Landlord fined for failing to maintain Rental HMO

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A Carmarthenshire landlord has been fined £2,000 for failing to comply with the terms of an improvement notice served on his HMO. After several complaints from tenants, council environmental health officers carried out a full inspection of the property under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System. They found numerous problems with the accommodation, including issues with fire safety, damp, mould growth, issues with heating and food safety.

The landlord was then served with an improvement notice ordering him to bring the property up to scratch. He failed to comply with this and the work was not completed.

Balasubramanian Pulendrathasan was convicted at Llanelli Magistrates Court in his absence of an offence contrary to Section 30 of the Housing Act 2004. He was fined £2,000 and order to pay costs of £1,160.

Councillor Hugh Evans said that the landlord “showed a total disregard for the local authority and for the health safety and wellbeing of his tenants.”

We’ve heard a lot about HMOs this week, with John Healey’s proposals to “tackle concerns” about them. There’s a whole other blog post on the “war on landlords” coming up shortly, but this story just shows how unnecessary that war is. The legislation to tackle “rogue landlords” is there already. Those who don’t maintain their properties to a decent standard, those who don’t look after their tenants propery, those who damage the industry for the rest of us – there are ways of dealing with them, as this case has shown. We don’t need more legislation – we need better enforcement.

Via Residential Landlord http://www.residentiallandlord.co.uk/news2151.html

James Davis - Upad

A guest post by James Davis, the CEO of Upad.co.uk, the UK’s leading online lettings agent. Upad lists your rental property on 100+ sites and portals – including Rightmove – for just £59: tenant guaranteed. Follow the Upad blog and on Twitter for rental industry news and tips for landlords on making the most of your properties

Tags: Housing, Housing Act 2004, Local government, Property, Rent
Posted in Property on March 4th, 2010 | No Comments »

What References do I Need to Rent a London Flat?

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What references will my landlord want?

Before you move into a new property, it’s almost certain that your landlord will want some form of reference to check that you’re who you say you are , and that you’re not going to move in and immediately stop paying rent.

If you’re prepared for this and have your referees primed, you’ll stand a better chance of moving into your desirable property sooner rather than never. Let’s take a look at what you’re likely to be asked for.

Proof of ID

This is basic but essential. Have a passport or driving licence, plus a utility bill or bank statement to prove your current address. Make copies that you can give to your landlord: it shows you’re organised and business-like – and will definitely help you stand out as a prospective great tenant!

Employers’ reference

This is the other essential. Your landlord will want to know that you can afford the rent (i.e. you’re being paid enough) and that you have a stable job that you’re not about to lose.

Do your homework. Know who in your organisation should be contacted, and tell them you’ll be needing a reference shortly. Or better still, ask them to write you an open reference confirming your employment status and salary. You can still expect your landlord to contact your employer to verify it, but it might save a day or two if you need to move in quickly.

Previous landlord

Your previous landlord can – I hope – confirm that you pay your rent on time and haven’t trashed the place. The problem here is likely to come if the reason that you’re moving is that your current landlord is a shark who never completes repairs, or they’re uncontactable. You might consider offering your last-but-one landlord as a referee (best to ask them first) instead – though of course you’ll need to explain to your new landlord why you’re doing this.

Financial checks

If your prospective landlord wants a bank reference, be prepared for some delays

banks take a long time to complete references, and are understandably vague

Have 6 months of bank statements handy if you need to prove your financial status.

Expect credit checks – if there are problems, admit them up front and explain them. It’s better to say “I had a business that went under; I’m sorting things out”, than hope no one notices a CCJ or three.

Guarantors

In some circumstances, landlords may prefer to have a guarantor rather than a reference. A guarantor is someone who signs to say that they will pay your rent if you don’t: often a parent if you’re in student accommodation, for example. I know some landlords of HMOs who say they will only deal with guarantors: they typically rent to people who have little employment or renting history, and to have someone with their own home stand surety is, they say, easier.

Whatever references your landlord asks for, be open with them if you can’t provide them. It’s much better to be honest and offer an alternative than have a friend pretend to be your boss. Most landlords have taken plenty of references in the past and will see through that in minutes – meaning you’ve lost the property you wanted.

