Renters in London need to earn around £52,000 to let a buy to let home, according to figures from homeless charity Shelter. The charity reckons 65% of non-home-owning Londoners have given up hope of buying a property in the neighbourhood where they live.

Landlords maximising income from buy to let properties by leasing their roof space to firms generating energy from solar panels are warned that they need to comply with mortgage lender guidelines. Many landlords are installing solar panels that offer tenants cut-price power while siphoning off excess energy for an income under the feed-in tariff.

The latest round up of news features the reaction to the National Planning Policy Framework from around the buy to let industry, a strong open letter to Grant Shapps about the work and influence of Shelter and the penultimate edition of the LHA Expert. There’s also news of a landlord in trouble for a lack […]

Pictures are great, but there’s no substitute for a good description when it comes to inventories according to the Association of Independent Inventory Clerks (AIIC). The before and after photos that fill inventories should always be accompanied by a “clear narrative as to what the photo is showing”. Photos, they say, are mainly for reference […]

LHA Top Tips for landlords. Article 7 in a series of 8 If prevention has failed the next best thing is speedy resolution. Be organised. Know when your rent or rents are due and what date you are expecting top-up payments. Never allow arrears to mount up before taking action.

The government needs to take action to protect consumers by regulating unscrupulous letting and estate agents, urges the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. RICS slams the current self-regulating regime as ineffective, complicated, inconsistent and fragmented. Instead, says the organisation, the government should a impose a single regulatory framework for residential property aimed at protecting consumers.

Following the release of the amended draft of the National Planning Policy Framework, reaction has been fairly positive. The streamlining of rules, culminating in 1000 pages being reduced to a more succinct 50, include a return to focus on developing brownfield and town centres as opposed to greenfield development. Councils already with a local plan […]

*Property118 is not in any way aligned with Kazuri nor Farah Damji, but we believe questions should be raised about the funding being poured into Shelter and Crisis to work with private landlords when they have done and continue to do so much to damage the reputation of the Private Rented Sector. We believe this […]

Buy to let entrepreneurs can only finance around a quarter of the £200 billion investment needed in property over the next five years – leaving a massive shortfall in homes, according to new research. Unless institutional investors, like pension funds, fill the breach, the UK will not have enough homes to meet demand regardless of […]

A landlord who told a court he misunderstood shared house rules was fined £1,000 for failing to licence his property and fit fire safety equipment. Anton McLoughlin, 47, thought he did not need a house in multiple occupation licence because although six tenants lived there, he had divided the property into three separate flats.

Clever Chancellor George Osborne is masking landlord tax increases with smoke and mirror financial tricks that make income tax bills look better than they really are. Many believe they are better off this year and next after all the talk about big increases in the personal allowance that lifts the poorly paid out of the […]

There is a wide variety of buy to let mortgage news for both landlords and letting agents in today’s newsletter with a spotlight feature on how our but to let mortgage calculator can assist landlords to find the most suitable deals on the market. Our columnists feature posts on whether or not to opt for […]

To fix or not to fix, that is the question so many people are not honest with themselves about. In the early days of my career I saw interest rates go to 15% and then slowly creep down from that point. Around that time a significant proportion of customers were sold/chose cheaper fixed rates on […]

Hi it’s me for my sins I started my career in banking in 1990 (when I was 8!) and on to the mortgage desk in the pre regulation days. Then on to a Building Society to become a branch and business development manager, and that’s where I came across a specialist Buy to Let brokerage […]

LHA Top Tips for landlords. Article 6 in a series of 8 Stay in contact to build a positive relationship. The most valuable asset to a trouble free tenancy is regular, open communication. Ensure both you and the tenant maintain up to date contact details and if possible obtain details of next of kin or […]

Buy to let landlords are picking up almost double the average monthly rent in London compared to property investors in the rest of the UK. Average monthly rents in the capital are £1,212 a month, according to landlord mortgage firm BM Solutions. That’s 69% more than the UK average of £716 and 41% higher than […]

Tenant Referencing comes in many guises but in this article I am going to focus on how landlords can outsource a major piece of due diligence and pass the risks of tenants failing to pay rent onto an insurance company by purchasing Rent Guarantee Insurance “RGI”. The concept itself is very simple. The insurer performs […]

A new piece of lead generation software has been created by Property118.com to help businesses providing services to landlords to know when their clients and other people visiting their website are considering the purchase of buy to let property investments. Research has shown that many service providers welcome the opportunity to offer landlords advice prior to […]

Property investors and nosy neighbours can drill down in to the Land Registry’s house sales data for free under new Government open access rules for public information. The most expensive property sold in England and Wales was Dorchester Mansions, Ascot, Berkshire, with a price of £135 million – while the cheapest was Chapel House, High […]

Keeping accounts for a buy to let business could be a lot simpler if the Government adopts cash accounting for small businesses. Chancellor George Osborne announced in Budget 2012 that he was launching consultation on a dispensation that will let small businesses turning over less than £77,000 switch to a simpler way of calculating profits.

Chancellor George Osborne’s Budget 2012 was a chance missed for reforming property tax, says the industry. Many are also breathing a sigh of relief that stamp duty reforms have glossed over commercial property. The anomaly in the market is a £2 million house owner pays draconian duty starting at 7% for personal ownership and stepping […]