Here's how to show it... lettings agency Corporate Homes has launched a 2010 Best Landlord competition. If your landlord has been more than landlord (and - presumably - less than a lover) you can show your appreciation by going here and nominating him/her. The deadline is May 15, after which CH will pick 20 finalists, and the final poll will be thrown open to the public. (Presumably the reasons for nomination will be published, so if your landlord gave you his/her kidney, best mention it when you fill in the form.)
It's the work of Norwich-based property lawyer Tessa Shepperson, and it's aimed at "land owners of normal intelligence" who might baulk at paying a solicitor more money than it's costing in arrears to chase up a tenant that's outstayed their welcome and kick them to the curb. Her kit costs £250 plus VAT (but don't forge the £150 court issue fee and other procedural costs) and there's online support to walk clients through the process. More here.
I was out with the pickiest rental client in the world today, seeing a peach of a bachelor pad on the banks of the Thames. He was late of course, him being a very important person and me being a service provider. He liked it, he wants it. Now I just need to finalise "a few bits". New carpets are needed, obviously. The slippery roof terrace needs attention - it could be dangerous. The stairs are steep, a handrail is essential. "Someone could come a cropper." There"s not nearly enough storage, will need more. "I have winter & summer wardrobes to accommodate." Obviously we are not going to offer full asking price. Ten per cent discount on rent is our best offer. Terribly nice agent, wants to help but they have just received two full asking price offers since we viewed and with no conditions. The pickiest rental client in the world discovers that there's no messing about in today's rental market. Under-supply and over-demand for good quality rentals are making it a landlord's market and very possibly a buy-to-let dream.
Tracy Kellett runs leading buying agents BDI Homefinders. Follow her on Twitter, here.
They're, like, gumshoes for landlords. FinderMonkey finds your fleet-footed tenants if they're left without paying their rent or after damaging your property. They also work on a no-find-no-fee basis; £35 after a successful result. More here.
Kingston-upon-Thames comes in second, east London fourth (would like to see a breakdown of this), Uxbridge eighth and south east London ninth. More here.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders expects homeownership to continue to shrink in the coming years, as a shortage of supply prices increasing numbers out of the market and makes private sector renting the norm among the younger generation. It says the changing face of the property market won't simply be a reflection of practicalities, but will reflect changing expectations, too.
Our publisher looks at Foxtons latest (and final) move in its long-running legal chess game with the Office of Fair Trading, in his weekly guest column for Citywire.
More estate agent data, this time from Savills, looking at buy-to-let returns, and crowning east London as king of the quick returns. Barking & Dagenham, Havering and Newham were marked out for their big month-to-month yields. However, as any landlord worth their keys will tell you, month-to-month yields aren't everything, and traditional west and central London areas, where short-term yields aren't so impressive, might make better long term investments, with their more solid capital growth potential. More here.
An Association of Residential Lettings Agents suggests that, coming up fast on the frustrated vendors forced to let because they can't sell, is a whole new group of buyers forced to rent because they can't find the right property or the right mortgage.
And if stealing his food wasn't bad enough... they killed, dismembered and scattered him across two counties too. This is an extraordinarily sad and gruesome tale. The couple are apparently now arguing in court about who did the killing and who did the dismembering. See? Constant rows about something and nothing... that's what happens when you move in together.
In a very interesting article, Estate Agent Today points to worrying flaws in the Tenancy Deposit Scheme that could leave unwitting landlords open to legal liability. The problem arises when lettings agents sign up to a scheme, but hold the money in one of their own accounts, and then go into administration. In many cases, according to the article, the money isn't adequately ring-fenced either... it's registered with a scheme, but not audited... so agents have no quick way of knowing (without performing an audit) whether they're spending agency money or deposits. The buck eventually stops with the landlord. More here.
And in London you can chain it to lamppost, but they'll just nick the lamppost and you'll still need to buy a new one the next morning. The Independent reports on the London cyclists who demand better bike accommodation from their landlords.
A Boris Johnson production, the London Rent Map is an interesting interactive website using colour codes to show average rents for different sized properties in all the London neighbourhoods. I've played with it, and it looks good. Find it here.
An interesting Radio 5 show yesterday about what looks like a maintenance charge scandal involving some east London new build apartments close to the Olympic Village. Maintenance charges, paid by direct debit, are escalating wildly with neither notice nor obvious logic; services remain abysmal. One man had to call pest control himself and pay to rid the place of cockroaches, while £200 a month in service charges. Read more here, and scroll to the bottom to download the podcast.
We've written aboutPark Let before... they're the letting agents for car parking spaces. They've released figures of earnings by London's "driveway landlords" during the recession, and it's interesting reading.
Total earnings since April 2008: £1.398m
An average of £857 for each space let
Average monthly income in London £147.94
In Covent Garden and Piccadilly, the average was £296.92, peaking at £383
Here they are, the unthinking woman's idea of proper music... Blake. But baritone Stephen Bowman apparently hasn't thrown himself into the rock'n'roll lifestyle so competely he isn't still thinking about a bit of property investment. He's renting out his Notting Hill flat to foreign, short term tenants and - its seems - making a killing.
The Rat and Mouse has teamed up with Discount Letting to bring Rat and Mouse readers a very welcome 25% Christmas discount offer. An online letting agent, Discount Letting launched shortly before we did, back in 2004, and has forged partnerships with Rightmove, Primelocation, FindaProperty, PropertyFinder and Fish4Homes, guaranteeing impressive exposure for a cut-price fee.
And the fee's about to get even more cut-price, with this 25% discount offer for Rat and Mouse readers, meaning you could use Discount Letting to find your tenant for just £44.25. This offer is available until the end of 2009, so take advantage now by either visiting DiscountLetting.co.uk and using offer code 6899yedvr (or phoning 020 8697 0984.
Robert Jordan - ex-chief of the above and chairman of Jordan's lettings agency has published his first crime novel. It's called Time's Up For By To Let, and it features two murders, a fraud and an attempted blackmail. We want to know... where did he get his material? More here. Buy it from Amazon here.
Rents are likely to go up, is the message from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Remember the rise of the accidental landlord... the frustrated vendors left high and dry by a dead property market and forced to let their homes? Now - apparently - they've all rushed to sell while the market's revived. The net effect... that surplus of privately rented property has dried up into something like a shortage, and so rents are likely to go up in 2010.
Know someone unlawfully subletting their council house? Then you - yes you - could profit by as much as £500 by snitching on them to the council. It's apparently a growing problem in London, compounded in its seriousness by the current shortage in affordable accommodation in the city, with subletters charging as much as four times their own rent to a private tenant. Housing officers are also being told to keep a particularly close eye on larger properties in central multistorey blocks. According the Guardian, they might be making a few unannounced visits.
According to FindaProperty.com... it's just 0.1% between October and November, but it's the seventh consecutive rise. Across the year... rents are 2.5% down.
Ah. (But, then, imagine the hot dog smell and all the bird shit down the back of that interactive poll box.) My pet literally is a member of my family. (Then you need to re-think some of your sexual practices.)
According to LetsWithPets, the pro/anti-pet argument is pretty one-sided in the world of landlording, and so they're petitioning lettings agents to try to persuade landlords not to discriminate against tenants with fur (or feathers). More here.
A little plug for the Raise The Roof campaign. What's it about?
Since 1997 (i.e. under the current government) no change has been made to the income threshold of the Rent a Room Scheme - the threshold at present is £4,250 a year; the campaign would like to see this rise to £9,000 a year.
So? We'd all like to pay less tax, what makes landlords so special? The answer is that renting out a room is an oft-recommended route toward avoiding arrears and repossession, and yet 60% are above the annual threshold (and 91% in London). Some high-profile commentators are supporting the campaign. Visit it here.
