One thing I have always said is that it is impossible to manage your properties effectively from a distance. If you are not prepared to visit your properties on a regular basis to carry out inspections then you had better be prepared to accept the consequences.

Belvoir, a firm which specializes in providing consultancy services for the residential rental sector seems to agree with me on this aspect of property management. In fact they have dubbed regular visits and open lines of communication ‘the golden rule’ of being a successful landlord.

Of course, you must remember to follow all the rules set down to govern such visits to your properties. Tenants quite rightly value their privacy and failing to respect it can only lead to future conflict.

Make sure you give your tenants a decent amount of warning and inform them of not only the date but the approximate time of your visit. This will make the tenant feel less ‘watched’ and more supported.

There is no doubt about it though regular visits will keep your tenants on their toes in terms of keeping your valuable investment in good shape.

This of course means that in the long term these visits will literally save you money.

Remember – No one can possibly blame you for wanting to protect your investment in this way.

For a time there people saw the buy to let market as an easy way to get rich, almost a license to print money. There were even ludicrous claims flying about that once you had established your portfolio you would have to work less than four hours a week and still you would be raking it in.

For the record these kinds of claims were always madness and anyone with any experience knows it was never that easy. Having said that making money in this industry required less finesse a few years ago than it does now.

It is always easy to make money in a market that is booming!

The recession has put us firmly back in reality and I agree with personal finance expert Andrew Hagger of Moneynet.co.uk when he says “Too many people got carried away with hearing how others were raking in the monthly rental income but without appreciating the potential pitfalls or having the financial back up to cope when things didn’t go according to plan.”

With lenders proving that they have no appetite for this sector at the moment and the government introducing legislation that seems destined to make things much harder on landlords, this sector is definitely no longer a place for the faint of heart. If indeed it ever was.

The government are taking a moral high ground stance in their defense of their new property reform. Under the new reform all landlord’s will be required to fork out fifty pounds to register with a national body the government is claiming is designed to rid the sector of rogue landlords.

Clearly, I have no problem with the government’s plans to try and clean out the bad wood in the buy to let sector. No one approves of landlords who bully or intimidate their tenants least of all other landlords who risk being tarred with the same brush. The thing I object to is the fact that those landlord’s, the large majority, who are fair and conduct their business with the upmost integrity, are being asked to fund this clean out.

It is also unclear exactly what powers this new body will have, I agree with Simon Gordon of the National Landlords Association when he says “We can see the thinking behind this but we need to see the details and be reassured that this is not simply a mechanism for tougher regulations,”

I think it is understandable that certain factions in the buy to let sector are harbouring a strong suspicion that this new charge could be a fund raising exercise on the part of the government.

Between this and the hard squeeze that has been put on loans for buy to let mortgages, there is no doubt that landlords are having it tough at the moment.

We all know that things have gotten pretty bad in the buy to let sector over the past year and we have had hundreds of statistics thrown at us to prove it, but every now and again a statistic has the power to shock even me.

One such stat appeared in a story in The Telegraph this week, apparently the buy to let mortgage market has shrunk by 95 percent over the past two years. According to the financial website moneysupermarket.com, the number of different mortgages available for rental properties has dived from 4,384 in April 2007 to just 213.

On top of this the rates for buy to let mortgages, if landlords are lucky enough to get hold of one, are far from as favourable as in the mainstream mortgage range. The average interest rate charged on a buy-to-let mortgage has reduced by only 1.51pc since June last year, compared with a 2.6pc drop in average residential mortgage rates.

As if all this is not enough lenders are also demanding much higher deposits from landlords, on average 15 percent more.

It is no wonder those of us in the buy to let market are finding times so tough at the moment. Making things so difficult may prove short sighted of lenders in the long run; they are after all just the type of business that may help to spark a recovery, if given half a chance.

So many mistakes were made through naivety during the buy to let boom. Many of the people attracted into the market by the huge house price rises were inexperienced and bound to make rookie’s errors.

Unfortunately for those who arrived into the game quite late any mistakes they made were soon magnified by the recession crashing in.

New build apartments in the city centre were very popular during the heady days of the boom, last year. The Telegraph reported that some of these were now going for half their original selling price. Quite a blow if you were an inexperienced landlord getting into the market to make a quick buck.

Things are a little better for those who decided on getting into the buy to let market via houses but in most cases landlords are still finding it tough even in this area.  It is a simple matter of oversupply.

There is some good news on the horizon with the 1.2 percent rise in supply of properties in the last month being the slowest rise since September last year, however, many experts warn that while this may indicate that we are close to the bottom, the climb back is likely to be very slow.

I don’t think any of us got too excited over the slight rise in house prices last month, though it was nice to see things headed in that direction for a change. It is just as well that most of us greeted the news with caution because Nationwide figures released last week show a 0.4% decline.

The good news is these same figures show that the pace of the decline in house prices has slowed.