James Davis - Upad

Tags: Financial Services, Flats, Landlord, Property, Rent, Rental, Studios
Posted in Renting on March 3rd, 2010 | No Comments »

Embarrassing Moments Renting a London Flat

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Reading a Letting Agent describing her embarrassment at slamming a door on the fingers of a prospective tenant, and then walking into the flat to see on the walls framed full frontal nude pictures of the current tenants, reminded me of my own flat hunting funny and embarrassing moment. We had arrived at the flat promptly at 10:00 on a Saturday where we were met by the agent. Ringing the bell the agent was a little flummoxed when the tenant opened the door in dressing gown, clearly having just rolled out of bed. She assured us it was fine to view as arranged and asked the agent to conduct the viewing for her, but said it was fine to come in the bedroom where she was going back to bed. The agent took us round the flat, which was actually very nice, but a little spoilt by wedding photos absolutely everywhere – framed on the walls, free standing on the coffee table, mousemats, coasters, mugs, whatever it was there she was with her new bridegroom.

Finally as our last port of call in the viewing we knocked on the bedroom door and walked in. As expected she was back in bed and dozing. The big surprise was – the man in bed with her wasn’t the man in all the wedding photos!

So what has been your funniest viewing?

Tags: Add new tag, Fun, Hunting, Property, Rent
Posted in General, Renting on February 4th, 2010 | No Comments »

Tenants – £50 for your Thoughts

Rigsby

We’ve heard a lot in recent months from various politicians proposing schemes to weed out dodgy landlords. Most commonly they’re suggesting landlord registration schemes or licencing, but another idea that’s being talked about is to let tenants leave eBay-style feedback for their landlord on a special website, that would tell other prospective tenants what kind of treatment they’re in for.

Upad.co.uk, the UK’s largest online lettings agent, wants to hear from tenants whether you like this idea or not. Would it help you decide whether you’re going to get decent treatment from your landlord, or is it too open to abuse from problem tenants who’ve been – quite unreasonably! – asked to do something like pay the rent?

It’s a short survey and shouldn’t take longer than a couple of minutes. You can find it at

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LD7M9LV

and you can also be entered into a draw to win £50 of M&S vouchers. The survey closes on Friday so get your answers in ASAP.

Tags: Landlord, Property, Rent
Posted in Property on February 3rd, 2010 | No Comments »

Smart Floors in London Flats

Richard Greenland

I wrote about floor coverings specific to bathroom floors last week, this week I’m covering polished boards, engineered wood, carpet tiles and underfloor heating.

Sanded and varnished floorboards remain popular with landlords, even though they’re at least 50% more expensive than carpet and underlay. They’re easy to clean, and with three coats of durable floor varnish should last much longer than carpets. Oil-based polyurethane is more durable than acrylic, but very pungent while drying, which it does slowly. Water-based acrylic dries quickly enough to get three coats on in a day, and without the smell, but is only suited to light-traffic, dry areas (not bathrooms). If the varnish wears thin, you can just sand and varnish them again! This second sanding is a quick job if it’s confined to worn areas.

Unless they’re insulated underneath with something draftproof (fibreglass or multi-foil film, not closed-cell phenolic foam like Xtratherm or Celotex), it’s vital to caulk the gaps between boards, or your tenants will be cold. Matching-colour caulk will do, or clear silicone.

sanded floor with skirting and door off

In the picture I’ve sanded the floor with the skirting boards and door off (you can see them upright in the corners), to get right into the corners. Also it’s easier to paint skirtings on a bench than on the floor, and avoids paint marks on the varnished boards. Correct sequencing of work saves time and raises quality.

‘Engineered wood’ is for high-end rentals only. It resembles solid wood but clicks together tightly like laminate. It has a surface of decorative wood such as oak a few mm thick, backed by plywood. Like solid wood, if worn it can be sanded and varnished again. If it gets wet it’ll swell and the joints will blow.

I’m not a fan of underfloor heating as electric heating isn’t very green. It needs to be insulated thoroughly to avoid massive heat loss to the soil below. To avoid problems, it must be taken right to the edges of the floor. If there are cool and warm spots, differences in thermal expansion can cause tiles to crack. Joints in laminates and wooden floors may open due to the desiccating effect of being heated.

Carpet tiles are intended for office or commercial spaces, but are great for typical student lets or other low-end rentals. They’re very hard-wearing and can be replaced square by square if fouled or left with tell-tale iron-shaped scorch marks.

Next week I’ll write about central heating, boilers and insulation.