It's an intriguing and compelling video interview... diagonal slants on their ties are all these two have in common. I've time for both views, although the interviewer sounds naive at times... it's only business.
If I could embed it, I would, but I can't, so watch it here.
I'd like to think that's something I'd have known about before signing on the line that's dotted. But then, I'd like to think that's something anybody would have made sure they'd known about before signing. Of course, within five years... the tenant was in arrears.
What big prize? An entire year's rent, courtesy of SpareRoom... only you're not answering your emails. It's possible that an overzealous spam filter is stopping you receiving any good, competition-related news. It could be you're just a klutz. Whatever... don't miss out on the opportunity to live rent-free for an entire year. If you know a Joanne who was recently searching for a spare room in Brixton... you might want to mention this. More here.
The Wilsons - the ex-school teachers who built up a £70m buy-to-let empire that pushed them into the Sunday Times Rich List - are cashing in. We reported that they were in the early stages of a sell-up less than a year ago, but that they intended to drop property gradually. Not so now... this time they'll put their 700 homes up for sale in one go. The Times reports that they've already had interest from investors interested in the entire portfolio. They're looking, specifically, for investors in order to offer some kind of continuity to their tenants.
Of course, there's still the prospect of rising unemployment pushing rental arrears up, which will affect the ability of buy-to-let landlords to pay their debts.
Sapna Bukhari apparently doesn't like travellers, but that's uncertain. What is certain is that she doesn't like the "travellers' who've pitched up camp in her five-bedroom Totteridge house and caused tens of thousands of pounds of damage (including a collapsed ceiling) and decorated the back garden with trash and cat crap. Back to Bukhari:
Almost a million homeowners are now renting a room out to a permanent boarder, according to research by Abbey Mortgages... that's triple the number this time last year. The average earnings from sharing your roof with a stranger isn't to be sneezed at either, weighing in at £393 a month (slightly above the Government's tax-free threshold). London homeowners are the most likely to take in a lodger (6%).
As some of you may know, this has been going on for some time. Foxtons and the Office of Fair Trading have been locking horns in the Court of Appeal regarding Foxton's T&Cs. Was it fair that they should charge landlords commissions when tenants decide to renew contracts, even though they've done no extra work? Was it fair they sales commission if a tenant decides to buy the property, even if they didn't formally introduce it as a potential sale? Other lettings agents have been watching the case closely, concerned that a precedent would cost them dearly in a renewal fees... because everybody does it. Finally... a judgement. No, Foxton's T&Cs weren't fair. But not due to their content, due to their wording. They simply weren't clear enough. Is charging commission on renewals unfair in itself? No. So there you have it. Everybody's a winnerloserwinnerloser whatever.
This may turn out to be useful... a teleseminar courtesy of Mary Waring Associates. Mary will ask solicitor James Picknell about your legal options, and you'll have the option of submitting your own questions before the event. It's technically free... although call charges of 5p per minute will apply to the 60 minute call. It's on Tuesday July 14, at 1pm. More here.
Mortgaged-up landlords seemed to be getting away with it during the first months of the crash... with repo-figures looking modest compared to domestic properties. Not any more. The latest Council of Mortgage Lenders figures show 1,700 buy-to-let properties repossessed in the first quarter of 2009. But factor in instances where the lender opts for appointing a receiver and continuing to collect rent and the figure leaps to 4,100. Part of the story is about a trend... lenders opting to hold onto and rent out properties rather than simply repossess them and chuck them onto the market at diminishing returns. Very sensible. The other part of the story is about the market finally catching up with landlords. Using the figures that include the appointment of a receiver of rent, and three times as many landlords were repossessed than private owners across the period.
Five per cent of Bradford & Bingley's mortgagees are in arrears. The bank's chairman has pointed the finger at buy--to-let landlords - traditionally served by the nationalised bank - for the worsening situation, which he expects will escalate through 2009
After nine consecutive falls, average UK rents remained unchanged in May, according to FindaProperty. The figure - £819 - remains, however, 5.5% down on the year.
In other landlording news, Property Hawk is urging landlords to write to their MPs demanding the Government abandon its mooted landlord licensing scheme.
Parking space letting agents Park Let have just compiled a 2009 League Table. At the top of the list Sloane Avenue, where a parking space can be let for £538 per month, adding up to £6,456 a year. Sounds like a lot? Then you clearly don't own a property with parking on Sloane Avenue. Anyway... here's the table:
A survey by financial/professional advice-search website Unbiased shows that a further five million Brits are considering or have considered becoming landlords. The figure brings together those letting rather than selling and those simply seeking a lodger to help make ends meet.
That's a long time to wait without any income, and the insult added to the injury is that errant tenants regularly trash the gaff, too, leaving thousands of pounds in repairs. Oddly, I wasn't aware of Landlord Action. They take the whole eviction process, from serving notice to kicking to the curb, off a landlord's hands, charging for each step separately. They're also involved in debt recovery. Clearly, a landlords can take all this on themselves, but I can see the sense in passing it to an organisation with lots of experience.
Letting licenses... everywhere. First, if you're a member of the Association of Residential Letting Agents then, from today, you're also licensed to let. The ARLA scheme demands members sign up to some promises.. including "continuing professional development", whatever that means, and the expected codes of practice and redress schemes. Full details, here. Meanwhile, the Government, short of a few bob right now, will discuss legislation forcing all residential landlords to pay for a £50 annual license. Landlords...
Celebrity property and Government stainage... it's turning into a sleazy day of property news. The latest features the former flat of Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell, who apparently charged the tax payer £100 a month in cleaning fees on his small Covent Garden flat, but managed to lose his deposit when his landlord arrived to find stains not just on the floor but up the walls too. That's correct, the Work and Pensions Secretary left damp patches. He also left a sink which might yet prove to have been the original breeding ground for swine flu. Irritatingly (some may say astonishingly) he also had a girlfriend, who appears to have shared the property at the taxpayers' expense.
An interesting report by the National Landlords Association highlights problems caused by the Local Housing Allowance, introduced a year ago, in which rent is paid to tenants instead of directly to private landlords. In a significant number of cases, the money's remaining with the tenant, leaving landlords struggling to pay mortgages and, in some instances, facing repossession. Research by the NLA shows that landlords are so unhappy with the new system, more than half are choosing to turn away LHA tenants, rather than run the risk of rental arrears and lengthy and costly actions to recover the money. More here.
The Conservatives have just launched a social housing initiative... see here. At its heart, a continuation of the modern Tories' right-wing take on the power to the people principle... social tenants rewarded for good behaviour by being awarded a stake in their properties (nothing patronising about that, obviously) and a trial of a "right to move" system, in which tenants can force council landlords to sell properties and buy new ones if they need to move to a different area. Exactly how this will work between different council-controlled areas and whether there'll be a cap on the number of times a tenant can demand a (costly) move are unclear.
Some of you may remember... Foxtons and the Office of Fair Trading are locked in dispute over a clause in the Foxtons letting contract (and - to be fair - just about every other lettings agents' contracts, too) demanding landlords pay a new commission to agents even when existing tenants simply renew. There's already been a little action, resulting in a Court of Appeal judgement that the final decision will apply to existing contracts as well as future ones. Now, we've a date for the final showdown... April 27. It will be interesting... a contentious issue with good arguments on both sides, and the potential to seriously affect agents all over London.
It's called The London Central Residential Recovery Fund, and - as described above - it's a strange bird-fish, flying-bottom-feeding creature, which will renovate and let out bottom-of-the-market properties in top-of-the-market neighbourhoods. Minimum investment: £50,000, and it's targeting a 15% return.
If this is correct, the Rat and Mouse wouldn't be surprised if it amounts to something of a redistribution... away from over-stretched amateur landlords and toward more established and cash-rich bargain hunters with well-bedded portfolios.