No matter which way you cut it, though, houses are still worth 15% less on average than they were a year ago and for most people this is fairly grim news.

It is a very interesting fact, however, that the largest factor affecting your house price movement is location. The Land Registry released figures in March that make fascinating reading with typical property prices rising by 1.8% in the North East of the country but falling by 2% over the same period in the West Midlands.

In separate news, Nationwide were reasonably positive about some of the measures put in place by Chancellor Alistair Darling in the last budget but they still sounded a note of caution.

They do not believe that anything he announced would have the effect of a quick turnaround in the market. It seems that they, like most of us, continue to urge patience.

There were some interesting statements made this week by the manager of Clarity Commercial, Chris Jenkins. And I must admit I agree with a lot of what he had to say.

The first thing he talked about was the way seasoned property landlords have a different take on things than the average person. He points to the number of these types of landlords who are continuing to expand their portfolio even as they are surrounded by doom and gloom news in the property sector.

Mr Jenkins claims this happens because experienced landlords are not panicked by the dire view of the immediate future. Most of these types of people are in this business for the long haul and realise that this time of low house prices is actually the ideal time to expand their property portfolio.

I agree with this view of things and assuming a landlord can get his hands on the necessary finance I think most experienced landlords recognise the soundness of this long term view.

The other point that Mr Jenkins made is that he believes that it is about time that the finance institutions of this country got their act together and made buy to let loans more readily available again. The lack of these loans is clearly, as I have discussed before, contributing to accidental landlords flooding this sector of the market.

Considering the fact that these financial institutions played a significant role in creating this mess in the first place it seems only fair that they help to drag us out of it. At the moment their policies seem to just be making things harder for buy to let landlords.

I have talked a lot about location being a prime factor in whether or not your local buy to let market is starting to show the very early signs of recovery. There is no doubt that this is important, but figures released this week by Findaproperty.com indicate that the type of property you own may be just as important.

According to their figures, the number of houses available to rent in the market fell in April for the second month in a row, in contrast the number of flats rose for the sixth consecutive month.

Clearly supply and demand dictates that these figures have an effect on rent rates and predictably, according to Findaproperty.com, rents for larger properties are up two months running while flats show a further 0.7% fall in average rents.

Andrew Smith, head of research at FindaProperty.com, said: “The UK has become a tale of two very different markets. House rentals are seeing the start of a recovery with declining supply rates and price rises for the largest family homes. In contrast, the flats market has seen a much deeper downturn, with rental prices falling for 13 consecutive months and supply levels continuing to increase.”

It would seem that the decrease in houses for rent is probably the result of people who had previously taken their houses off the sales list, returning to the market with more realistic expectations in terms of sales price, leading to an increase in sales of houses.

Flats on the other hand are traditionally the area favoured by first time buyers and buy to let landlords. These two groups of people are finding it very hard, in the current climate, to achieve mortgages so the flats remain on the rental market causing an oversupply.

This recession has had some effects on our business that I would just never have thought of. Buy-to-let mortgage specialist Paragon Mortgages are now reporting that there has been a huge leap in the number of mature students seeking rental accommodation.

Many people, as we all know have lost their jobs through no fault of their own when companies have been forced to downsize. Apparently a lot of them are using this opportunity to return to full time schooling and re train.

John Heron, managing director of Paragon Mortgages, said: “If individuals have been made redundant or are struggling to get a job they may see higher education as an attractive option.”

This is potentially very good news for the buy- to- let industry who has traditionally relied heavily on students to populate their properties. It can be a very desirable market to let to as the property often has higher yields because it it is let on a per room basis. Even better is the fact that Paragon claim students have lower void periods.

The fact that mature students are also more likely to run a car and therefore be prepared to travel further to get to university could also see the usual boundaries of student letting being extended outwards.

All the advantages of letting to students but with the added bonus of a higher maturity level, it sounds like any landlord’s dream tenant.

The Times reported last week that yet another attempt is being made to breathe some life into one of London’s most infamous areas. The area behind King’s Cross station.

It seems very interesting timing on the part of these brave developers, given the huge hole the construction industry has been in lately. The plan they have is set to transform the area and create as many as 2000 new homes. The extra exciting part of this project is that apparently 40 percent of these will be earmarked for first time home buyers.

As well as these new homes the development is also said to contain some ambitious plans for new shops, galleries and restaurants.

Several groups of people are putting the money forward for this huge project. King’s Cross Central Limited Partnership — a group composed of Argent Group, London and Continental Railways and DHL Supply Chain — has stumped up £150 million for Phase 1 of the project. The University of the Arts London, which will have a campus on the site for Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, has provided a further £100 million.

The first of these new homes are said to be likely to be completed and up for sale in 2012.

This kind of thing has been tried before in this area, to no avail, but probably not on this scale. It would be great to see such a bold plan really take off.