When I first came up with the concept of Property118.com I wanted it to be the best property website ever. To achieve this I realised that it was important to focus on my website being found as well as producing interesting, informative and useful content. With this in mind I set about understanding the Google […]

Christmas is not only the time to be merry, but it’s also the time when the dreaded pundits come out with their property price predictions for the next year in a bid to garner column inches and web space for free publicity. Piles of press releases predicting this, that and the other for next year […]

Landlords who fail to submit their tax returns on time can expect no mercy from HM Revenue and Customs after changes in the law let the tax man levy more fines. HMRC will turn the financial screws on tax payers filing after the midnight deadline on January 31 – and then some as other new […]

Please leave a comment below if you think “The GOOD Landlords Campaign” is a good idea. One of my employees has had to move her family three times in two years because her landlords wanted to move back in or sell their property. She wasn’t told this when she rented the property and certainly would […]

Homeless charity Shelter is predicting thousands of tenants will skip their rents to pay for Christmas. Renters are putting festive presents, food and drink before the costs of housing and risking their homes rather than spending within their means and protecting the roof over their heads.

Santander has joined the buy to let lending frenzy with a range of purchase and remortgage deals for landlords. The property investment loans are available from IFAs and mortgage brokers under the Abbey for Intermediaries banner.

Landlord’s Log, the Personal Blog Of Mark Alexander, the Founder of Property118 Try associating the words ROGUE or UNSCRUPULOUS to a trade or profession which is not related in some way to property. Whether we like it or not, we now live in an age of digital communication and “no win no fee” lawyers. We […]

Landlords are seeing a rising amount of deposit disputes over the cleaning of properties according to The Association of Independent Inventory Clerks. They say 40% of all tenancy deposit disputes involve some sort of cleaning cost. They also claim tenants don’t see cleaning costs as anything more than “fair wear and tear”, hence the disputes.

Whether you own one or one hundred properties you must monitor the performance of each property on a monthly and annual basis. Before you can do this though, you need to have a goal or target in mind as to the performance you wish to achieve with each property over a specified time period, whether […]

Estate agents quoting misleading below-market-value home sale prices have been reprimanded by the advertising watchdog. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld four complaints against Express Estate Agency, run in Manchester by Sell Quick.

Landlords can take the strain out of comparing letting agents to find the best deal with a new online service. The site lets landlords list details of their property for free – and invites local letting firms to pitch their deal against the clock.

Following my blog The Devil is in the Detail, I want to pass on some information that will help landlords avoid being caught out. “When you protect a deposit you are asked if there is a third party who has provided the deposit.  Most of us assume that the tenant has provided their own deposit […]

I am writing this blog to balance out another article on this website and to raise a question about whether it is reasonable for a business to be exposed to a trial by social media. Is it even possible that a group formed on Facebook could muster up enough support to potentially bring an established […]

Letting agents are ripping off tenants with high fees that are not revealed until they come to let a home, claims a new report. Mystery shoppers found only two letting agents visited in London, Manchester and Gloucester advertised letting costs online and the range and cost of fees varied ‘significantly’ between firms.

As an Airline Pilot, Ray Pearce has a fairly unique perspective on the changing trends of UK holiday makers; “Over the last few years I’ve observed an increasing trend for UK families to choose to holiday within the UK rather than flying abroad, so for me, investing in holiday lets is kind of hedging against […]

A landlord was fined £4,000 for failing to carry out fire safety work at a rental property after a tenant had to flee to safety from a blaze. Islington Council had already served Nadia Boujema an improvement notice ordering the fitting of fire detection equipment at the home near The Angel, North London.

A shortage of homes to rent is pushing yields up for landlords – and the trend is likely to continue, say letting agents. Yields have risen for 21 months in a row according to the latest buy to let market review for the three months ending October 31 from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors.

The latest news and views from the property market and private rented sector, including reaction to the Channel Four Property Scandal programmes. This edition also includes guest articles from Ben Reeve-Lewis, Julie Ford, Frazer Fearnhead and the funny-as-ever HMO Landlady.

House prices in Scotland have remained fairly constant, offering only small rises for larger properties and slight drops in smaller houses. Edinburgh saw its average house price rise by 0.6% on a year ago, with the biggest rise coming in West Lothian at 6.2%. Elsewhere, properties in East Lothian and Dunfermline decreased.

You can reference tenants, you can use your own judgement to select ones you think you can trust and you can be a good honest considerate landlord, but there is still no guarantee they will treat your property with respect. If you have not experienced any issues with tenants damaging your property then you are […]

Property investors will pay more inheritance tax and capital gains tax after the government changed the basis for calculating index-linked increases in reliefs. The back-door move will increase the amount of tax collected on all transactions from April 2012 despite Chancellor George Osborne promising CGT rules would remain the same during the life of this […]