Private Rented Sector Buy to Let Consultants
David Lawrenson of www.LettingFocus.com remains unimpressed by the reality of the Green Deal Any decent private landlord is like anyone else, we like free stuff. We like it a lot. Not the kind of “free stuff” advertised by the likes of the Telecom and Pay to Watch TV firms. Example: “Get this great Sky TV Package free for 6 months”……. […]
Read moreDavid Lawrenson of www.LettingFocus.com explains the “work arounds” and the sleights of hand involved in the latest changes in Local Housing Allowance funding. The government has just voted to cap rises in several benefits, including local housing allowance (LHA) base rates, at the lower of 1% or the 30th percentile of local rents – which means that in practice, in […]
Read moreBe aware of the holes in TV documentaries about the private rented sector says David Lawrenson of LettingFocus There was an interesting programme on ITV last week from the “Tonight” team. Called “Generation Rent” the programme set out to look at a number of aspects of the growing private rented sector and the problems people face trying to scrape together […]
Read moreThe forthcoming Local Housing Allowance (LHA) caps and reductions have brought with them a range of technical and practical issues, including also impacts on landlords who never let to LHA tenants. Statutory instruments SI #2835 2010 (which came into force 1 April 2011) allow local authorities slightly more discretion about whether to pay LHA directly to landlords. It states that […]
Read moreSometimes government policy doesn’t seem to join up too well – with different policies apparently conflicting with each other. Two good examples are (1) the lending activities of state owned banks which appear to hamper what local councils are trying to do with their private rented sector access schemes, especially lease schemes and (2) policies on HMOs which appear to […]
Read moreA few months ago there was a ray of hope that the historically high margins that mortgage companies want to charge buy to let mortgage borrowers could be coming down. Readers of this column will know that back in November last year, for a 75% loan to value buy to let mortgage, you could get a reversionary (or “go to” […]
Read moreI have always said that the biggest threat to private landlords comes from external sources and especially from new competitors. Unfortunately, these new competitors are rarely on most small landlords radars, which is not surprising really, because so far these new competitors have not really been all that active. Most landlords tend to prefer to worry and huff and puff […]
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