The Deposit Protection Service (The DPS) has announced the pricing structure for its new insurance based deposit protection scheme and rules out membership and annual renewal fees. In the DPS press release they claim to be offering the easiest and cheapest option quoting: • We will offer the industry’s cheapest published option for landlords and […]

The Essential Information Group reports a positive end to 2012 for the UK property auction market reviewing auction activity in December and the year as a whole. Overall results for the month were comparable to December 2011, with only marginal differences in the volume of lots being offered and sold. Interestingly the amount raised grew […]

Help! I have a Mortgage Express representative coming over for an account review! Why are they are demanding a huge array of info from my entire portfolio, the 15 mortgages I have with them and the 19 mortgages I have with other lenders? They want evidence of everything I do make spend etc which has […]

Central London Landlords are not the villains as thousands are owned and unused by poorest boroughs in an empty homes crises. “The lights are out in London” seems to be politicians’ pet mantra. It was used by Lib-Dem MP Simon Hughes in his motion to make parts of the capital ‘off-limits’ to wealthy people purchasing […]

I  would like some advice about one of my LHA tenants? I have recently taken over management of 4 properties with Housing Benefit tenants resident. All are great except one. A tenant of 3 years with another agent is refusing to accept the take over of management by my company, sign any agreements or mandates […]

We have received four questions from one of our readers as the final date for submission on-line of 2011-12 tax return looms asking: 1. Are NIC’s payable on rental profits accrued by an individual, i.e not a company? I believe this is classed as unearned income and does not attract NIC’s liability. 2. Can I […]

Genesis Housing Association is entering into an unprecedented and innovative financial agreement for its Stratford Halo development in East London with M&G Investments, the leading investment manager. The agreement will provide Genesis with greater capacity to invest in regenerating balanced communities and in good quality, affordable housing at a time when public subsidy for the […]

Putting a freshly cut onion in roughly the centre of a room whilst painting and after you have decorated will get rid of the smell of fresh paint a lot quicker. Give it a try, it really does work, not by masking the smell of paint with the smell of onions either. I’m no scientist […]

Yesterday the House of Commons gave a second reading to the Welfare Benefits Uprating Bill which caps future increases to Local Housing Allowance rates at one per cent from 2014. Richard Lambert, Chief Executive Officer of the National Landlords Association (NLA), says: “Capping future increases to Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rates to one per cent […]

The Bridging Loans market has become popular with many new niche lenders competing with the big banks for your business. This competition can only be good for price, customer service and lending criteria. The Loan Directory is a regular feature publishing examples of the most competitive and frequently used product offerings helping readers identify possible […]

According to Savills there is a shortage of 42,760 student bed spaces in Glasgow. That’s why Glasgow is a buy to let property hotspot and also why we expect these superb central Glasgow Buy to Let Studio’s for the student letting market to sell fast.                       Central House, Glasgow […]

I have just had a text from a tenant complaining the BT landline is not working. BT say if its internal then they charge £99.00 call out + fix fee. Steve’s question is who should pay for this ? Myself or the tenant ? If it was a cooker or washing machine then we provide […]

We are about to rent out a house that does not have a cooker, just a space for a free standing one with a gas connection. A local estate agent mentioned to my husband that we are legally obliged to provide a cooker. Please could you tell me if she is right as I did […]

When do you need to re-protect tenancy deposits? Clarification from TDS Following an article on Property118 before Christmas some agents and landlords expressed concern as to whether they are approaching deposit protection at the end of the fixed term in the correct way.

I suspect very few of our readers expected to see the words Rent Guarantee Insurance and LHA Tenants in the same headline! Following headlines that only 1.5% of landlords will now let their properties to tenants in receipt of housing benefits is alarming, particularly if you are a landlord whose entire property portfolio is only attractive to […]

Housing Charity “Crisis” report that only 1.5% of private landlords will let their properties to housing benefits claimants. This is because the risks are considered to be too great. Make it a criminal offence not to pay rent, especially if Housing Benefits have been claimed for this purpose, and improve the eviction process for none […]

    Tessa Shepperson of Landlord Law is a solicitor specialising in residential landlord and tenant law. Tessa very kindly wrote a series of articles exclusively for readers of Property118.com some time ago. These still serve to be an excellent resource for landlords who find them when searching the internet so we have decided to […]

We have a house let to three persons and they seem to have fallen out, with the lead tenant (for deposit protection purposes) giving us notice. The deposit is registered with My|Deposits. My question is what is legally correct? Do I return the full deposit to the lead tenant or do I give a third of it […]

Here at Property118 we constantly share ideas to help UK Landlords to reduce your costs and maximise your returns. These are our austerity tips for 2013, each section is linked to the relevant page of our website where you can find out more and make contact with the providers of products and services we currently recommend. Links […]

“Milking the Buy-to-Let” is a Landlords Tax Planning Strategy which is very much under utilised. The strategy applies only to married couples and Civil Partnerships and is used to offset mortgage interest against rental income, regardless of whether the amount borrowed exceeds the original purchase price and also regardless of how the proceeds of the […]

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