Archives: Magazines
PM overcharging trap
I’ve just negotiated a deal to purchase a 2 bed new apartment in Nottingham. A repossession that sold at the height of the boom in 2003 at £125,000. I’m aiming to get it for £50,000 less. However, having agreed a price I was absolutely gob smacked when I received this week the legal contracts at […]
Inventories – Video Evidence
In the digital age, we ask the question of tenancy deposit scheme expert Tom Derrett; “is it’s worth landlords gathering video evidence in support of their written property inventory?” Tom provides Property Hawk users with the inside track on how a Tenancy Deposit Adjudicator views the use of video evidence in tenancy deposit disputes & […]
Landlords and Facebook
Last week the numbers of people on Facebook reached 500 million, it seems that everybody is on it. The question is can landlords use this modern day phenomenon to their advantage? Facebook It’s a generational thing. If you’re over 50 you may not be familiar with the phenomenon that is Facebook. If you are under […]
Interest Rate Time Bomb
I was watching ‘How to beat tough times’ on the BBC the other day. This programme about the down turn; highlighted the financial perils we all face. It concluded that many people, including landlords have been saved from financial melt down by the historically low interest rate of 0.5%. The lowest for 400 years. Clearly […]
Regulating the agents
Should letting agents be regulated? Landlords are understandably relieved that the changes proposed for the private rental sector have been dropped by the Coalition Government. No more ridiculous landlords licence! However part of the proposals by the previous Labour administration was to regulate letting agents. Many landlords and tenants organisations welcomed the move to a […]
EPCs and HIPs
Great news for landlords. HIPs are dead! Home Information Packs were bought in by the Labour government in August 2007 in a bungled attempt to speed up the process of selling a property. They failed and were yet another piece of largely useless paper that a landlord was forced to have if they were looking […]
Property investment 2012
I was in London last week attending the AGM of one of my VCT companies, Albion Developments Plc. The setting was the resplendent City of London Club in the heart of the Square Mile. Albion’s investments have weathered the financial ‘melt down’ pretty well. This is partly down to its’ conservative gearing and partly down […]
Tax – budget essentials
The emergency budget was predicted to hit landlords hard. In reality it has been rather much kinder than expected. The huge hike in Capital Gains Tax (CGT) to 40 or even 50 % didn’t materialise. Instead landlords on the basic rate of tax will continue to pay the current 18% rate of CGT on disposals. […]
Landlording legals and morals
Being a landlord frequently throws up a whole raft of legal but also moral dilemmas. They are not always easy to resolve. I recently had a situation with one of my tenants with respect to repaying his tenancy deposit. I confess I had more than one sleep interrupted night as I churned the moral and […]
Ending a tenancy
We have created a new facility for landlords to create a closing statement at the end of a tenancy using our free property management software. Like all good things, a tenancy will come to an end. I personally like long-term tenancies and I now have a high proportion of long-term renters. Probably a good 75% […]
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