Buy to let lender Paragon Mortgages profits rose 12% to almost £81 million thanks to landlords building on their portfolios. Paragon returned to lending in September 2010, and the pre-tax profit represents the first full year’s trading as a lender since the onset of the credit crunch.

By Guest Columnist Ben Reeve-Lewis I work for a council in London. I’m the landlord’s nemesis, the bogey man, a Tenancy Relations Officer; the guy who prosecutes landlords for harassment and illegal eviction, the one who gets injunctions out against them, has them arrested, helps tenants claim damages against them, kicks doors in and pushes […]

There is a lot of focus and discussion on the Governments Housing Strategy released on Monday but there are plenty of other landlord stories to educate and entertain in our second issue of the week, including guest articles from the Property Maverick, Nick Stott, Vanessa Warwick and Martin Cunningham.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) have issued a warning to landlords, saying they will prosecute those “who fail in their duty of care to tenants” after a Walsall landlord was sentenced. Khalid Hussain was fined £2,000 and ordered to pay £3,000 in costs after he failed to replace a boiler that had broken down […]

Landlord’s Log, the Personal Blog Of Mark Alexander, the Founder of Property118 Earlier this week a comment was left on one of our articles by a property developer who explained in very simple terms why developers can’t afford to build. Right across the UK, building sites are being mothballed but why is this happening if […]

Build-to-let funded by private investors and pension funds is the solution to the UK’s housing crisis, housing lobbyists have told MPs. Unlocking billions of private sector cash to invest in a house building programme together with the government’s new housing deal would meet the country’s growing need for homes, says the British Property Federation.

Another important factor I like to consider is the “Equity Return on Cash”. Ideally the smaller the deposit, the greater the Equity Return on Cash. Today 15% deposit is almost a thing of the past, 25% deposit is now the norm. Unless its apartment new build and then it’s a whopping 35% deposit. Let’s now […]

Desperate sellers are ready to accept knock-down prices on homes for sale as financial problems and a lack of mortgages keep buyers away. Both Britain’s biggest online property portals, Rightmove and Zoopla, report homeowners are discounting their asking prices.

Leaky pipes and sinks cost the UK’s landlords £2million a day and over 9 billion litres of water a year, and accounts for a quarter of all insurance claims on flats, according to property insurance specialist Cadogan Keelan Westall.

How and Where to Find Property Bargains Welcome to the next four part episode of the “Property Maverick”. I will again try to make this episode fact filled, funny and light hearted. But the real funny stuff will come in “The Pros and Cons of being a Franchisee”, “The Bulgarian Fool’s Gold Rush”, and laughs […]

As I sit here in a Civil Court’s waiting room waiting to be called (here pursuing a tenant on behalf of a landlord), it makes me think that all this is a bit laborious and pointless. Why is the legal system being used for run-of-the-mill cases like these? Yes, I know that it’s hugely important […]

I’m an unashamed fan of U.K. coastal holiday lets. My husband Nick and I first started investing in them in 2008 as we saw the economic climate deteriorating and reckoned that people would start holidaying at home again. We’re now the proud owners of two high-occupancy holiday lets – one on the island of Portland […]

Isn’t it ludicrous that we can invest our private pension funds into ‘off plan’ Caribbean Hotel Developments but we can’t invest them into solving the housing shortage in the UK? We have wealthy Greeks taking their money out of their failing economy and inflating London house prices by investing there and yet we can’t use our pension […]

Landlords might think that rent is the only income generated by their property business – but they may need to tell the taxman about other money coming in as well. Deposits from tenants are probably the main other income from tenants – and the rule is that these deposits always belong to the tenant.

The Government has launched a make-or-break housing strategy designed to boost the economy, create jobs and help people buy homes – but seems to have forgotten buy to let landlords. The initiative has the backing of Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and lays out a blueprint for the future of […]

The much awaited Government housing strategy was unveiled today with many seeing it not as the “radical and unashamedly ambitious strategy” professed in the foreword, but as simply not radical enough. The private rented sector is set to be boosted by tax changes as stamp duty will be assessed on the average value of individual […]

Today the government announced a new initiative to provide 100,000 new low cost homes over the next four years creating 200,000 new jobs. Well it’s better than nothing some will argue, but it hardly scratches the surface in terms of meeting requirements. To do this, a similar number of properties to a City the size […]

This week we have reported on a variety of political issues affecting landlords, some of which have been picked up by the mainstream media. Fortunately, it’s not all politics in this Newsletter. Our guest authors have written some excellent articles to lighten the mood and provide useful insight too.

Answer? – When it’s an Assured Tenancy. Rubbish joke I know. Most conversations I read on Property 118 and other websites centre on ASTs and the rules and regulations that surround them, but did you know that actually there are around 16 different types of tenancy and licence agreement?

As you probably know, search engines rate websites by the number and rank of other websites that link to them. The higher you rank the better for SEO purposes. Please feel free to place a link on our site and a few lines about your business in the comments section below. All we ask in […]

This week I attended an unofficial Bank of England briefing. This article is based on that meeting and informal discussions with other attendees before and after. It is not intended to be representative of any official views of the Bank of England or Property118. These are my personal opinions and perceptions only.