as it is very uncompetitive, I am in the process of cancelling it and taking a policy from a 3rd party insurer (at a savings of about 60%!). The current lender is insisting on the following […]

I have a couple of properties which I purchased a few years back using 70% LTV buy to let mortgages. My plan was to remortgage to 75% LTV based on increased property values in order to release some funds to buy further properties.  I have seen a few products I was interested in but after […]

Outraged by the fact that his mortgage lender changed the terms on his tracker rate mortgage, buy to let landlord Mark Alexander posted a blog on the Property118 website in September last year. Since then his blog page has been visited over 175,000 times and nearly 4,000 comments have been posted. There are nearly 2.5 […]

The Bank of England base rate has been at 0.5% now for five years! It will not stay there forever and can only go up. Question is; at what interest rate will your properties break even? This calculator will help you to “stress test” your rental properties – it is free to use.  If you […]

Sales and marketing isn’t my thing and I’m wondering how aggressive I should be in my property To-Let advertising. The two bed apartment that I’m soon to complete on is approx 1,000 square foot in size. The problem is that almost every advertised property claims to be ‘spacious’! I’m planning on letting at about 10-15% […]

Hazel de Kloe is our latest sponsor at Property118 and will soon be launching her first book and a series of webinars, both of which I am very much looking forward too. Hazel is also very good on camera as you will see from the video below – in my opinion she’s far better than […]

Shawbrook Bank have launched an HMO refurb product geared specifically to investors that are looking to convert a single dwelling into an HMO and take advantage of the higher yeilds available on these type of properties. This is a growing niche area that Shawbrook Bank have identified as “good business” and are looking to support […]

If you’d have been on the front line with active property investors in  2008 when the market fell off a cliff you’d have seen virtually every investor in the market either gunned down or white & pasty with fear and panic. Debt/money stuck in properties, remortgaging-‘free’-money-out now completely dead, the millions borrowed to buy properties for […]

I want to sell one of my BTL properties, it is a very small studio flat on the outskirts of Uxbridge. Unless things have changed it maybe difficult to mortgage as it is only 26 square metres and lending criteria was a minimum of 30 sq metres last time I looked into it. The tenant […]

Hi All, I’ve been getting the paperwork ready for a BTL property that I’m close to completing on. There’s three things that I’m not 100% sure about and was hoping for some advice on. They’re all unrelated, so apologies if I should be raising these under separate discussions… (1) Adding clauses to an AST I’m […]

Ever since the Credit Crunch it has been very hard to finance new build flats on Buy to Let mortgages with lenders criteria either a straight No, or at a reduced Loan to Value. However Aldermore commercial have now released new criteria allowing 80% maximum LTV on new build flats for individual, company applicants and […]