In a bid to persuade the credit crunched to see their storage facilities as a wise investment, The Big Yellow Self Storage Company has done some interesting if unscientific data analysis. Apparently, more than a third of us have a junk room... a room filled with stuff we probably should have thrown away. My theory is that you can spot that room on visiting somebody within minutes. It's the room with the door closed. Big Yellow combines this statistic with the finding that 31% of us would - if we could - rent out a room to make a bit of extra cash, subtracts the cost of storage from the income earned by renting out the junk room and extrapolates Brits could bring in an extra £38bn a year by moving the crap out and a lodger in.
Your lodger may vary, rental income may go down as well as up, safe if taken as directed, if symptoms persist...
That's not a third of tenants, note, but a third of landlords, many of whom will have multiple properties. The figure - a snapshot of the market - comes courtesy of the National Landlords Association, and is being quotedwidely as a sign of wider current difficulties. It isn't - however - being quoted with any sense of context. I've tried to find an equivalent figure for March 2008, but failed (if someone from the NLA knows what that might be, please do leave a comment). However, I have managed to find an equivalent figure for early December 2008. The March 2009 figures are 37% currently experiencing tenants in arrears. The 8 December 08 figure? Er, 37%.
Over at PropertyHawk's Landlord and BTL Blog, there's plenty. It's earned by the story of a 25-year-old landlord with a 12-month community order, 150 hours of community service and court costs after changing the locks on a tenant who had failed to pay any rent for four months, while his own mortgage repayments piled up.
There's a little more to this than meets the eye. The landlord did have some legal recourse, but failed to fill out the right forms to force possession. Still, interesting case.
Here's a good one. James Harvard and Janice Gledhill own a caravan park in Essex. One of their tenants - Robert Taylor - had a dispute with them about the rent, so he did what any reasonable tenant would do under the circumstances, he destroyed their house and two cars with a 14-tonne JCB. Now, from prison, he's suing them for selling his caravan.
According to research by the Letting Protection Service - a company offering referencing and insurance products to landlords - it's only a matter of time before a prospective tenant tries to pull a fast one. And don't assume you're safe just because you like the look of her crinkly old church-goer's smile and well-fitting dentures.
In a poll of 10,000 landlords, a surprising 21 per cent said that they had received a fake reference from a prospective tenant aged 60 and over. A total of 43 per cent had problems with faked references from prospective tenants aged over 50.
Karen Menzies is upset with Foxtons, after the "single professional female" they moved into her Cathcart Road flat turned out to be a Russian prostitute who damaged the property, failed to pay any rent and took drugs. Menzies's complaint is that Foxtons provided a (Foxtons) reference for the tenant, despite the fact she apparently owed a previous landlord £6,000 in unpaid rent and damages. She did, however, hand over the keys to the woman before the previous landord's references arrived... something that a lot of people might consider unwise, Foxtons-reference or not. Foxtons have also offered to contribute to the legal costs involved in evicting the woman... something you don't see everyday. It will be interesting to learn the outcome of this one. More here.
The idea is that it will be particularly suitable in the case of buy-to-let mortgages that have gone wrong. The lender will not only keep the existing tenant, but look to extend tenancies, rather than try to flog the property in a declining market.
Understandably angry, I'd say. She's used the Merton Council housing solutions system to find a tenant for her house. A mother of five moved in, caused £2,000 of damage, then refused to leave after the 12 month tenancy agreement expired, and caused a further £8,000 of damage before being evicted. To make matters worse, the local council assisted the tenant in fighting the eviction. Read more here.
According to Channel 4 news, the UK's new breed of credit crunch battling amateur landlords who have taken in lodgers to pay the mortgage might also represent a new breed of unknowingly uninsured.
The study also revealed up to three million homeowners who currently have a lodger could have an invalid home insurance policy - because they failed to notify their insurer about their housemate.
Something tells me PropertyHawk's not from 'round here... but if he can find some of those cheap Hoxton or Shoreditch properties, I'm all-ears. (Not literally, obviously.)
That's it... I'm going to grab myself a cup of tragedy and get myself some of that homeless action. Where could I expect to end up? According to the piece, there's a family in a £1.5m Kensington mews house, rented from a dentist for £1,125 a week.
An independent report, commissioned by the former housing minister Caroline Flint will be presented to her replacement Margaret Beckett today. The Rugg Review will look at residential rentals, and is thought to contain proposals for ways local government can work with private landlords for social housing, plus tax incentives and other ways to grow private letting.
Buying and selling property might be so 2007, but renting it while you wait-and-see whether you can get a mortgage/find a buyer [delete as appropriate] is bigger than ever. Upad is one of a number of businesses launching to capitalise on the changing face of the UK property market. It's a rental-specific search engine, which matches renters (directly) with landlords. Search criteria include parking, broadband, transport links (via the slightly unsavory-sounding "spec up your pad" menu). Landlords have to pay to list their properties, but they pay once, and the property remains in the database until it finds a tenant. Upad also claim to have deals in place with Gumtree, Nestoria, Zoomf and others. So far, it's London-only, and beta, but worth a look.
I am sitting in our £5million chateau in Megeve in the Alps. I will sue anyone who says that Imagine Homes is in financial difficulty. We are 20 per cent owned by HBoS and we have huge profits that have yet to materialise.’
Remember these guys? They're the two former maths teachers who serviced the kids twice... first they taught them how to work out annual rental expenditure plus deposit, then they rented them property. Now - after buying more than 900 properties, sometimes as many as several a day - they're starting to sell. Not surprisingly, it's the cost of credit that's the deciding factor. The couple's mortgage total?
In the interview, they state that they're not behind on their payments. Nor do they intend to crush the Ashford market by unloading everything at once. Still, can't be comforting reading for any Ashford locals struggling to sell homes right now.
The BBC have uncovered a new (as far as I've heard) and clever fraud aimed at conning London tenants out of thousands of pounds... (as opposed to simply the London lettings market, which is, of course, an old fraud aimed etc). Prospective tenants drawn to unusually cheap lettings advertised in Gumtree are being asked to prove their ability to pay by transferring money, via Western Union, to a friend of their choice, and then sending a scan of the receipt to the "landlord". It's a clever scam... there's always a reason why the property's going so cheap, and the fact that nobody's asking for actual money lulls the prospective tenant into a false sense of security. The scammer then prints off the scanned receipt, takes it to a Western Union office, pretends to be the intended recipient, and takes the money. Gumtree tell the BBC that they're working to combatting the fraud, but that's going to be an uphill battle. What the Rat and Mouse finds disturbing, is how apparently easy it is to scam Western Union. In the meantime, if it looks to good to be true, that's because it is.
***UPDATE*** A useful link courtesy of a reader... thanks, Jim!
Head over to the Telegraph for a few pictures illustrating a Slough tenant's offbeat lifestyle. "Britain's dirtiest flat"... reads the headline. What about "Britain's unhealthiest tenant"? When he vacated the flat, the landlord found £5,000-worth of discarded burger cartons, a cigarette butt mountain on the side of the sink and nicotine dripping from the walls. Guess what? Single male.
You can always count on Bradford & Bingley for some extraordinary news. The latest... they've moved into the rent-collecting racket... picking up the cash directly from tenants, in order to combat arrears in its buy-to-let mortgage business. So if you're late on your rent, and there's a couple of guys outside in bowler hats...
Back in February, we reported on a test case between the Office of Fair Trading and Foxtons, concerning the legality of letting agents' renewal fees... either money for old rope or fair fees for finding an ideal tenant, depending on whether you're landlord or agency. In London they're fairly standard. I've recently paid some. There was a time when you could negotiate a discount... but it's getting harder. The case is currently in limbo, which would make you think that , as things stand, landlords are legally obliged to pay the fee they agreed in the contract, until/unless informed otherwise by the High Court. Not according to a judge at Edmonton County Court, who appears to be refusing to enforce the law until it's proved reasonable. Isn't that the law, backwards?
