Rents are raging out of control in some areas of the country as tenants desperate for a home gazump their rivals and offer higher rents than landlords are seeking. But buy to let seems a game of two halves – with some regions away from prosperous London seeing rents fall.

Independent commercial finance and bridging specialist Crystal Mortgages has launched a new range of buy to let products for landlords. The portfolio of loans offers a number of purchase, capital-raising and remortgage products with loan-to-values of up to 75% of the property price. Interest rates starts at Bank of England base rate (0.5%) plus 1.99%.

A proposal urging MPs to vote for tighter regulation of private landlords is likely to be booted out of Parliament due to lack of time. The private member’s bill, promoted by the Labour MP for Sedgefield Phillip Wilson won 10 minutes of time, but is unlikely to win any further support.

New technology should be taking the property market forward but agents aren’t embracing it, an Imfuna Let survey has found. Imfuna Let, the new digital inventory system, found that while 90 of the hundred letting agents surveyed thought technology improves their service to clients, only 33% had smartphones that would allow them to work on […]

Landlords are blamed for the noise and bad behaviour of partygoers who let out city centre flats near nightspots for wild parties. Property owners are allegedly pocketing up to £1,200 a night from cramming stag and hen parties in to family flats.

A £50million mortgage fraud said to be ‘off the scale in terms of the sentencing guidelines for fraud cases’ by a judge has resulted in a combined 20 years in prison for a property investor and a chartered surveyor. Saghir Ahmed Afzal and Ian McGarry were charged in 2009 along with six others and plead […]

The mortgage business is flatlining as buyers, sellers and lenders wait for the property market to jump start. The latest property market statistics show fewer buyers are in the market and this is affecting sales and mortgage advances.

Many landlords are handing unnecessary cash over to the tax man because they do not know what expenses they can claim for running their property businesses. Even a new study by landlord mortgage specialist Paragon Mortgages does not cover all the costs that a buy to let investor can claim.

As MPs debated the Welfare Reform Bill at report stage on Monday, 13 June, a survey by the National Landlords Association (NLA) had already revealed that more than half of private residential landlords are planning to reduce the number of properties they let to tenants on housing benefits. Around 450,000 homes are let to tenants […]

Many landlords surveyed by Paragon could save money on tax, they’ve found not all were as efficient as they could be. Of those questioned, less than half are claiming their advertising (45%), transport costs to visit your property (49%) and on any energy efficiency improvements (41%) as tax allowances.

Housing Minister Grant Shapps has today launched plans to give tenants greater support to hold their landlords to account. The Housing Minister argued that new locally-run tenant panels will put power back into the hands of residents, helping them to build the Big Society in their neighbourhoods.

The Tenant Deposit Scheme recently released shocking figures showing that only 19 per cent of disputes over tenants’ deposits are won by landlords.  This statistic could be vastly improved if landlords better protected themselves at the start, during, and at the end of a tenancy agreement, according to the Association of Independent Inventory Clerks (AIIC).

Buy to let specialist Mortgage Express expects to write-off another £80 million to loan fraudsters and slack business practices this year. The former buy to let lender shut up shop for new business during the credit crunch and has already put aside around £200 million to pay for suspected fraud and negligence.

Millions of would-be householders will turn in to a generation of property paupers as all hope of buying a home slips away from them, according to a new study. The research says the property door will shut on around 2 million people who will have to rent instead of buy. The scenario is part of […]

Data from the recent Halifax Housing Market Confidence tracker reveals that a third of Britons expect house prices to rise over the next year, making this a good time to buy. Despite house prices falling by 1.2% on a quarterly basis in April, one in three of survey respondents predicted that average UK house prices […]

HM Revenue and Customs is planning to flood the courts with criminal and civil cases against tax cheats after the first round of amnesties has closed. The tax man has started 16 criminal investigations for tax evasion – six involving the medical profession and ten relating to failure to declare interest on offshore bank accounts. […]

Mortgage borrowers who have loan applications rejected when they have directly approached lenders should consider looking for help from a mortgage broker. Many borrowers are turned down for a loan at the first attempt because they do not know how to ‘package’ themselves as an attractive prospect for a lender, according to a study by […]

The Bank of England voted to keep base rates at 0.5% for another month and to keep quantative easing at £200 billion. The rate has not moved since March 2009 and quantative easing has remained locked at £200 billion since November 2009. Few financial pundits are surprised by the decision as in the past few […]

Britain is careering towards a housing crunch as an increasing number of home hunters cannot afford to rent or buy a property. A shortage of homes to rent is pushing up rents at the same time as worsening finances create an underclass of consumers who do not have the cash to buy while their poor […]

The British Property Federation has issued a word of caution over the distribution of the land set to be sold off by the Government. Housing minister Grant Shapps announced yesterday that thousands of acres of land will be sold off to create 100,000 new houses by 2015. Liz Peace, BPF’s chief executive backs the plans […]

A property investor set up a web of false identities as ghost tenants at shared houses as part of a huge bank and credit card scam. Paul Reppion, 49, funded buying two flats and two buy to let houses from his eight-year crime spree that involved 32 false identities, 200 credit cards and 50 bank […]