Blogging News

This is our second blog summarising the news this week in the world of a flat hunter, tenant, landlord, in London or elsewhere.  Two makes a series, so every weekend we will be summarising the week, starting from renting flats in Pimlico (of course!) but ranging out through the world of London, the UK, Property, Technology, the World and Life. Serious, amusing, balanced, it aims to be a must read with a summary and links to where you can find more. Please comment, particularly if you would like me to blog in more detail on any particular subject.

UK House Prices Falling Again

The discount of properties sold at auction has been rising since May, and properties at auction are now being sold for an average of 18% below their market price. Auctions are like a snap-indicator of coming price-trends because properties are being sold much faster,  and the widening of the auction discount over the past two months is the first indication that the housing rebound is fizzling out. Read More:

Pimlico Flats on Twitter – Humour Popular

I am active on Twitter and checking my tweets – my most popular this week with 4718 clicks is: Now this is how I fancy getting to work . If you already use twitter – do you follow me? Do you know how I know how many people are viewing my link?

Fine for Landlord after Tenant Dies

A wakeup call to landlords over their responsibilities, but is a fine enough? Hilary Thompson, aged 82, of Portscatho, was fined £5,000, and ordered to pay £1,182 costs, and probably is guilt-ridden. She inherited the property, and rented it on an AST in March last year. A few days after Thirza Whittall moved in with her husband and two young children she went to take a bath but tragically died when she was electrocuted after touching the taps. There was an electric, oil-filled radiator in the bathroom with the plug being run from a socket in the kitchen, the radiator was more than 30 years old, had a damaged flex, and was fitted with a 13 amp rather than a three amp fuse. A fault occurred when the flex was pulled tight allowing the electrical current to make a connection with the water pipes, there was a lack of earth bonding on the water pipes and the bath taps became live. The court heard in Thompson’s defence that she had asked a local electrician to check the house before the Whittalls moved in, but he had not had the opportunity because he had been too busy, and the radiator had originally been in another part of the property and was not intended for use in the bathroom. Read More

£6000 Housing Benefit Fraud …… £100 Fine!

A woman failed to declare that her landlord was the father of her children, which resulted in an overpayment of benefit totalling £6034.74. The woman was told she must pay back the full overpayment when she was sentenced last week and given a £100 fine plus £40 costs. Is that enough? Read More

Renting to Students

This has been the week where the world of journalism has discovered that renting to students can be profitable, probably off the back of a report by Knight Frank.  The student letting market continues to buck the trend in other areas of the economy with record numbers of students applying to enter higher education this year, student numbers have grown from 1.8 million in 1997 to 2.5 million in 2007, and Knight Frank estimate that London alone requires an additional 100,000 student bedspaces.

Renting a Spare Room

Mr. Rigsby

Both my wife and I managed to afford the first house that we bought when we were single by renting rooms to lodgers. Now renting a room is proving to be a lifeline for thousands of beleaguered households across Britain under the cosh of the recession. Having a lodger can typically bring in £393 a month or £4,716 a year, and figures show there were 388,000 lodgers in July last year, rising by 152 per cent to 981,000 a year later. Households in London are the most likely to take in a lodger, with 6 per cent renting out a room, compared to just 1 per cent in Scotland and Northern Ireland. The Government’s Rent a Room scheme allows households to earn up to £4,250 a year tax-free. However, those renting rooms to lodgers could find their details being studied by tax inspectors under government proposals for a national register of landlords. The most popular age to take in a lodger is 25 to 34 years old, with this age group making up a third of all new live in landlords, and 70 per cent of live-in landlords are single.

Mouldy Landlords Stink!

Ovenu (call 0800 140 9800 or visit www.ovenu.co.uk) the leading UK oven cleaning specialist did a survey which showed that tenants are 3 times more likely to be put off by mould in a property (77%) or bad smells  such as smoking or pets (66%) than practical issues such as small rooms.

Landlord Registers

Currently, each of the four countries within the UK is adopting a widely different approach to whether landlords should or should not be on a central database.

England: the Government is proposing a national register of English landlords which would include not only their names and addresses but also the addresses of their rental properties. Run by an independent organisation, landlords (or their agents) would have to register every year. In return, landlords would receive a unique landlord registration number to be used in tenancy agreements, court proceedings including eviction, and housing benefit claims.

Scotland: every council in Scotland already holds a register of landlords and letting agents. If they have not registered, or applied for registration, it is a criminal offence. Since its introduction in 2006 there have been calls for the scheme to be reviewed as 25% of rental properties are not registered.* Landlord registration has failed to have sufficient teeth to deal with rogue landlords who have failed to register.

Northern Ireland: the Executive has stated clearly that mandatory registration of landlords “would put an unnecessary and unfair focus on those landlords who are already complying with legislation and acting responsibly. It would not provide the most effective means of targeting those landlords who are not complying with current law, particularly those who are unaware of, or who deliberately decide to operate outside the law.” ** In other words, there will be no register in Northern Ireland.

Wales: the Assembly Government has no immediate plans of its own to introduce any type of landlord register. However, it is possible that if legislation is introduced atWestminster, it could be extended to include all Welsh landlords.

Confusion reigns over landlord registers, according to the National Landlords Association

Forced to Borrow at Fixed Rates

Introducer today reports that the proportion of borrowers opting for fixed rate mortgages has hit record levels reporting John Heron, Paragon Mortgages’ managing director:

‘With borrowers unsure about the next move for interest rates, they appear to have been opting for the security of fixed rate deals.’

I’m sorry Paragon – that’s tosh

Borrowers are being forced into accepting overpriced fixed rate deals because they can’t get anything else!

Landlords to House Britain

In a headline to bring tears to the eyes, the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) says that with a lack of homes available to meet demand the private rental sector step in to pick up the slack.

“The government will end up relying on buy-to-let investors to provide property for rental and ensure that Britain has a roof over its head.”

This is not a case of the Estate Agents, Hairdressers and Management Consultants from the “B” Ark saving the country, but actually a cry for help.

“But to make this happen, the buy-to-let market needs assistance from the banks and it will only be ministerial pressure that will make that happen.”

It follows updated guidance from the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit which calls for 5% more new homes to be built a year, and that banks also need to start lending to developers again so that mothballed projects can resume. Read more

Evicted from the Family Home

Knightstone Housing Association’s nuisance prevention team took action against a man who was released from prison on 5 August and wanted to return to a property in Chard. The man is not a tenant of Knightstone but his long-term partner is. Knightstone took action because the street in question contains 19 girls under the age of 16. In a case in Yeovil County Court this week it saw an interim injunction, preventing the man returning to the property, extended until 29 September. Evidence in the case was heard this week and it was agreed by both parties that closing submissions will be given in writing to the judge by 1 September. Read More

Should a tenant be evicted because they have a boyfriend who is a reformed criminal? What’s your view?