The Telegraph goes in search of The Let Set... the let-happy landlords and landladies letting their own homes to rent another. It's the only way to move, apparently. Except in a lot of cases... it really is the only way to move.
They can according to a report by Reading University's Professor Michael Ball, for (and here's where we're required to control our skepticism) the Association of Residential Letting Agents.
Depending on who you believe, rents are either being driven up by thousands of would-be buyers putting purchase plans on hold while they sit out the turbulence; or driven down by thousands of would-be vendors, unable or unwilling to sell homes in the current climate, and so flooding the rental market with properties. Hmm. Here's the latest chatter, courtesy of the Gumtree ads database... London rents soaring by 8% a year, the strongest demand in a decade.
To combat the crunch, Bovey’s arm of the business plans to launch a service whereby it will guarantee to a vendor that it will pay a buyer’s mortgage for five years as long as they stump up 20% equity.
Guarantee to a vendor? Is anyone else having trouble understanding this? While I go away and try to puzzle it out, you have a great weekend. And remember, things really could be worse.
As you're probably aware, traffic costs, and right here is where the Rat and Mouse continues paying. Which is why we're encouraging advertisers who feel they might have something to gain from seeing their brand served up to homeowners, renters, landlords, movers, media shakers on around 4,000 pages a day. As part of the deal, you'll get a heartfelt thank you each and every week, which is why, tonight, we're saying thanks to...
... LandlordNanny, an innovative, hi-tech, but simple-to-use, drag-and-drop online organiser for everything a landlord needs to remember, whether managing a single property or a giant portfolio. As well as providing a useful directory of recommended letting-sector professionals (accountants, mortgage providers, HIPs providers etc), they're a registered letting agent, which means that customers get to advertise properties on the large property portals, including Primelocation.com and Propertyfinder.com. Use of the basic service is free. Upgrade to a premium account (£99.95, but £49.95 during the current introductory offer) and you get access to legal documents, automated invoicing, web-based accounting software and more. In other words, the kind of things that would cost a great deal more than £99.95 if you handed them over to a lettings agent.
Would the landlords – over-mortgaged into negative equity – start dumping properties on the market en masse, precipitating the crash of all crashes while they squealed like pigs drowning in a rough sea of schadenfreude? Plenty of tenants, sections of the media, and simply greed-repulsed bystanders have been lining up to wave at them on their way down. But, as yet, there’s little sign of a storm. Or is there?
According to Katie Razzall, a rise in defaulting buy-to-let landlords is being followed by a rise in evicted tenants. It's obvious, really... although clearly not too obvious too get in the way of the schadenfreude outbursts from the usual suspects.
As a symbol of an era now passed, Inside Track does pretty well. A property investment company and seminar school that promised property riches and a live on easy street, it taught buy-to-let landlording and off-plan property flipping to a generation of get-rich-quick clients who knew only a rising market. To be fair, some of its early customers might have done very well. But those days are over. As is Inside Track, which went into administration this morning. And according to this, today brings a bit of a double whammy for Inside Track boss Jim Moore:
In 2004, his marriage to Kim broke up. The couple have since been arguing over a settlement. Today, a court will announce that the former Mrs Moore has been awarded £15m.
There's an interesting piece over at Bloomberg. It doesn't tell us anything startlingly new: people got greedy and over-extended themselves, now they're in the shit, the inner-city apartment builders who relied on them are in the shit, and the lenders and surveyors and various other facilitators who walked the tightrope between stupid optimism and fraud might turn out to be in the shit, too, soon if people like Richard Lee get their way. Lee leveraged £150,000 up to £5.3m of property in - it appears - all the worst places. All his property's now owned by the bank, after losing 40% in value.
Lee and 85 other investors plan to sue the developers, lenders, appraisers and solicitors involved in their property transactions. Lee's attorney, Hammad Ahmad of Max Gold Partnership in Hull, England, said the lawsuit will probably be filed in about two months.
Read it and weep/laugh (delete, depending on your personal view) here.
There's an interesting piece in today's Telegraph about a clause in buy-to-let mortgages by Bradford & Bingley and Birmingham Midshires, which demands a consistently maximum 85% loan-to-value rate on all loans (checked - via a new valuation - every time a landlord remortgages). The unhappy result during a period of falling prices is that landlords could find themselves being asked to produce cash "top-ups" where a property's value has fallen drastically enough to no longer meet security requirements. Yes, it's a cowardly clause. Yes, lots of landlords have agreed to it. The Telegraph fears it could be the final straw that forces landlords to dump properties back on the market. More here.
I’ve shown properties at 6am and helped other clients by collecting them from their offices at midnight and settling them into their new homes.
Blimey. He's over here, telling the Times's Career & Jobs supplement what it takes to succeed in the high-end London lettings business.
One of the great things about this job is that I’m not stuck in the office. I spend most of the day out and about, whether that’s getting new keys cut, organising a gas safety certificate, meeting clients or doing something deeply unglamorous – but obviously important – such as unclogging a lavatory. I’ll do whatever it takes to facilitate things for my clients.
It's not a place I generally frequent, but ToryDiary at ConservativeHome is worth a glance this morning, regarding a Freedom of Information request about cleaning costs at Admiralty House. The story is that it cost £3,320 to clean the place after John Prescott had occupied it. What the hell had he been doing in there? Did it involve Rizlas and alcopops? Was he made to forfeit his deposit? More here.
... by refusing loans? New figures from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors show buy-to-let mortgages shrinking, the availability of new rental properties slowing, demand and yields growing. Gross yields in the last quarter of 2007 rose at their fastest in two years. And it's possibly due (partly) to this that the big btl fire sale hasn't happened... with the percentage of landlords selling their properties after a tenancy ends dropping to 4.6% from 6.5%. More here.
According to this, young professionals - disinclined to buy when we might be sitting at the peak of a house price roller coaster - are leading an unprecedented run on London rental property. Agents are seeing as much as a 25% rise in interest in lettings, compared with this time last year, with new occupants paying as much as 20% more, and renewals coming in 5% to 10% higher.
It's a test case. The complaint is that the Foxtons letting contract with landlords stipulates that it can continue to take commission from a landlord after the first term has ended if a tenant renews, and that it can take commission for the full term even if a landlord decides to end an agreement and sell halfway through a tenancy. It seems to me that Foxtons is taking the heat here for a practise that is not uncommon. One "high-profile" complainant, quoted in the Telegraph, is Blue Peter's Konnie Huq, landlady on two flats in west London:
She said on Tuesday that the OFT's decision to take Foxtons to the High Court was "a victory for landlords for everywhere" [sic].
The expected cheering in the streets didn't follow.
2007 saw btl mortgages grow by almost a quarter, to 1,038,000. The growth, however, really reflects the first six months of the year, before landlords began to go blue and sweat. Here, This Is Money catches Birmingham Midshires in a not-the-whole-truth moment claiming that landlords made an average return of 16% in 2007, more than twice what they could have made by tracking the Footsie. But...
... the report excludes the costs of letting fees and mortgage interest costs, both of which would substantially eat into investors' returns.
More interesting are Council of Mortgage Lenders figures showing that arrears in the btl sector are less of a problem than in the general mortgage market.
Reports of the return of sell-to-rent began to appear toward the end of 2007, and over the weekend they made front page property news in the Observer. According to Rightmove research, the practice - selling, hopefully, at the top, renting for a while while prices drop, and then either buying back in further up the ladder or taking a profit - is picking up pace. The Rat and Mouse can only applaud bubble-sitters' courage. Few financial decisions are as risky, or real-world calculations as tricky... taking in the cost of storage, rents (which can go up and down), the costs of selling and buying, the value of time, inconvenience and risk, all multiplied by however long it might take for prices to start to drop and then assuming it's possible to buy in just before everybody else does. The chances of getting all this right are low, and the Rat and Mouse has seen shrewd people brought down by this tactic. Exciting, though. Best of luck.
