Improving fraud detection is vital for the future of the PRS

admin    Uncategorized     agents

On Monday 8 July, Paul Shamplina and his team at Landlord Action will once again appear on Channel 5’s ‘Nightmare Tenants Slum Landlords’, this time highlighting the need for better fraud detection when it comes to referencing. Paul Shamplina says letting agents and referencing companies who invest in technology with the means to validate tenants’ financial means and payment histories will stand to benefit in the future

The post Improving fraud detection is vital for the future of the PRS appeared first on Property118.

View Full Article: Improving fraud detection is vital for the future of the PRS

Virtual & Augmented Reality Inventory Reporting

admin    Uncategorized     agents

Danny Zane,
chair of the AIIC (Association for Independent Inventory Clerks) predicts that
AR (Augmented Reality) technology will revolutionise the inventory process in
the near future. Augmented
reality (AR) adds
digital elements to a live view often by using the camera on a smartphone. AR
differs from VR (Virtual
Reality) which offers a complete immersion experience that
shuts out the physical world, by allowing you to walk through a real space with
added digital elements, such as labelling or text description. Zane believes AR
could add a new dimension to inventory reporting within VR, allowing reports to
go beyond the 2D/3D picture and offer tenants and landlords the opportunity to
walk around their properties in VR whilst damage and a schedule of conditions
is pointed out in real time and space.

With the
global AR market forecast to reach a value of $70.01
billion by 2023. Investment in AR has steadily increased in the past few
years, and more recently, the technology has generated renewed interest from
big brands such as Facebook and Apple. Augmented reality allows brands to offer
immersive and digital experiences, and to engage consumers in a unique
way. 

Zane,
who runs My Property Inventories is convinced this is an obvious next step for
the inventory industry: “Right now we rely on labelled photos for accurate,
impartial documentation of a properties conditions. Imagine if you could
experience walking around a room, zooming in on damage and compare it to the
condition before a tenancy began. Augmented reality is the obvious next step
forward for independent, impartial inventory reports, those working in the
industry would be wise to jump on the bandwagon�, comments Zane who is planning
to role out a VR trial as a first step with his own company in the coming weeks:
“I am hoping that by investing in the technology to start compiling VR and then
AR inventory reports we will stay afoot of the expectations of consumers and
keep impartial inventories relevant and important and most important of all, even
more usable.�

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Virtual & Augmented Reality Inventory Reporting | LandlordZONE.

View Full Article: Virtual & Augmented Reality Inventory Reporting

UC trial for thousands to join “managed migration� starts in Harrogate

admin    Uncategorized     agents

Harrogate is the first area in Britain to trial a major new phase of Universal Credit. Up to 3,000 existing benefit claimants in the Yorkshire spa town are being moved to the six-in-one system starting this month, in the first test of “managed migration�.

The post UC trial for thousands to join “managed migration� starts in Harrogate appeared first on Property118.

View Full Article: UC trial for thousands to join “managed migration� starts in Harrogate

How safe is your housing investment?

admin    Uncategorized     agents

House Prices:

With the S&P 500 up 16.2% and the FTSE 100 up 10.2 in
the last 6 months, the focus for investors has recently be back on the stock
markets, but can it last?

Houses are one asset class that’s bigger than stocks and
bonds combined. The world’s homes are worth over $200trn (£159trn) in total,
and they are a very important element in the worlds economy.

The Woodford Equity Income Fund suspension fiasco is perhaps
a sobering reminder that the stock market is no easy option, even for the
experts, so property provides a continuing safe haven for most of us. However,
there’s always the threat of a downturn in property prices.

The last time house prices had a big fall, around the rich
world, it triggered the deepest downturn since the 1929 Great Depression, in
what has since become known as the Great Recession. But according to The Economist, prices are likely to keep
on rising, at least in the short run.

It’s over ten years since the Great Recession, and home
values on average are back above water – they’ve recouped all of their losses
and then some in most countries in the west, and in some cases they are well
above – Canada and New Zealand are now 40% above their pre­-crisis peaks.

But is another economic crash due soon? Not according to The Economist,

The Economist has developed an economic model to
predict “changes in real home values at the national level,� arguing that “an
inexact forecast provides more in­sight than no forecast at all.�

The model takes into account such measures as GDP growth and interest rates, home prices to rents and incomes ratios and his­torical prices, all to take into account momen­tum and mean reversion. Using a machine-learning algorithm they call a “random forest”, the model creates a “forest” of “decision trees”, measuring each of the variables.

Back-testing has shown the model to have an acceptable
accuracy of 3 percentage points over an 18 month forecast period, with greater
errors during booms and busts, but still of some utility.

Ireland, Spain, Germany and the US are expected to be the
fastest growing markets to Q2, 2020 (all above 3% growth) with France, the UK,
and Australia showing marginal growth, and Italy declining.

According The Economist’s model, conditions to­day are dissimilar to those of 2006. Across the ten countries monitored, the “average of its median es­timates for the year to June 2020 is an ap­preciation of 2.3%.�

Although a downturn is not completely ruled out – there is a one-in-seven chance that Italian prices will fall by at least 5% – the most likely scenario, it says, is that the house price rally has further to run.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – How safe is your housing investment? | LandlordZONE.

View Full Article: How safe is your housing investment?