Tags: Blog, floors, Maintenance, Property, rich
Posted in Property on February 1st, 2010 | No Comments »

Half Price for Landords Looking to Rent to London Students

Student numbers are growing at 15 times the rate of new supply in London

This has prompted fund manager Inspired Assets to sponsor a conference on Student Accommodation in order to help landlords, investors, accountants, lawyers, developers or fund managers:

Discover the opportunities in student and young professional accommodation
Find out the accommodation needs of the next generation: types of accommodation, locations, specification…
Keep up with the significant trends affecting the sector
Learn how to tailor your approach to satisfy demand
Get up to speed with creative, modern solutions that combine property, investment, social media and networking
Make some superb contacts

The event offers guest speaker Robert Weaver, Head of Residential at Invista Real Estate Management, the largest UK listed real estate fund management group. The Group manages both commercial and residential property across the UK, Continental Europe and Asia-Pacific, and has a total of £5.3bn assets under management.

The Event is:

Thursday, February 11, 2010 from 6:30 PM – 10:30 PM (GMT)

The May Fair Hotel
Stratton Street
W1J 8LT London
United Kingdom

If you book it at http://inspired.eventbrite.com/ and use the discount code 4WALLS you can get one ticket half price.

Tags: Add new tag, Investing, Investment, Investment management, Property, Real estate
Posted in Property on January 30th, 2010 | No Comments »

Pimlico – what’s in a name? £1,151.75!

Old Pimlico Map

£1,151.75 – I don’t think it’d buy you enough real estate to sit down on in modern Pimlico, but in 1623 it was King James I’s asking price for the freehold of the entire Manor of Ebury – the area of London that became modern day Pimlico.

By 1666, the year of the Great Fire of London, Ebury was owned by one-year old heiress Mary Davies. Her estate was collectively known as The Five Fields, and included not only Pimlico, but most of what is now Belgravia, Knightsbridge and Mayfair. Mary was married at the age of twelve to Sir Thomas Grosvenor. At that time, the Grosvenors were a rather obscure Cheshire family, but their management of Mary’s property brought them enormous wealth. In 1874 Queen Victoria made Hugh Grosvenor, Sir Thomas’ great-great-great-grandson, a Duke, and his great-grandson, the current Duke of Westminster, is one of the richest men in Britain. All thanks to Pimlico.

The origin of the name Pimlico is a bit more obscure. Most writers are agreed that Pimlico was originally a person, most likely a publican famed for his nut-brown ale. Some cite his first name as Ben, but not much more seems to be known about him, except that he probably gave his name to the Pimlico Pleasure Gardens, which were situated in what is now Bacchus Walk. Hoxton Street itself was at one time known as Pimlico Path, and there is still a Pimlico Walk in the area.

In the late 1600s and early 1700s, Ebury was also “a district of public gardens much frequented on holidays” at that time, and it seems to have borrowed the name Pimlico from the Hoxton gardens. Perhaps the word became a general one for pleasure gardens, just as Hoover’s name has become used for any vacuum cleaner or Biro’s name for any ballpoint pen today.

There are Australian Pimlicos in Queensland and New South Wales, and American Pimlicos in South Carolina and Baltimore, Maryland. County Laois in Ireland has a Pimlico and so does South Africa.

James Davis - Upad

Tags: Ebury, Great Fire of London, History, London, Pimlico, Property, Real estate
Posted in London on January 27th, 2010 | No Comments »

Flat out to keep bathroom floors flat in London flats!

Richard Greenland

Last week I wrote about carpets and laminate floors. I said I’d write about floors for bathrooms this week, and waterproof laminate flooring in particular, so here goes.

I never fit MDF based laminate floor in bathrooms. I’ve seen products which claim to be suitable for bathrooms, made of very highly compressed MDF with a high resin content. These products are still not truly waterproof, the moisture always gets into the joints somehow, curls up the edges and they don’t stay flat. There’s a new product called Aquastep, made by Quickstep, which isn’t a laminate in the true sense as it’s entirely plastic, so impervious to water. I fitted a room with it recently for a client and it goes down quite well. It’s expensive at about £25 a square metre, so at that price, it’s worth considering fitting tiles instead.

Tiles are probably the best option for durability in the bathroom if you can afford them. They can’t be fixed straight to a wooden floor, but need a backing board of a minimum 12mm plywood, with lots of screws holding it down to stabilise the existing floor, which also needs to be screwed down thoroughly to the joists beneath. I recommend using powdered adhesive, not ready-mixed, if the tiles are likely to remain wet for any length of time. Ready-mixed can soften if left wet for too long. With the extra work and materials involved, tiles will probably cost a bit more than the Aquastep flooring all-in, unless you can get a very cheap deal on the tiles, but tiles laid properly are incredibly durable. Be careful not to fit tiles which are slippery when wet!