Reports of the return of sell-to-rent began to appear toward the end of 2007, and over the weekend they made front page property news in the Observer. According to Rightmove Findaproperty (apologies, see comments below) research, the practice - selling, hopefully, at the top, renting for a while while prices drop, and then either buying back in further up the ladder or taking a profit - is picking up pace. The Rat and Mouse can only applaud bubble-sitters' courage. Few financial decisions are as risky, or real-world calculations as tricky... taking in the cost of storage, rents (which can go up and down), the costs of selling and buying, the value of time, inconvenience and risk, all multiplied by however long it might take for prices to start to drop and then assuming it's possible to buy in just before everybody else does. The chances of getting all this right are low, and the Rat and Mouse has seen shrewd people brought down by this tactic. Exciting, though. Best of luck.
Buy-to-let's not dead, according to GMTV in association with homebuying and facelift experts BuyAssociation. It's a radio show, but you can download the MP3 by pressing this.
The Telegraphtakes a peak inside Chiswick's Oddfellows Hall... a Victorian building, built by the masons, and featuring four entrances and four addresses. It's been used as a wedding venue and an artist's studio, before the current owner - an estate agent/property developer - snapped it up for £385,000 in 2002 (I know, I know) and gave it a radically modern re-fit. Now it's all plasma screen in the bathroom ceiling, under-floor heating and cinema rooms. What's it doing in the Telegraph? It's for rent... £3,900 a month, from Featherstone Leigh. I can't find Japanese water feature nor wet room of it on the FL website, but luckily you can see more pictures here.
Thanks to the Rat and Mouse reader who sent me the results of an interesting Facebook survey of a thousand London tenants by the Deposit Protection Service.... an independent service which aims to make the negotiation over and return of deposits quicker and easier. Apparently, 36% claimed to have never had their deposits returned, and another 37% had to wait more than a month to see their money. Which is a problem when they need upwards of £750 in order to secure their new place. So where are they getting the cash? According to the survey, 33% turn to their parents. It looks as if the Deposit Protection Scheme - on its own - isn't enough.
Against an oncoming torrent of negative data, and a growing awareness that twitchy landlords may well have the house price crash button under their fingertips, beleaguered buy-to-let mortgage specialist Paragon digs in its heels and, undaunted by my mixed metaphor, tells the world the buy-to-let sector has never had it so good. Apparently, returns (the data includes house sales) are up 15.5% on the year, rents are up 10.2% and one in four landlords are looking to buy. Fighting talk.
... there's some great news for landlords. According to Association of Residential Letting Agents Data, tenant levels are at a five year high, driven by high(er) interest rates, a softening in the sales market and immigration. In the south-east, 57% describe seeing demand outstripping supply.
And (younger) landlords will be pleased to read that the UK population is predicted to double by 2081. These new Government figures combine longevity, fertility and immigration projections to paint a rosy picture for owners of flats in south-west London. More here.
... it's "a rich man's game". That's according to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, who point out the need to put down increased deposits and higher interest rates. The average deposit now stands at £65,000, up by a multiple of more than five since 2002.
Props to CityWire for this very interesting report from the auctions. Repossessions appeared to be order of the day - but aren't they always? People over-stretch themselves even in a bull market. What's more shocking is how little was selling... even at a substantial discount on 2005 prices. CityWire's Richard Lander makes the assumption these are buy-to-lets, an entirely sensible assumption given that so many appear to be new-build apartments of one or two bedrooms. He goes on to interpret this as a sign of the buy-to-let market imploding. The Rat and Mouse might interpret the experience slightly differently. New builds - especially in 2005 - were in many cases hilariously overpriced. If the auction was a sign of any kind of chicken coming home to roost, it's as likely to be purchasers of so-called off-plan newbuild bargains as buy-to-let landlords per se wearing the feathers.
Here's an interesting piece on Reuters, predicting a buy-to-let-induced disaster. If Northern Rock's the pin, it says, buy-to-let's the bubble. The story offers plenty of common sense, comparing earnings to interest payments on buy-to-let and offering the scenario that capital growth doesn't continue to offset any difference. The story's told with the that undercurrent of triumphalism that pops up in the press occasionally... as if it has never occurred to the writer that everyone - evil coyote landlords, honest families alike - will suffer either directly or indirectly from a serious prolapse in the housing market. What's crucial to know is the proportion of buy-to-let property that was bought-to-let long enough ago to absorb the RICS's (much quoted this morning) estimates of a (4-to-1) 10% crash in the London market or a (much more likely) year of zero growth, and how many landlords are on 100% mortgages. I don't know. Do you?
En masse, UK landlords are cashing in on the booming markets for holiday homes. Basically, they are bailing out of the UK and hitting the foreign markets as quickly as they can.
In a report based on in-house research, Tim Warrington, of buy-to-let property portal Landlord.co.uk, warns that 14,000 landlords registered with the website are currently in the process of selling... some in order to finance properties abroad, others to take profits. A proportion - he claims - have failed to account for capital gains tax, an astonishing admission amateurishness in the sector.
According to figures by the Association of Rental Letting Agents the average London weekly rent now stands at £525... and it appears the current uncertainty about house prices is actually lending landlords a helping hand. As long as rents continue to rise (and - of course - prices fail to crash) buy-to-letters are, so the Royal Institute for Chartered Surveyors say, quids-in, with rents rising at their fastest ever recorded rate, tenants clamouring for property and rents themselves at an all-time high.
Monevator.com is an interesting new personal finance blog with a healthy distrust of the finance industry and an emphasis on personal responsibility. Here, you'll find an examination of the relative costs of buying versus renting in the W6 neighbourhood. It's a good read, and the end result suggests there's little value in buying. However, variables that are harder to quantify and calculate include the freedom to turn a house into home exactly the way you want, and - of course - the market. Certainly, it's fair to say residential properties boom days are likely to be (ought to be) over for the immediate future. But mortgages last longer than the immediate future... and although house price crashes and negative equity have been realities, it's difficult to find a full mortgage term in which properties haven't been a sound investment.
It's the data we've all been waiting for... buy-to-let mortgage broker The Money Centre's Landlords' Chuckle Index, measuring the chuckle level of a nation's landlords. The headlines? Seventy-three per cent of UK landlords are reporting a high or very high level of chuckleness, compared to 71% last time. That means landlords are 2% happier.
The auction catalogue included half-a-dozen flats barely two years old at Henry Laver Court, part of a Barratt development in the heart of Colchester, Britain's oldest town and a popular commuter zone for City workers. The flats sold, with incentives, for between £224,995 and £249,995 last year. Their reserve price at the auction last week was £140,000; five sold for £145,000, the other for £155,000. Local estate agents have similar flats in the development on the market for £180,000.
The Telegraph has an interesting story about novice buy-to-let landlords getting their fingers burnt by on new-builds - falling for tempting "Stamp Duty-paid" and "guaranteed-rental-income-for-two-years" offers on off-plan apartments. The Rat and Mouse has written before about the dangers of buying new-builds off-plan - and covered instances of flippers in a flap. Don't believe everything the developer tells you (obviously). New-builds are notoriously hard to value. And the evidence was all around when Paul Farrow, of the Telegraph, visited an auction in Covent Garden.
Two very interesting snippets, by Graham Norwood, writing in the Sunday Times. There is an Olympic Effect, but it's not what some people were hoping for. Estate agents are apparently blaming The Games for a drop-off in interest in east London. And - despite all the buy-to-let hateration - we need landlords as much as first-time buyers need properties. According to Hometrack, renters need another 600,000 landlords by 2021.
