Opposing groups of letting agents are lining up to fight over who takes the official title of industry regulator. In one corner is the reigning champion, the Association of Rental Letting Agents (ARLA), backed by around 6,500 members and the self-proclaimed ‘voice of the industry’.

A property investor spent a little more than a penny and bought a former public toilet to convert in to a family holiday home. The anonymous investor paid £104,000 for the two-storey loo with outline planning permission on the promenade at Sheringham, Norfolk. The guide price of between £30,000 and £40,000 was pushed up by […]

The Association of Independent Inventory Clerks (AIIC) has announced a new course for July aimed at new and inexperienced clerks called “Guidelines for Inventory Clerks”. The course is also open to those who are interested in becoming an inventory clerk as well as Associate Members, colleagues or landlords.

A student landlord’s dreams of property riches collapsed in to a nightmare of £3 million in debts as he broke laws to run his letting business. Daniel Eaton, 36, now has his portfolio of houses in multiple occupation (HMO) for sale to recoup some money – but he is £1 million short as his assets […]

Three landbanking scammers were disqualified as directors after they sold worthless farm plots at hugely inflated prices with the fake promise of planning permission They traded as directors company Land Strategy, which went in to liquidation in July 2009 owing £78,900. Kevin Hilton of Crosby, Merseyside, Lynne Hilton of Burscough, Lancashire and Darren Butt of […]

Just one in one hundred buy to let landlords think now is a good time to reduce their portfolios, according to a survey by LSL Property Services. Instead, 49% think they should be investing in new property, up 2% on last year. In fact of the landlords questioned, a massive 86% have said they will […]

Why the legislation was introduced- According to the last Labour government, a significant number of landlords were abusing their position and holding on to deposit money that rightfully should have been returned to the tenant at the end of the tenancy.

By @PaulShamplina, founder of @LandlordAction From acting on nearly 20,000 problem tenant cases since 1999, we have seen some horrific things in our time. Over the next three blogs, I am going to be talking about some dangerous types of tenants that landlords should try to avoid at all costs. The first type of tenant […]

Property118.com has had an eBook dedicated to it called “A Short Guide to Being a Landlord” by regular contributor and landlord law specialist Tessa Shepperson. The book comes free if you purchase her £17 eBook “The secrets of Assured Shorthold Tenancies and section 21” before 10am, 7th June.

Mortgage lenders have laid out their lending policy for the next two years – and the news does not look too good for borrowers. The forecast, released by the mortgage industry mouthpiece the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), hints that some extra funding for buy to let borrowing will come through later this year. Banks […]

Pay less stamp duty on a home in a ‘disadvantaged area’ is one of the 36 tax reliefs set for scrapping by the Treasury in a clean-up of the rule books. The proposal to ditch the relief is up for consultation – and the likely result is the benefit for home buyers is expected to […]

House prices were up 0.8% in April – the first time prices have crept above zero in 2011 and the highest monthly growth since January 2010, according to the Land Registry. Year-on-year, house prices are down 1.3%, but even this is a slowdown on last month’s figure. The Land Registry statistics underwrite those from other […]

The pattern of home ownership in Britain is undergoing a major upheaval with nearly two thirds of adults under 45 years old giving up any thought of buying their own property. Buying a home seems beyond the grasp of this age group as 95% say they have no spare cash, no interest in saving for […]

A new range of six buy to let mortgage products has been released by Paragon’s Mortgage Trust today, as well as two ‘Rapid Remortgage’ deals. The three fixed mortgage rates range from 4.89% to 5.09% with three tracker rates between 4.3% and 4.5%, they will only be available via intermediaries for purchase and remortgage.

It’s official – thousands more tenants are chasing fewer buy to lets as online property portal Rightmove reports searches for homes to let are up 66% over the past two years. In the same time, the number of available homes has dropped by 25%.

Property prices are unlikely to bounce back strongly regardless of how the economy improves over the rest of the year, predicts mortgage lender Nationwide. The latest survey from the building society shows house prices increased by 0.3% from April to May, but the average home is worth around 1.2% less than a year ago at […]

Special thanks to David Humphries of buy-to-let.com for giving us permission to shine the spotlight on two excellent video’s he’s produced about purchasing property at auction. I first met David in 1995, as David recalls, before the phrase “buy-to-let” was a twinkle in the eye of it’s founders the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA).

I regularly give talks all around the country at landlord forums and property events. At the beginning of a talk, I usually ask landlords to raise their hands if they are using a letting agent. Over the last couple of years, there has been a noticeable shift where more landlords are beginning to self-manage their […]

Tenants’ lives were at risk when gas was reconnected to dangerous fittings after a safety engineer cut off the supply The landlord ignored warnings fittings were faulty – including a flue that was fitted back to front. Asif Azam of Whitelands Road, High Wycombe, was fined £800 and ordered to pay £2,000 costs after he […]

Fraud investigators are warning landlords to watch out for crooks trying to cheat them out of cash. The overseas gangs are targeting buy to let and holiday let landlords with variations of a common fee scam. The fraudsters will contact landlords to make a corporate booking – often for a charity or religious organisation.

In the previous two articles in his series, Bill Main-Ian recalled the accident that saw him lose one of his legs in a car accident and then fight for his perfect house which led to him becoming a property investor. The story of how Bill got into property investing and triumphed through adversity is being […]