Engineered wood is a bad idea in bathrooms for the same reason as laminate – water gets into the joints and curls them up at the edges.

natural wood floor surprisingly resilient in bathroom

Oddly enough, solid wood varnished tongue and groove boards perform better than you might think. They swell a bit, but the pre-existing gaps between the boards disguise this so they still look OK.

Vinyl is of course far and away the cheapest alternative. It’s impervious to water, quick and easy to fit, and can be surprisingly durable IF your tenants aren’t too hard on it. It’ll tear with hard use or if heavy objects, such as washing machines, are dropped or dragged along it. Personally I favour vinyl in kitchens and bathrooms because it’s sooooo much cheaper than anything else and I trust my tenants to be sensible, but this is down to the discretion of the landlord.

That about raps it up for this week. Ill write about polished boards, engineered wood and underfloor heating over the next week or two.

Tags: bathroom, Blog, floor, Maintenance, Property, rich
Posted in Property on January 25th, 2010 | No Comments »

50 Years of Housing

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Yesterday the various newspapers published articles about UK Housing over the last 50 years. Although there are minor differences based on each publications political bias and readership, essentially most reports were pretty similar. Personally I like to use the power of the internet to track down the original source of articles, and read that myself. If you would like to do this yourself with this report it can be downloaded from Lloyds Bank and here are my own observations, which I hope you find different to the average journalistic view.

House Prices to Fall

Property is a great investment, but it’s important to buy the right property, it’s not when but where that counts.

Whilst in Real Terms property is appreciating at a very impressive 2.7% p.a. (a widely reported statistic) when in 1979 – 1989 prices shot ahead of this long term average (they rose 61%) it was followed by a decade when prices fell 22%. This pattern has been repeated with prices rising 62% during 1999 – 2009 and so if history repeats itself we might well expect prices during 2009 – 2019 to fall at least 20%.

As always location is more important than timing. As an example – if you got your timing as bad as you could get it and bought in 1989 instead of 1999 then by 2009 your gain would be only 40% instead of 62%. However regional differences in the price changes are much more dramatic – over 100% between London (229%) and Scotland (120%) over the period 1969 – 2009.

Social Trends

People are now living on their own.

Since 1971 Single Parents have risen 400% !!!! Single people are “only” up 75%.

In 1971 these two categories formed 21% of households – less than a third of the 70% for married couples, today they are equal in number to married couples (42%)

Tags: Add new tag, London, Politics, Property, Scotland
Posted in Property on January 21st, 2010 | 1 Comment »

Earn extra Income from your Central London Flat with Parking

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Parking in Central London (particularly (Pimlico and Westminster) is much in demand and agent Park Let has 10,000 recession-savvy landlords on its books who earn an average monthly rental income of £120 from their unused parking spaces. A homeowner in Pimlico nets £597 per month for their space, after paying park Let’s commission.

Park Let started renting parking spaces in 2004 and has a waiting list of over 7,000 people looking for parking spaces to rent, and just like a flat letting agent it’s free to advertise your space, and they charge 15% commission of the monthly rental fee. They handle all enquires from prospective tenants, arrange viewings and negotiate terms, produce a professionally drafted contract (the most popular version being on a rolling monthly basis where you can choose to let your space 24 hrs a day, either 5 days (Monday to Friday) or 7 days a week). The tenant is issued with a unique, clearly visible parking permit, for recognition and control.

Pimlico Flats only have on street parking, but if you have a parking space it looks as if you can rent it out for more than we rent some of our flats!

Tags: Add new tag, Central London, Landlord, Parking, Property, Renting
Posted in Property on January 20th, 2010 | No Comments »

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Landlord fined for failing to maintain Rental HMO

What References do I Need to Rent a London Flat?

What references will my landlord want?

Proof of ID

Employers’ reference

Previous landlord

Financial checks

Guarantors

Embarrassing Moments Renting a London Flat

Tenants – £50 for your Thoughts

Smart Floors in London Flats

Half Price for Landords Looking to Rent to London Students

Student numbers are growing at 15 times the rate of new supply in London

Pimlico – what’s in a name? £1,151.75!

Flat out to keep bathroom floors flat in London flats!

50 Years of Housing

House Prices to Fall

Social Trends

Earn extra Income from your Central London Flat with Parking

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