Property Seminar and Landlords Networking Event on 9th March 2010

Don’t miss our property seminar and landlords networking meeting in London on the Evening of 9th March.
The meetings are small and informal and now only take place twice a year – we have a maximum of 25 guests and the meetings last for about 3 hours.
As usual we will have a special guest speaker plus you will have the chance to ask me lots of questions about residential property investment and letting.
And of course, you can network with other landlords too.
There are only eight places left, so hurry.
If you want to come, just email me at david@LettingFocus.com and then just turn up on the night. Cost is £30.
Location of venue here:
Next Property Investment Seminar and Networking Event

Gas Boiler Scheme

Landlords will know from previous posts how I complained about the lack of tax incentives for landlords to replace their old boilers and the general vagueness from HMRC on this matter (and specifically the vagueness on whether putting in a new boiler could be classed as an improvement, replacement or even a repair) which affects how it could be treated for tax purposes.
But some good news, at last.
Landlords should be aware of the boiler scrappage scheme which will cut the cots of replacing old boilers by £400.
The basic procedure seems to be as follows: 1. Obtain three written quotes for the job. 2. Ring the 'Act on CO2' helpline on 0800512012 3. They will send your voucher out approx 10 days after application. Vouchers are valid for 12 weeks. 4. Have the work carried out, then send a copy of the 'paid' invoice along with the voucher back to 'Act on CO2'. They will then send you a cheque for £400.00For full details please see this link: http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Home-improvements-and-products/Heating-and-hot-water/Boiler-scrappage-scheme

Inside Track Back - David Lawrenson Quoted in the FT

Claer Barratt in the FT two weeks back reports that less than two years after it collapsed into administration, the men behind the buy-to-let property club Inside Track are back, targeting UK investors with a new get-rich-quick property scheme.
Members are promised they can make "make £100,000+ in five minutes" she says, and a nationwide programme of seminars has begun to recruit investors eager to participate in the UK's next property boom.
Financial Times sister publication, “Investors Chronicle” went to one of these and found participants being encouraged to part with fees of more than £40,000 to acquire a portfolio of five UK properties from distressed developers, with IAP Global acting as the middleman.
I was quoted in the FT article too where I observed, “High-risk techniques are not used by the majority of responsible landlords, and it is therefore unfair that we might have to suffer increased regulation as the result of irresponsible activity from a small minority of greedy investors."
The full article is here (you need to register (for free, currently) to read the whole thing):
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/2673677a-11f6-11df-b6e3-00144feab49a.html?nclick_check=1

MORE ABOUT LETTINGFOCUS AND WHAT WE DO

LettingFocus.com is the home of landlord information.
Hello, I’m David Lawrenson.
I’ve been a landlord and property investor myself for over 25 years and am author of “Successful Property Letting” – the UK’s top selling commercially published property book for the last 3 years.
Primarily, I work as a consultant to banks, local authorities, social housing providers and other organisations – helping them with their landlord facing or buy to let product strategies and services.
I also write for property websites and am regularly quoted by the media.
I have written articles, guides and documents on letting property and property investing for numerous publications including The Independent, The Telegraph and for quality landlord and property websites.

Services for Private Landlords

For private landlords and other investors in the private rented sector, we do two London seminars each year.
We also find some spare time to help landlords and property investors by coaching them in how to make money in the private rented sector using ways that work, which are ethical, fair to tenants and which involve minimal risk to the investor.
We pride ourselves on giving independent unbiased buy to let advice on either a one to one mentoring / coaching basis or through our occasional group seminars.
With no links to property firms, developers or bridging loan providers we can advise on where and what type of property to buy for investment and when to buy it. We also show you how to manage tenants properly.