In the Sunday Times, Rosie Millard introduces us to Paul Ainsworth-Lord... a young man (38) with a posh name and 39 houses worth £5m in a small town in Lancashire... plus a local newspaper shop which he uses to sniff out available properties before they reach estate agents. He even once wrote to an entire village, asking if he could buy their homes and rent them back to them. Ouch.
So property price increases in Prime Central London might have taken a hit, but the same can't be said for rental growth which, according to Knight Frank, reached its highest point in eight years... 12.2% June-to-June. If you're a landlord, how did you do in the postcode lottery? Here are the winning numbers... SW1, SW3, NW1, SW10, W8, and the bonus postcode is W14. This month's jackpot isn't as high as you might expect. Although house prices in these postcodes have slipped slightly in the last quarter, they've still, historically, outstripped rental growth, meaning that in a lot of cases yields aren't actually that impressive. If you own the property, though, and you bought it in time... who cares?
Almost regardless of social class, home ownership has become the ultimate national objective.
So, rich or poor, black or white, property unites us all. Right? No, that's not exactly what the New Statesman's Edmund Conway is driving at. He's writing about the homes-shortage, and how it's affecting every sector of society. It's an interesting article, pointing out how it was relatively rare for Brits to own their homes until the post-WW2 homes for heroes drive... when tax incentives for homeownership got us into the mess we're in right now. Conway points out how recent governments have quietly shifted the incentives back toward the landlords, resulting in a growing and tangible level of resentment from reluctant tenants. Read more, here.
According to this in the Times, many of London's council flat and housing association tenants are pocketing a fortune by illegally subletting their flats to the gullible at market rates. The writer herself was caught up in a sublet fiasco, when a housing association official turned up at her Crouch End apartment.
According to research by Alliance & Leicester Mortgages, 56% of landlords hold onto some of their tenants' deposit after they move out. The top reasons? Property damage (26%), missed payments (25%), cleaning costs (22%). Of course, there's a compulsory Tenant Deposit Scheme in operation now to ensure that everything's fair. Except 63% of landlords in the south east and eastern England claim to have never heard of it.
Let's just revisit those figures before signing off... one in four tenants fall behind on their rent. Am I the only person surprised by this?
Here's Madaleine, sorted - thanks to a number of buy-to-lets which, she says, have released her from working 12 hour days and ended her retirement worries. She's remortgaged her own home, picked up a few other buy-to-let mortgages along the way, and speaks very highly of The Money Centre, who appear to have advised her to change deals pretty regularly. Hmm. In fact, The Money Centre get so much coverage, I was looking for the word "advertorial" along the top of the copy. I couldn't find it. No mention from Madaleine of how well-placed she is to cover her multiple mortgages if interest rates reach 6% or more.
1. DO set aside money for the unexpected - such as a void period in rent or a boiler breaking down.
2. DO keep an open mind about what and where to buy. Talk to as many experienced landlords as you can and learn from their mistakes and successes.
3. DO think carefully before buying a property with maintenance issues. Money you save buying it may be lost by it being empty while you’re renovating or improving the property.
4. DON’T indulge your own taste in design and style of the interior or exterior of the property, as it’ll restrict its appeal. Keep it neutral and safe.
5. DO be cautious about buying properties off-plan. You need to stick to a specific timeframe in order to maximise your return and developers may not guarantee a finish date.
6. DO beware of companies offering cheap conveyancing. If a few pounds saved on conveyancing means a slow service you may lose the property.
7. DON’T skimp by finishing your buy-to-let property with second-hand furnishings, fixtures and fittings. If they don’t meet health and safety regulations you could find yourself in trouble.
8. DO be aware of the specialist insurance you need. Standard domestic insurance policies do not cover many of the eventualities that landlords face.
9. DO think carefully before leaving the management of your property to relatives or friends. Buy-to-let properties need experienced management to maintain tenant occupancy and maximise returns.
10. DON’T abuse the relationship you have with your tenants. Give plenty of notice before you visit and make sure maintenance problems are addressed quickly. Tenants are an essential part of your business plan and the relationship needs to be managed in a professional way.
Lee Grandin, of Landlord Mortgages, tells Lorna Bourke, of Citywire, why he believes landlords might be on the point of raising rents by as much as 20%:
According to Lee Grandin, managing director of Landlord Mortgages, the largest buy-to-let broker in the UK, many property investors who have been on two- and three-year fixed rates will be coming back to the market to remortgage.
‘This move is likely to force them to increase the rent they charge as the base rate has increased from 4% to 5.25% over this time period,’ Grandin says.
He believes landlords will pass on the increased mortgage interest costs to tenants and rents could increase by as much as 20% over the coming year. ‘The market is buoyant and in some areas there is real competition among consumers for good rental accommodation. This trend is likely to mean that landlords can pass on the increased cost of financing to their tenants,’ he says.
The estate agents, however, tend to disagree. They point out - very sensibly - that it's during times like these that landlords fear voids, and might actually end up preferring renewals or competing with each other to attracts tenants.
Yesterday, I was contacted by an animator with a link to one of the most beautiful and intelligent and involving short animations I've ever seen. Go here for a sorry tale of tenant-landlord relations. And you might want to explore the rest of the site - because Jerry's a genius.
According to Hamptons' Lesley Cairns, the effect of extortionate London house prices on would-be first-time buyers has seeped so far through into rents that Londoners are now in danger of being priced out of the rental market too:
"For example, a recent applicant initially seeking a property in South Kensington for £550 per week has ended up taking a property for £1,000 per week - almost double their original budget."
Guy de Havillande - the man who buys-to-let on a £100m scale through his company de Havillande Holdings - is, according to the Sunday Telegraph, having problems with his mortgage repayments. De Havillande owns luxury property in some of London's most expensive neighbourhoods... and has owned some very sweet locations for a number of years, so it's hard to work out how he could be in any kind of trouble. Yet his lenders are blabbing to the press with an eagerness the Rat and Mouse finds surprising (aren't there rules about privacy that stops this kind of thing?):
Derbyshire Building Society told The Sunday Telegraph: "Obviously we are looking at the matter at the moment - it's with our lawyers."
Skipton Building Society said: "We are in discussions with De Havillande about his properties."
A source at one building society said: "We have a couple of million of his £100m portfolio. Until Christmas he [De Havillande] had been a very regular payer, then payments just stopped all of a sudden."
What is it with these guys? When they launched, as Opromark, a couple of years ago, it coincided with RICS figures suggesting the market was toppling over into the abyss. Since then, Opromark has become The Property Investment Market. The idea remains the same... you can invest as little as £1 in shares in a range of managed buy-to-let properties, exposing yourself [not as dirty as it sounds] to capital appreciation [perhaps not as likely as it sounds] and a little income. TPIM was in the news on Saturday with the announcement that it's expecting approval as a regulated alternative trading system... which will apparently throw it open to foreign investors, too. Just in time for this.
Hot on the heels of yesterday's comments by Hampton's comes Cluttons with a slightly different view of the market. Yes, London's seeing record level rental value growth. But no - it's not about demand... it's about landlord expectations. The basic numbers are: rents up 13.8% in the 12 months to March 2007, the first time in 20 years that number's crept into the double figures. Supply is a little low - but then, according to Clutton's - so is demand.
According to Hamptons International, there's such demand for rentals in London that one-bedroom flats are being let within hours, there's bidding among potential tenants, and rents have increased across the capital by 18%. The drivers? A glut of first-time buyers unable to get on the ladder and corporate tenants being relocated to London.
The swelling ranks of struggling, failing first-time buyers could be among the swelling ranks of buy-to-let landlords profiting from the swelling ranks of struggling,failing first-time buyers, according to research by Mortgage Trust. More than a quarter of new investers with a single buy-to-let property are aged between 26 and 35. That's 16% of all buy-to-let landlords with up to three properties.
