ABOUT LETTINGFOCUS.COM

I'm David Lawrenson, owner of property consultancy, LettingFocus.com.

I'm author of the UK's highest selling property and buy to let book as well as fitting in being a landlord, a buy to let expert and media commentator, property writer, public speaker and landlord blogger.

However, our main work is now our consultancy. We help a range of organisations - from banks to local authorities - develop or improve their buy to let and landlord facing products and services. We also help them develop their strategy and improve their marketing towards the private rented sector.

In addition to our work with organisations, I also find a little time to help private investors and landlords as a property advisor and mentor.

BACKGROUND IN PROPERTY INVESTMENT

I first let out property way back in the mid 1980s just after finishing my MBA at City University (now Cass) Business School. (Before that I went to schools in the Wirral and Dover and my first degree was at Cardiff University.)

In my early days as a property investor, I mixed being a landlord with working as a project manager and management consultant in financial services for leading banks.

But my love of property investing finally won the day and in September 2002 I gave up the day job to concentrate on building and managing my property portfolio full time.

As a landlord and property investor I made some mistakes -this despite having had read quite a few books on the subject. So, I put down some ideas of my own which eventually led to a publisher offering me a contract to write a new book, which I called, "Successful Property Letting - How to Make Money in Buy to Let."

ABOUT "SUCCESSFUL PROPERTY LETTING"

"Successful Property Letting" came out in September 2005 and in 3 months sold out its first print run and established itself as the fastest selling book on property in the UK. Today it has sold over 30,000 copies and has been the UK's highest selling property title for 4 years running.

Since then, I have been frequently quoted as a buy to let expert in all the UK national papers and leading websites and have appeared on radio and television.

I also became a regular speaker on property matters at trade shows and for private companies and associations in the buy to let field.

These days I work mostly for organisations in both public and private sectors who wish to launch, develop or improve their products and services for landlords and property investors.

Click here to listen to a fun early podcast at the Motley Fool website with David Kuo!

CRITIC OF POOR PRACTICES

I am well known as a critic of bad buy to let advisors and I warned many years ago that inner city flats were being sold to amateur buy to let investors at well above their long term value. I was also one of the first to warn of the dangers inherent in Sale and Rent Back and later, in Property Lease Options.

I am also critical of the buy to let lending policies and processes of many banks and building societies which too often fail to meet customers needs and I am unimpressed by councils expensive forays into setting up "local letting agencies" to attract private rented sector supply.

In our consultancy work we help many such organisations to do it better.

Read our testimonials to see what organisations and private landlords say about us.

If you are a landlord, check our Landlords Resources page for great deals for landlords and email me to join our Quarterly Newsletter.

Whether you are from the media, an organisation seeking consulting help or if you are just a private individual needing advice, please get in touch.

Readers may want to also look at our Articles pages and read our Private Rented Sector Blog for more up to date news and comment.

If you have a site about landlords or property investment you can link to us here, to the blog or to our Twitter Page.