AT OUR WEBSITE LETTINGFOCUS.COM:

THE HOME PAGE OF THIS BLOG click here: Blog
THE HOME PAGE OF OUR MAIN SITE click here: LettingFocus Home Page
For general info on our CONSULTING click here: Consultancy and Seminars
ONE TO ONE PRIVATE CONSULTANCY click here: Property Mentoring
NEXT SEMINAR AND NETWORKING EVENT for Landlords and Property Investors:
Next Property Investment Seminar and Networking Event
We have OFFERS on a range of services and products for landlords too; click here including landlords insurance, tenant referencing, tenancy agreements and more: Services and Products for Landlords
TO READ CLIENT TESTIMONIALS – both commercial and private click here: Testimonials
BUY “SUCCESSFUL PROPERTY LETTING” click here: Buy the Book at Amazon plus anything else you fancy at Amazon.co.uk

To JOIN our Free QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER simply send an email to david@LettingFocus.com - Please note we WILL NOT send spam or sell our mailing list to advertisers!

See our TWITTER PAGE: http://twitter.com/LettingFocus

Copyright of Blog: David Lawrenson 2009. This blog is updated roughly once a week usually on a Monday or Tuesday.

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INSIDE TRACK STOP THEIR SEMINARS says LAWRENSON OF LETTINGFOCUS.COM

Well what a fascinating few weeks we have had.
Coming hot on the heels of Mortgage Express’s pull out of “next day re-mortgages” which has put a big hole in the potential ability to buy property “with no money down” (see last blog) we now have the demise of the property advice company Inside Track - who have pulled the plug on doing their seminars.
Well, this was kind of expected by property people in the business.
Inside Track traded on the premise that people could get rich quick in property by buying “discounted” new build flats.
Well, as we all know, new build flats in most areas have not been the best investment one could have made in property over the last few years (to put it mildly) - and defeat has been rather staring Inside Track in the face for quite a while now.
Still, for many years their property weekend seminars at a reported £2495 a pop (no, I’m not kidding!) were full to the gunnels with hopeful property investors and much money was made by Inside Track and their related companies for quite a long time.
But when mortgage lenders finally woke up from their slumbers and became reluctant to lend on often overpriced new build flats, Inside Track was always looking a bit doomed.
Plus they latterly did suffer from quite a bit of bad publicity when some of their disgruntled investors popped up on TV and in the press to say that the performance of the flats they had been sold had been poor.
As I have said many times before in this column, the wonder is that anyone paid so much to go on one of these seminars in the first place and I have to say, I still struggle to understand exactly why they did!
I guess it is partly it is the power of Inside Track’s admittedly brilliant marketing combined with some people’s belief that they can get rich by not actually doing much work. To see the latter effect in action just watch TV’s “The Real Hustle”!
As far as I can tell too, the attraction of Inside Track was that people wanted to learn all about it and then have a company say to them, “Here you are, we have found the property for you, so you don’t actually have to do any work.” (They had to shell out a few thousand more to actually be on the “inside track” to get these great deals)
If only life was so easy.
In fairness to Inside Track, their seminars were, I understand, quite informative but one investor I know well who went on one said they did not tell him anything that was not in a good property book.
ABOUT LETTINGFOCUS.COM and DAVID LAWRENSON
I’m David Lawrenson a buy to let and landlord expert from lettingfocus.com.
I’m the author of “Successful Property Letting - How to Make Money in Buy to Let” which for the last 2 years has been the UK’s top selling property title: buy the UK's top selling buy to let book
It is fully up to date with all the recent changes to tenancy deposit schemes, HMOs, licensing, capital gains taxes and it has new sections on buying property below market value. I’m an expert property investment speaker and a well known property investment blogger and I contribute to newspapers and a host of property websites, write a property investment blog, a number of columns in the press and I can provide advice for landlords
Check out where I was recently featured in the Daily Telegraph:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/24/cmbuy24.xml&page=1
http://propertyclub.telegraph.co.uk/Page/View/222
I also work as a consultant helping banks, building societies, housing associations and web portals with their buy to let and property products and services and am a regular speaker at property shows.
You can read more of my blog & find details of my networking, advice, property investors networking programme at my website.What’s unique about lettingfocus.com is that we offer independent property coaching because unlike most people in the buy to let and property “advice” business we are not linked to a property company, a developer, an agent or bridging loan financier and do not receive commissions from any of these sources.If a property investment is lousy – We’ll tell you straight and we will tell you all about buy to let and property investment - the good and the bad and we won’t make silly promises that you’ll become a millionaire overnight.
Copyright: David Lawrenson 2008. This blog is updated once a week. Permission must be sought before using the material in the blog.