It's 10 Park Street - pool, five bedrooms, an adjoining two-bedroom mews house and, oh yeah, use of the Rolls Royce Phantom thrown in. A Russian oligarch is apparently due to move in soon, but in the meantime, landlord Paul Davies doesn't think he's asking too much:
"We're close to a number of hotels and the top suites there are more much smaller than this and they sell for about £5,000 to £6,000 a day."
There's a nice little tussle over at the BBC website between the Centre for Economic and Business Research's Jonathan Said and Chartered Financial Planner Jonathan Davis, who's described as "a spokesman for www.HousePriceCrash.co.uk". Said falls back on the old supply-and-demand argument (also, see comments here). Davis cites the 900,000 buy-to-let mortgages as evidence that demand is over-inflated and could very quickly transform into supply. Are landlords bailing? Not yet.
According to a report by the Centre For Future Studies, commissioned by Alliance & Leicester, a combination of a growing traditional rental market and an increasing social acceptability will see buy-to-let grow by 40% over the next ten years. There's also be an increase (from 21%) in the number of landlords making the equivalent of the national wage from their holdings. More here.
According to this in the Guardian, Gumtree is claiming that it's seen a 38% rise in ads placed by homeowners looking to rent out a room. Of course, that could be due to growth at Gumtree (and it would be interesting to know how those figures stack up with other advertising on the site), but the Guardian puts it down to stretched finances and increasing interest rates, and quotes research by the website supporting their view.
Figures from the Association of Residential Lettings Agents show how London landlords favour older properties that might need work, whereas outside of the capital, new-builds are the preferred route for buy-to-lets.
The FT reports on a new RICS survey showing (or at least, suggesting... RICS surveys are anecdotal in nature) tenant demand rising at its fastest in nine years. The theory is that household income's increasing enough for tenants to start to demand larger homes, but not enough to bridge the affordability gap between renting and buying. As an explanation, I'm not sure I buy that. Anyway, more here.
New Council Of Mortgage Lenders figures reveal a 48% increase in volume (and a 57% increase in value) in buy-to-let mortgages during 2006. That's 330,000 loans, worth £38.4 billion. The CML points to further growth, too, citing rising rents and falling void periods. More here.
Not all of them, judging by the illustrations, but we feel a little sympathy... it must feel expensive at the moment. She's featured in a slightly breathless New York Times piece that marvels at London property prices, and compares Ms Eklund's £3,208 monthly rent (for a two-bedroom flat in Kensington's Observatory Gardens) to the slightly lower figure she'd be paying for a Manhattan equivalent with obsequious doorman. Also, we're apparently "pickier", counting every last scratch on the wall and broken glass in the inventory.
In a Sun money editorial that manages to honk of advertorial Tom Harvey writes that innovative estate agency The Step is offering to pay the 15% deposit on buy-to-let purchases. How do they do it? Well, much of their property is bought off-plan and at considerable discount (a proportion of which, I guess, is passed on as the deposit). We wonder whether buyers are tied into any particular lender or deal?
Somebody's done some complex statistical research and come to the conclusion that 2007 will the year when home-renting becomes the preferred option. Apparently:
“There used to be a stigma attached to renting your home. People would see you as a second class citizen who couldn’t afford to buy or didn’t have the ambition to progress in life."
You speak for yourself, mate. I've never thought that. Anyway, rising prices, greater job mobility and improved regulation will mean, apparently, that from now on, it's cooler to rent. And who performed the research? Oh. Belvoir Lettings.
Apparently, that's the thinking behind the new property investors who are buying starter homes and leaving them empty rather than risking wear, tear and damage by allowing tenants to actually, well, live in them.
Research by the magazine Inside Housing found that up to 50 per cent of new flats in Leeds were being left empty, 40 per cent in Salford and 10 to 15 per cent in East London. The trend extends across most English cities, with 24 per cent of new homes being left empty in Manchester, 16 per cent in Nottingham and a large proportion in Newcastle and Liverpool.
If these - as the Telegraph article claims - are buy-to-let properties... I'd like to know how the owners are funding the mortgages.
Hello Mr and Mrs Wilson, ex-maths teachers and Ashford, Kent's uber-landlords, with 700 houses, and a new one purchased every week. They were featured in Saturday's Guardian, in a piece that had to quoteestate agents anonymously (they were fearful of annoying the powerful couple). The Wilsons buy blocks of property in new developments off-plan, and then rent them out, making life extremely difficult for first-time buyers. I wonder why, when it's the same buyers doing this it's hard to swallow. And yet - from the perspective the ftb - it doesn't matter whether it's one landlord or twenty, the effect is the same. Possibly because the Wilsons are approaching billionaire status. Anyway, read the piece here.
Research by Birmingham Midshires suggests that although being priced out of a purchase isn't the only reason why a renter rents, it remains the primary one. Nationally, 67% rent because they can't afford to buy. In London, the figure's 73%. Which suggests that home-owning is still seen as the most successful outcome. And yet 26% of UK residents are renting their homes.
It's Zurich's landlord insurance claims Top err Nine (spot the corporation that needs a lesson in PR... top ten, it's always ten. What? You don't have a tenth? So? Just make it up. At that end of the list, it could be anything... killer bugs, inflammable bananas... take your pick):
[via The Move Channel]
And she's not alone, it seems. According to this in the Times, tenants need to check more carefully than ever their landlords can afford the mortgage. It tells the tale of Melanie, a mother of five, who found herself and her kids out on the street, evicted by Mortgage Express, after her landlord had fallen behind with payments.
... Has finally been arrested, after a stand-off in which he turned the gas on and threatened to blow his flat sky-high in response to the council's decision to evict him. Sudbury House was evacuated this morning, and the Southside shopping centre closed. More here.
New licensing rules designed to curb the activities of rogue landlords are resulting in a mass withdrawal from the multiple occupancy sector and the early signs of a shortage of affordable housing. Apparently, the RICS report that almost a third of their letting agents report sales of properties as a response, and 15% report landlords altering the internal structure of their buildings to accommodate three tenants or less.
If you want to keep a tenant fast, give them wifi and Sky, says Chris Partridge, in today's Independent. You won't get more rent, but you'll get more interest, and you'll be ready for when wifi and satellite TV are considered basic amenities.
If you can tear yourselves away from Big Brother, how about Tenants From Hell, tonight, at 9pm, on ITV1? Including the tenants who turned their flat into a cannabis factory, and the tenants who... er... murdered their elderly landlady. Which definitely wasn't in the contract. Meanwhile, click over to the landlords/tenants page at Channel 4 4homes to be greeted by the truly nasty photo caption below.
Before we get too excited, this comes courtesy of buy-to-let lenders Paragon. What's odd is that Paragon's figures suggest rising property prices but stable rentals. In other words, falling yields. But a Paragon spokesperson puts us right:
"Investors are dispassionate purchasers and buy in response to growing tenant demand, rather than in the expectation of short term capital appreciation."
As an American who grew up in London, I've always wanted to find a way to live there again. Since I can't get a permit to work there, I was fantasizing about investing in a London flat now and living there for retirement.
I'd have to let it during that time, but the ideal would be to let it for the summer months and have the option of visiting there during the off-season (assuming one could charge more during the summer to cover costs the rest of the year).
So one question is whether anyone knows if there's much of a market for such lettings? Part of me also thinks it wouldn't be fair to neighbors to have short-term tenants coming and going, or that the wear-and-tear on the flat would be too much.
The other piece of this is just the difficulty of looking for flats from overseas and trying to buy one during a short visit (a week or two). In the U.S., buyers have their own agents who can look out for their interests in a transaction with the seller and their agent. I've read about some agencies in London that charge a percent or two of the price to advise a buyer.
Does anyone have experience with those? Are they worth it?
This would be a pretty low-budget investment by London standards, too-- maybe 200,000-250,000 sterling.
