This is the third in a series of 10 articles written by specialist landlord & tenant solicitor Tessa Shepperson, founder of the online Landlord Law Service.  Having a good tenant is THE most important thing about renting property. 

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A very good friend of mine, Rob Hubbard @Walkerfox, wrote an excellent Blog this week entitled “Me, the social web, property and how much Google loves us all”.

Students are asking housing minister Grant Shapps to introduce a star rating system for buy to let homes. Hundreds of students in Shapp’s consituency of Hatfield have complained about shoddy properties in a survey by University of Hertfordshire Students’ Union.

Buy to let rents have dropped slightly for the second month running as landlords offered more homes to let. The average rent in England and Wales wavered down by an almost imperceptible 0.3% to £682 a month, but is still 4% higher year-on-year.

Wrtten by Neil Patterson – Partner of The Money Centre, following his visit to a meeting at The National Skills Academy in Norwich for The Bank of England Quarterly Regional Inflation Report. Do you think the Bank of England have lost credibility in dealing with the economy? That is an interesting question and one raised […]

Britain’s leading house builders are looking at changing their business models by moving in to buy to let as buyers struggle to raise mortgages for new homes. Barratt Developments – the biggest firm with brands Barratt, David Wilson and Ward – is offering a limited sale and leaseback terms to buy to let investors.

Buy to let landlords could benefit from a cut in VAT on repairs and maintenance if Chancellor George Osborne heeds a plea to boost the struggling building sector. Property organisation the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors wants him to slash the rate of VAT on costs of supplies and labour for refurbishing homes.

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This is the second in a series of 10 articles written by specialist landlord & tenant solicitor Tessa Shepperson, founder of the online Landlord Law Service.  If you let a property in poor condition to your tenants, not only will you get complaints and lower your reputation as a landlord – it is also against […]

A PDF of the Bank of Englands February inflation report can be downloaded here

Housing Minister Grant Shapps wants key players in the housing sector to join together to help first time buyers find homes.  House builders, lenders, insurers, councils and consumer groups turned up for a summit meeting chaired by Mr Shapps, to thrash out how they could help young people who want to own their own home.

Retailers are shutting up shop in Britain’s high streets and many of the doors may never open again for trading.  New data shows town centre business rates for shops are surging, with shopping ‘black spots’ in the north and midlands.

Investment opportunities for buy to let landlords look good as mortgage availability increases and asking prices for homes continue to fall.

The Blue Force Group – including Blue Force Property and Blue Force Services have collapsed holding cash for soldiers that could run in to millions.  Many of the soldiers with cash on deposit with the firms could lose up to £11,000 each.

Tenants often skip their rented home leaving behind old furniture or other belongings that are broken or too heavy to move, leaving the landlord to sort out the mess behind them.

Mortgage lending seems to have bottomed out in 2010 after plunging from £362 billion at the top of the market in 2007 to £77 billion last year.

Vanessa Warwick, from Property Tribes, interviews Tessa Shepperson of Landlord Law. Filmed at the offices of Property118.com

New figures from the government show how the banking crisis and recession crippled the housing market. In 2008/09 – the latest figures available from the Office of National Statistics (ONS) – only 9% of all households in England (2.0 million) had moved to their current homes within the previous 12 months, the lowest number since […]

The truth is finally out about how the buy to let market performed in 2010 as the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has released the latest loan figures for property investors. The figures confirm the market expanded by 7%, with about 1.3 million buy to let mortgages worth £152 billion on the books of the […]

Neighbourhood no-go zones for houses in multiple occupation are spawning some unholy alliances between former property letting adversaries to fight their local councils. More and more councils are announcing ‘article 4’ declarations to let them take on tough controls to restrict new houses in multiple occupation (HMOs) from opening.