Property Millionaire in Months - And other Lies and Nonsense

Here is a reality check.
You can do well in property if you follow some sound principles but you can’t become a millionaire almost overnight. (Well you can, but you will also have a mortgage for a million pounds too!)
And yet, lots of very expensive seminars tell you it’s possible.
This is utter nonsense.
It cannot be done without taking silly risks.

The only people getting rich here are the seminar givers themselves - who also make money by selling property, arranging finance, conveyancing work and so on, right down the line.
Of the people I know who have been to these expensive property firm seminars, the biggest beef they have – apart from the high fees - was that the property they bought could not be let out for anywhere near the rent the promoters claimed.
In many cases there was no one to rent them to at all.
In last weeks’ broadsheet papers, I see lots of journos are writing about overseas property.
Their editors like these stories because it’s a chance to print a pretty picture of a beach somewhere – and the writers like them because the article copy can be cut and pasted from the property developer’s blurb.
But too few of these writers ever have a good look at who is actually going to rent these new builds and for what rent.
As you may know, I try to tell it like it is – which is what I will be doing at my speeches, seminars and consultancy.

MORE ABOUT LETTINGFOCUS AND WHAT WE DO

LettingFocus.com is the home of landlord information.
Hello, I’m David Lawrenson.
I’ve been a landlord and property investor myself for over 25 years and am author of “Successful Property Letting” – the UK’s top selling commercially published property book for the last 3 years.
I help private landlord investors (see more on this below) but these days I’m mainly a consultant to banks, local authorities, social housing providers and other organisations – helping them with their landlord facing or buy to let product strategies and services.
I also write for property websites and am regularly quoted by the media.
I have written articles, guides and documents on letting property and property investing for numerous publications including The Independent, The Telegraph and for quality landlord and property websites.

Services for Private Landlords
For private landlords and other investors in the private rented sector, we do two London seminars each year.
We also find some spare time to help landlords and property investors by coaching them in how to make money in the private rented sector using ways that work, which are ethical, fair to tenants and which involve minimal risk to the investor.
We pride ourselves on giving independent unbiased buy to let advice on either a one to one mentoring / coaching basis or through our occasional group seminars.
With no links to property firms, developers or bridging loan providers we can advise on where and what type of property to buy for investment and when to buy it. We also show you how to manage tenants properly.

AT OUR WEBSITE LETTINGFOCUS.COM:

THE HOME PAGE OF THIS BLOG click here: Blog
THE HOME PAGE OF OUR MAIN SITE click here: LettingFocus Home Page
For general info on our CONSULTING click here: Consultancy and Seminars
ONE TO ONE PRIVATE CONSULTANCY click here: Property Mentoring
NEXT SEMINAR AND NETWORKING EVENT for Landlords and Property Investors:
Next Property Investment Seminar and Networking Event
We have OFFERS on a range of services and products for landlords too; click here including landlords insurance, tenant referencing, tenancy agreements and more: Services and Products for Landlords
TO READ CLIENT TESTIMONIALS – both commercial and private click here: Testimonials
BUY “SUCCESSFUL PROPERTY LETTING” click here: Buy the Book at Amazon plus anything else you fancy at Amazon.co.uk

To JOIN our Free QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER simply send an email to david@LettingFocus.com - Please note we WILL NOT send spam or sell our mailing list to advertisers!

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Copyright: David Lawrenson 2007