The landlord of a filthy and overcrowded shared house was fined £5,500 after admitting 23 licensing and management offences to magistrates. Jan Assakzai 42, of Friars Road, East Ham, London, picked up the fine at Thames Magistrates Court and was also ordered to pay £300 legal costs and a £15 victim surcharge.

As a landlord you can be forgiven for thinking that every bit of news from the government concerning the lettings sector is bad for the landlord – A new set of obligations which comes with the obligatory application process. Creating paper, jobs and VAT income for the government! Enough of my cynicism 🙂 So this […]

Landlords who have failed to pay tax on the sale or buy to let rents face extra scrutiny from a new HM Revenue & Customs tax force. A team of investigators covering East Anglia, London, Leeds, York, Leicester, Nottingham, Lincoln, Durham and Sunderland is seeking to recover more than £17 million from tax dodgers. They […]

Most lenders insist that a term of at least 35 years must exist on a lease in addition to the required mortgage term. Therefore, if a borrower requests a 25 year mortgage term the remaining lease term must be at least 60 years. If the remaining lease term is shorter, the lease will need to […]

Rent costs nearly a third of buy to let tenants 50% or more of their take home pay, according to research by online property portal Rightmove. While paying private rents averages 38% of take home pay for all tenants.

A struck-off solicitor and an estate agent who managed a house shared by 12 tenants who lived in filthy conditions have been branded slum landlords by their local council. Both picked up rents from the tenants for an absent owner in Nigeria but failed to run the house in multiple occupation according to strict licensing […]

Down here in sunny East Sussex, certain aspects of property investment are thriving, despite the economic downturn. Holiday lets are enjoying increased occupancy, spreading far beyond the “peak” season, and out into the shoulder months, producing some significant cash flow for investors.

Falling house prices has meant up to £90 million has been overpaid in inheritance tax by families and friends who have been left a home in a will. Insurance firm NFU Mutual reckons the tax is reclaimable under a special rule called sale of land relief.

The cheapest homes in England and Wales were sold for just £8,000 in April, according to the latest Land Registry data. Two homes sold for £8,000 out of more than 51,000 that changed hands.

Bridging finance has quite distinct and individual features offering some very useful advantages over other types of secured funding. The terms are flexible from one month upwards, which allows you to structure the loan to your requirements, and  can often be arranged quickly with an agreement possible within 2 hours and the funds available in one or two weeks if the circumstances […]

Letting agents are charging fees of up to £600 to tenants who want to privately rent a home in Wales, says housing charity Shelter. Shelter claims letting agents mask the true cost of letting a property and wants the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG) to introduce new rules to make the cost of renting clearer to […]

Landlords and second home owners who leave their properties standing empty face a new tax blitz. The government is to introduce proposals to let local authorities raise an extra £420 million a year in Council Tax from homes left vacant for more than two years and second homes only used at weekends.

There has been a significant shift towards bridging finance, especially in the residential property market. The high street banks are curbing their lending making it more difficult to apply for finance, but with demand for borrowing on the increase, bridging finance lenders have moved into the market to fill the gap. Falling interest rates have also contributed to the […]

This week’s edition features an introduction to Tessa Shepperson’s course “Landlord law made easy”, a recession busting article on how to save stamp duty, criteria to consider when purchasing a flat, buy to let market updates and the start of a series of articles on the availability of commercial finance.

Property investors with buy to let rentals and holiday homes expect to supplement their pensions with cash from renting or selling, according to a new survey. Around 73% of over 55s expect to raise extra income or cash in their retirement from property, says the Equity Release Council, the trade body for equity release lenders.

Rent rises are fuelled by a mortgage famine that is forcing home owners that cannot sell to become reluctant landlords who have to rent themselves to move on. The latest lettings survey by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) shows rents have followed an increasing trend since 2009.

Buy to let mortgage borrowing is expected to increase even more as lenders switch funds away from movers and first time buyers to landlords. Several key lenders have already pledged more funds for buy to let – including the Co-op Bank and The Mortgage Works, the property investment subsidiary of the Nationwide Building Society.

Landlords are warned to check out that their letting agents protect their money as a new scheme helping tenants reclaim unfair fees threatens make some firms go bust. Housing charity Shelter Scotland is leading the campaign against rip-off letting agents – and has helped more than 100 tenants start claims for the repayment of thousands […]

Breaking up is hard to do – and that applies to a property portfolio as much as a marriage.  Luckily, if buy to let landlords divorce, some special tax rules can help minimise the taxes involved in any exchange of assets.

According to the latest Landlords Panel research by BDRC Continental, one in four buy to let landlords own their property portfolio outright, while a third have a mixed portfolio. The survey of NLA members showed something of a polarised investor community though. The investors who rely on buy to let mortgages believe the industry needs […]

Godiva the specialist buy to let arm of the Coventry Building society is bringing capped rates back into the market after their disappearance during the credit crunch. A capped rate is a variable mortgage that can move up or down with fluctuations in interest rates, but will not increase beyond the “capped” pay rate during the term of […]