The Financial Times published an article last week on the fact that buy to let mortgages are consistently bucking the trend of falling interest rates. This is having an adverse affect on people’s ability to jump back into the market.

Even though the price of property has dropped temptingly low some landlords are being forced to shelve their investment plans because of still crippling interest rates in this sector.

The Times quotes figures of 6.3 % on the average two year fixed term by to let mortgage.
Continue reading →

As we enter a time of year that can be very fraught even in the best of economic circumstances, it seems that landlords disagree over the effect the recession is having on their property business prospects.

I don’t think anyone would deny that times are tough.

It seems that in some parts of the country tenants are proving very difficult to find. Given the time of year many landlords worry that if they have a property that is standing empty now it could easily remain that way for some time into 2009.

And it is true that the ‘time served’ landlords are facing heavy competition from people who have had the business forced upon them when they are unable to sell their extra property. And there are properties from the abandoned sales market flooding the sector.

Despite all this some landlords seem to think that it is not all doom and gloom. One landlord on a popular forum is quoted as saying the credit crunch is the best thing that ever happened to time served landlords. Continue reading →

Everybody is certainly feeling the squeeze out there in the market at the moment and landlords are not immune.

In some grim news from the fund manager Managing Partners Limited (MPL) it seems there are a couple of new statistics of interest to us, and neither of them are very up lifting. In the last 18 months repossessions per day in the buy to let sector have doubled.

Coupled with the news that in the last year buy to let repossessions are up by 302 percent it is tempting to feel a little despondent. MPL estimate that around five properties belonging to landlords were repossessed a day in January.

Jeremy Leach, the managing director of MPL was hardly encouraging either when he stated
“The number of properties belonging to landlords that are re possessed is only going to rise. Mortgage rates have been increasing and deals have been hard to come by. That coupled with falling property prices has meant that more landlords have been finding it difficult to make their payments.” Continue reading →

Halifax Landlord Insurance has just completed a report that lets us in on the secret of how most landlords think. It makes for very interesting reading.

Some things I don’t consider to be much of a shock.

The news that most landlords (77%) prefer to let their property to a female tenant did not surprise me. Rightly or wrongly, I think this fits with the general population’s stereotypical notion that the female sex is less reckless and perhaps a little more tidy.

It is also not a huge shock that most of us prefer our tenants to be of a certain maturity.  Sixty seven percent of us would prefer our tenants to be over the age of 25.

Not that we have anything against youth, I am sure, but we were all young once and that is probably the problem. Continue reading →

There are a lot of people out there who literally fear anything going wrong with their property because they have such grave concerns about the practices of some tradesmen. This is very understandable in the general population as they have little to do with tradesmen on a daily basis and have no idea who to trust.

I was a little surprised to find out that landlords suffer from the same fears. According to a survey commissioned by eGenie.co.uk 75% of landlords delay repairs to their properties because they fear over charging by the people they hire. That is an awfully high figure.

According to Tim Meyer UK manager of eGenie.co.uk “It is understandable people feel scared about having shoddy work or getting ripped off, particularly when money is tight”. In normal circumstances I would agree with Mr Meyer but as professional landlords I think we are in a unique position to develop a set of trustworthy contacts that can help us out in these situations. Continue reading →

A report due out soon by the Item Club seems destined to confirm what most of us already know, Britain is in a recession.

The report is set to state that Britain faces the biggest fall in output since the Great Depression; they put the fall in investment at 15%.  Peter Spencer, Item’s chief economist also states that the fall is likely to continue with another 2.7% drop over the course of this year.

He says “The time for caution is past. It looks a frighteningly long way down to the recessionary rocks below. All of the economic statistics are in free fall.”

He may be a gloom merchant but at least he has an interesting turn of phrase, he also has some advice for the government. According to him the government ought to buy toxic assets from the banks and quickly. Continue reading →

The latest rip off scam by clever fraudsters involves the rapidly approaching January 31st self assessment tax deadline. It is likely to run after that too with the target being people who are expecting a genuine tax refund.

HM Revenue and Customs released a statement recently warning us about this scam and calling it ‘the most sophisticated phishing scam that we have encountered.’

It involves an email pretending to be from HMRC itself and asking for your bank or credit card details so your rebate can be paid out. HMRC warns that falling for this scam could have dire consequences.

Obviously the bogus tax officials will attempt to clear out any bank account you give them the details for, equally as scary is the fact that your details could be passed on to organised crime gangs. The resulting identity theft can result in a massive hit to your credit rating. Something we know can be deadly in our game.

HMRC are very concerned about this and are working closely with police in the UK and internationally to close these fraudsters down, with some success. Scam networks in Austria, Mexico and the USA have been stopped. However, the danger remains. Continue reading →

The latest rip off scam by clever fraudsters involves the rapidly approaching January 31st self assessment tax deadline. It is likely to run after that too with the target being people who are expecting a genuine tax refund.

HM Revenue and Customs released a statement recently warning us about this scam and calling it ‘the most sophisticated phishing scam that we have encountered.’

It involves an email pretending to be from HMRC itself and asking for your bank or credit card details so your rebate can be paid out. HMRC warns that falling for this scam could have dire consequences.

Obviously the bogus tax officials will attempt to clear out any bank account you give them the details for, equally as scary is the fact that your details could be passed on to organised crime gangs. The resulting identity theft can result in a massive hit to your credit rating. Something we know can be deadly in our game.

HMRC are very concerned about this and are working closely with police in the UK and internationally to close these fraudsters down, with some success. Scam networks in Austria, Mexico and the USA have been stopped. However, the danger remains.

Leslie Strathie HMRC Chief Executive warns us  “We never use emails, telephone calls or external companies in these circumstances. We only ever contact customers who are due a refund by post.”
If we remember this and don’t click on any web links in emails we don’t trust then all should be well.

If you do happen to receive one of these scam emails HMRC would be very interested to see it so do the right thing and forward it on to them.

As landlords we are all used to treading the fine line between treating our tenants fairly while making sure that our investment is protected. This has gotten increasingly difficult over time.

Recently, the government approved the tenancy deposit scheme, mydeposits.co.uk confirmed what we all knew; it is getting harder and harder to withhold a tenant’s deposit.

It comes down to the fact that the burden of proof lies with us. So, even if a tenant has damaged our property to an extent well in excess of their deposit, unless we can prove it beyond doubt we have to return their money.  In fact figures from the last part of 2008 confirm that of 125 disputes dealt with by the independent adjudicator only around 12 where decided completely in the landlord’s favour.

How do we make sure that we increase the odds for ourselves?

It seems that the best way is to do a comprehensive inventory that includes photographic evidence.
Each room needs to be photographed from all angles. Carl Haagensen of Redbrick Inventories felt he had spotted a gap in the market and now offers this expert service in an attempt to help landlords and letting agents manage the problem of property damage more efficiently. Continue reading →