London student rents are rising as students besieging accommodation providers outstrips the supply of available properties. The capital has just 55,000 purpose-built student bed spaces chased by 283,500 students seeking a place to stay – with student numbers 6% up on last year’s total.

Landlords should separate their savings and current accounts from banks where they hold buy to let mortgages, loans or credit cards after threats to snatch cash without permission from a lender. Nationwide, the UK’s biggest building society, has written to mortgage customers threatening to implement ‘setting off’ powers that lets lenders take cash from a […]

In this video blog Mark Alexander, buy to let landlord and founder of Property118.com explains how he uses Social Media to reduce rental voids. His clients are his best ambassadors and Mark uses testimonials from them to promote his business. Mark explains how his strategy to promote his rental properties will be incorporated into the […]

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Disgruntled landlords have paid out £315,000 fees in a year to comply with a council’s new house in multiple occupation licensing scheme. Cardiff City Council has billed the landlords for 824 licence applications in the Cathays neighbourhood, a favourite haunt for students at the city’s universities.

Buy to let borrowing is underpinning the mortgage market as the Bank of England and lenders report a surge in activity from property investors. The signs are that lenders are inviting more applications from landlords and diverting funds from first time buyers and other borrowers to meet the demand.

The virus comes in the form of a Twitter Direct Message from somebody you know  and says “your not going to believe it… you’re in this photo album.”  I’ve not added the link for obvious reasons but it takes you to a “Phishing” site.

It’s all too easy to put down the cheapest flooring possible when furnishing a rental property. But unless you want to be continually replacing it between short lets, it is worth spending a bit of money ensuring it will look good and last.

Landlords with a no pets policy for rental properties need to watch out for a little known legal loophole which lets tenants keep chickens and rabbits. The loophole was uncovered by a tenant with pet chickens who was threatened with action for breaching her tenancy agreement by a housing association.

Letting agents have been warned that they must offer landlords clear and fair contracts or face action from government consumer champion the Office of Fair Trading. The OFT is concerned that some letting agents are not abiding by a High Court ruling that found tenancy renewal terms in contracts between London letting agency Foxtons and […]

Prior to the introduction of the TDPS in 2007 a landlord could choose not to prepare an inventory for his property (and most did choose not to) or, alternatively, the inventory prepared was extremely basic. However, if a landlord now wishes to protect his property, he absolutely must ensure that a complete and thorough inventory […]

The sale of a £2.7 million property portfolio for just £3 by a council to a property development company is under investigation. Blackpool Council leader Simon Blackburn has pledged to go public with the results of an independent scrutiny of the deal. The council put the portfolio together by buying up failing hotels and bed-and-breakfasts […]

Buy to let mortgage availability is seemingly not improving despite the best efforts of property professionals to talk up the market. The latest insight comes from mortgage brokers – with half reporting no change in business with landlords during the three months ending May 31, while the other half said business was up.

Google has quietly launched a trial run of a mortgage comparison site that includes buy to let mortgages. Links to the site appear at the top of the search results page triggered by mortgage related keywords. Only a few lenders are listed – Woolwich, ING Direct, Lloyds TSB, NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland. Around […]

I’d very much like to get your views on what’s been good about the credit crunch and what’s not been so good for buy to let landlords.

Rental arrears decreased for the second month in a row, according to LSL Property Services latest buy to let index. The figure now stands at £257million, down 18% on May’s figure of £315m. This was a result of 9.3% of rent being paid late or missed in June instead of the 11.5% recorded the month […]

Electrical wiring in a shared house was so dangerous the property was a firebomb waiting to go off, a court heard. Faulty wiring was overheating and could have ignited at any time – but the house in multiple occupation (HMO) had fire safety precautions in place.

Police, landlords and letting agents are in the front line of the fight against drugs in towns and cities across the UK. Cannabis factories are a real problem in residential and commercial rental properties with a dozen or so raids a day on suspected growers. To highlight the problem, here is a snapshot of cannabis […]

We love to keep things topical and relevant on Property Tribes, so to celebrate the recent Wimbledon Championships, I posted a new discussion topic:  Lessons from Nadal : The winner’s mindset in property as I believe there is much we can learn from seeing the attitude and attributes of successful people, no matter what their […]

If you’re thinking of your ideal celebrity tenant, would you think practically and pick a chef, handyman, cleaner or interior designer? Apparently not, Cheryl Cole topped the poll of 1000 tenants questioned by The DPS. She took 8% of the votes helping Singers and Bands to take an overall 29% of the voting. The closest […]

A mortgage adviser who stole buy to let landlord’s identities to con lenders out of £3 million has started a five year jail term.