I've concerns about the hassle of continual short-term lets, and I think he really needs a friend based full time in the UK, to help him understand the finer differentiations between one neighborhood and another.
If you've proper experience in this area and something helpful to add, please either comment below, or visit the Rat and Mouse forum - where you'll find his post right here.
... at your expense? According to new figures, 48% of the victims of identity theft who know their fraudsters, know them because they rent them a property. You see, your tenants pick up your old mail and - what the hell - open it and read it. And before you know it they're using your credit card to pay for their lapdances. More here.
In London, UCB found that buy-to-let represents up to 75% of some mortgage brokers business.
It's a survey by UCB Home Loans, reported in the FT, and it reveals a booming buy-to-let market. At Rat and Mouse HQ, we're still watching those economic indicators very carefully, and testing the breeze for interest rate hikes...
That's according to a survey by Paragon Mortgages, quoted here. Not only that... by boosting the economy they've also helped keep interest rates down. The message - that times are good and getting better for landlords - is reiterated by Nationwide, who say the market's also being supported by first-time buyers renting instead of purchasing.
Buying too many properties too close together, apparently. But, then, isn't the cardinal rule... stick to locations you know like the back of your hand?
We've been rebuked - and with some justification - by the Property Editor of the Sunday Telegraph for getting a little petty in our interpretation of one of her writers. Regular readers will know that the Sunday Telegraph carries one of our favourite property sections, which is why we're taking this like a rat, not a mouse, and printing her response:
Just a quick comment about the "logic" to the Sunday Telegraph renting story you highlighted recently. I agree it should have been explained better - what a sharp eye the rat has! But can I refer you to this coming Sunday's special spring market watch. London prices ARE enjoying a revival - largely at the top end of the market fuelled by healthy bonuses - but there are already fears in the industry that this is not sustainable. Houses are still very expensive and one must question where the upward pressure on prices is going to come from. Therefore, you may find that a number of canny homeowners are selling now and renting - waiting for things to cool down again before returning to the market.
The Telegraph carries an interesting piece about reasons to rent, and why the lettings market is doing well. I'm confused, however, by this logic:
And for London homeowners, who are seeing the early signs of a revival, selling up while the going's good and renting is an increasingly attractive option.
It all started yesterday with Paragon mortgages' suspiciously upbeat assessment of the buy-to-let market. Everything was, apparently, up. Capital gains - up. Yields - up. Rents - up. Our friends at FirstRung (okay, I say friends, but...) were the first to point out some possible inconsistencies at the heart of the Paragon release. Like... were Paragon really saying that buy-to-let house prices had risen a whole 3.65% in the last quarter - a wildly optimistic view of the housing market? And if prices had risen 3.65%, and rental income had grown a mere 3.33%, how could this mean that yields were also up, or that buy-to-let was a more attractive prospect now than three months ago? All good points, although we suspect that Paragon would counter by saying this merely proves rents are due to rise. All this came in the wake of CML figures reporting a record number of buy-to-let loans in the second half of 2005... a 39% increase on the previous six months. Today, ThisIsMoney weighed in with a piece counting the pitfalls (lots) of getting involved in buy-to-let right now... you might choose the wrong location, you might over-stretch, you might get a bad tenant. Yeah - and you might catch bird flu. In most of these instances you're factoring in either bad luck or avoidable human error. Finally, FindAProperty joined in with a piece about letting to students. Apparently, the halcyon days of squeezing a few cardboard partition walls into a studio flat and advertising it as a six-bedroom shared house are long gone. Students demand penthouses - and the new investment is in purpose-built blocks. FindAProperty lists some ways of getting into the modern student letting racket. Over the coming months we'll be keeping a close eye on the buy-to-let market, so stay tuned.
The property price index situation might lack clarity right now, but it's all good for landlords. Whether it's as a result of buyers choosing to rent in an uncertain market, or first-time-buyers still simply priced out is unclear. But, according to the latest RICS quarterly survey, tenants are returning to the market (the biggest increase in demand in four-and-a-half years), and rents are up (for flats, it's again the biggest increase in four-and-a-half years). More, here.
According to David Burrows, writing for Reuters. Buy-to-let rental yields were flat in 2005, he says, so what to do about it? He talks to Ben Robinson, from fund manager New Star, who reminds us that commercial and residential property follow different gameplans, and if you're already exposed to the residential sector (you own the house in which you live), you might be wise to avoid the world of six or 12 month leases and maintenance responsibilities and expose yourself to a little commercial sector goodness, from a fund with 10/15 year leases and blue chip clients. Other ways to get some property action without being a landlord include stock flotations (see Rightmove's flotation) and spread betting against the index. Read the full piece here.
Own up. Because, if you are, you might want to attend this drinks party (alright, conference) organised by Wandsworth Council. There'll be advice, they say, about what the council can do to help you (energy efficiency grants, assistance letting the property etc) and a Q&A. It's on Monday, February 20. We're not suggesting it's going to be fabulous, but it might be useful.
... before getting a mortgage, that is. The wave of valuation skepticism that resulted in a couple of lenders closing the door on new-builds continues, with both the CML and RICS warning that buy-to-let landlords can expect to face a few more hurdles - particularly regarding so-called "incentives" (cash-backs on new-builds for example) - before being granted a mortgage. Let's hope investors realise they're being done a favour - greater transparency and scrutiny is in everyone's best interests. Haven't they enough on their plates? More, here.
It's a horror story over at the Telegraph... one in which model tenant Andrew winds up £1,300 out-of-pocket because the landlady of his Camberwell flat has reached the end of the line with her mortgage arrears. It's one more thing to check, but the only sensible lesson to learn from this story is: ask to see your landlord's mortgage statement before signing anything. Although it would be nice if letting agents checked this out as a matter of process. Wouldn't it? Full story, here.
And I always thought Americans were scared of lawsuits. The story goes like this... a blogger put up this very detailed and well-illustrated post about exactly why he felt he was being screwed by the Trembickys - the owners of his rented Brooklyn apartment. And then it turned out it wasn't just him. Soon, the Trembicky-complaints were flooding in... so many, in fact, he decided it was time to launch a whole new blog. Trembicky.com isn't just about the Trembickys. It's a place for all disgruntled American tenants to vent, and it makes for some great reading.
Writing as a new landlord, my attention was drawn to this sobering story from the Daily Mail. It's a tale of Mr Hawthorn (the kind of man who'd give up his job to go abroad and do charity work) and his tenant (the kind of man who'd steal Mr Hawthorn's identity and use it to remortgage the house for £200,000 just days after moving in).
Buy-to-let lender The Mortgage Works have announced they're no longer prepared to lend against new-builds. Why not? It sounds as if they've been stung by would-be over-geared landlords accepting a high, initial price from developers for purposes of a valuation, and then striking a deal after the mortgage is in place. In any case, with new-builds coming out of our ears, it's too difficult, they say, to achieve a realistic or accurate valuation until the properties have been introduced to the market and allowed to settle. Full story, here. From what we understand, the new rule applies not just to The Mortgage Works, but all lenders in the Portman Group. It's a buy-to-let story, but there's a lesson here for all of us.
There are some new October figures, courtesy of buy-to-let lenders Paragon Mortgages, and posted, usefully, here (at the time of writing, Paragon haven't made them available on their own website yet). They show return on initial investment (yield plus capital appreciation minus the cost of servicing the mortgage) at 13.28% in London, which is just over a percent higher than the national average. Once again, the terrace house has outperformed flats, semis and detached homes, and provides the highest rental yields.
Props to CityWire for 
So property price increases in Prime Central London 
Own up. Because, if you are, you might want to attend 
... before getting a mortgage, that is. The wave of valuation skepticism that resulted in a couple of lenders 
And I always thought Americans were scared of lawsuits. The story goes like this... a blogger put up 
