Housing minister Grant Shapps has publically backed a web site advertising rent-to-buy homes. The scheme seems to promote lease option purchases that are popular in the US and Australia but rarely seen in the UK. The web site – www.tryitbuyitproperty.com – matches homeowners who have problems selling with potential buyers who cannot raise a mortgage.

There are already several LinkedIn Groups for UK property investors but none that we’ve found appear to offer a Directory of daily news relating to the property industry. For this reason Property118.com will be publishing their latest news to this new group which can be found here.

Shared house landlords can expect a surge in inquiries from tenants as the government changes the rules on paying housing benefit to singles. From January, singles aged under 35-years-old can only ask for cash to cover sharing a room in a house in multiple occupation (HMO) rather than self-contained housing. 

Thousands of home hunters are besieging letting agents to snap up buy to lets as the mortgage famine bites and stops them buying their own homes. Sequence Lettings, part of Skipton Building Society property firm Connells, has seen a 37% increase in the number of prospective tenants signing up to view homes.

The industry-voice of Britain’s mortgage lenders has already slammed a European Commission proposal to help borrowers before appearing to read the document in detail. The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) claims more moves to protect consumers are unnecessary because the UK already has a highly regulated financial services industry. 

Councils protesting at how Housing Minster Grant Shapps reversed house in multiple occupation planning rules have started a legal challenge against his decision in the High Court.

Do you think this is fair publicity? I can’t wait to read your comments on this one!!! Read comments below

When you consider that property118.com was launched just seven weeks ago it’s quite amazing that we are already ranked as being the 9,869th busiest website in the UK.   

First in a series of short video interviews in which Property118.com founder Mark Alexander quizzes IFA Jason Howard on how he’s used economies of scale to improve the returns on his property investments and for his clients.

Robin Pilley invests into HMO’s (Houses in multiple occupation) in the Haverhill area and regularly achieves up to 16% yields, he is also a Director of CXG Property Services, which is a Letting Agents and Property Sourcing Company.  As these yields are so good we’ve asked Robin to share his story in a four part […]

This is the eighth in a series of 10 articles written by specialist landlord & tenant solicitor Tessa Shepperson, founder of the online Landlord Law Service. I think my tenant has left, can I change the locks? You need to be very, VERY careful about this.  Once a property has been let to a tenant […]

Buy to let mortgage restrictions are relaxing as more lenders announce a return to the market. Aldermore Bank is stretching its comfort zone to take on a little more risk by allowing landlords to have loans on three rather than two properties, subject to a total loan value of £1 million and rent cover of […]

Building societies approved £1.7 billion in home loans last month – around 23% higher than the £1.4 billion approved a year ago.

It’s the situation every landlord dreads. You do the usual checks, the tenants seem like nice reasonable people but 6 or 12 months later they have trashed your property……..and if you haven’t got a professional inventory and supporting evidence such as photos (or even better) a video you have no hope of keeping the deposit. […]

Burnley may wear the crown as the cheapest place in England and Wales to buy a home – but a look behind the glitzy title reveals sinister reasons why. The Lancashire town with a population of around 80,000 boasts four out of five of the cheapest streets; according to property web site Mouseprice.

The buy to let market has switched from making money on rising house prices to inflation-busting returns on rental yields.

The number of millionaires in the UK is rising – and is expected to grow by a third by 2020. Around 619,000 millionaires live in the UK – with 86,000 of them worth more than £5 million. The figures include landlord property, like buy to let portfolios.

Holiday homeowners only have a few days to splash out on a spending spree that takes advantage of a lucrative tax break.

The news that squatters’ rights are coming to an end and that anyone squatting can be  evicted within days will bring a huge sigh of relief from landlords letting agents and councils the length and breadth of the country. The fact that someone could break into someone’s property, stick up a poster of Che Guevara […]

New stamp duty rules for portfolio property investors announced in the Budget opens the door on income-shifting tax planning for many high net worth landlords.

Chancellor George Osborne announced a tax neutral Budget aimed at providing economic growth and fairness. His speech of just over an hour pulled few punches about the state of the economy, but was very much ‘steady as we go’ rather than pulling in surprise tax rabbits out of the hat.