BREAKING: Airbnb bookings management service Hostmaker collapses

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Company had been trying to find new investors after burning through £30 million but landlords have been reassured that bookings will go ahead.

Airbnb bookings management service Hostmaker.com has ceased
trading after failing to find new investors to keep it afloat.

The high-profile company had been in trouble for some
time and last week newspaper reports revealed it was facing administration.

Hostmaker had already burned through £30 million of
investor’s cash raised during two funding rounds and had expanded rapidly
across London but also internationally in Thailand, France, Spain, Italy and
Portugal.

Its service offered landlords an ‘arms length’ short stay
service and charged to list their properties on Airbnb, collect payments,
complete check-ins and outs, and change over properties with new linen and a
cleaning service.

But such rapid expansion, and high marketing and
operational costs, made it a heavy loss maker and its 2018 accounts show it
spent £12 million generating £9.9 million in revenue.

Industry alliance the UK Short Term Accommodation Association (STAA) has moved to
reassure landlords that one of its members, Houst, has stepped in to fill the
service gap left by Hostmaker’s collapse and all bookings that had been made
with Airbnb have now been transferred.

“It is always sad when a company falls into
financial difficulties but it is one of the traits of a fast, evolving and
growing sector,” says Merilee Karr, Chair of the STAA.

“My sympathies go out to all the Hostmaker
staff and their customers that have been affected by this news.

“We are pleased that the industry has acted quickly so
that homeowners who were customers of Hostmaker have been migrated to one of
our member companies.”

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – BREAKING: Airbnb bookings management service Hostmaker collapses | LandlordZONE.

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Government design competition for low carbon age-friendly homes

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Housing Minister Christopher Pincher has launched a competition to attract the best and brightest talents of the housing industry to design the homes of the future. Small businesses, designers and manufacturers are invited to come forward with ideas for new low carbon

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Homeless man given fresh start thanks to generous landlord Daniel

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When letting agent and landlord Daniel Buckley logged on to Facebook one night after a hectic day at work, he never imagined that a few minutes spent scrolling would inspire him changing a homeless man’s life. Fast forward four weeks, and not only does the man in question-Nick -now have a roof over his head-he […]

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EXPOSED: a case that blows huge holes in the UK’s letting agent regulation and Right to Rent laws

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The government has asked landlords to help it regulate the private rental market and yet when things do go wrong, landlords can feel as if they’ve been left to the sharks, one woman claims.

A landlord has contacted us
to highlight her nightmare experiences of renting a one-bedroom flat in London because
she wants to highlight the ‘huge holes’ in the way both letting agents, and the
Right to Rent scheme, are policed in the UK.

38-year-old Rachael Phiri,
who lives in Northampton but rents out a property in Dagenham, East London
(pictured), has had her flat since 2004 but only recently discovered that her
agent had been renting out the property to a friend for £300 a month less than
market value, leaving her thousands of pounds out of pocket.

After dispensing with the
original agent’s services, the second one then promised to help her evict the
tenant after the family – which had started as a single man but then developed
into a family of four – made it difficult for her to inspect the property or
get contractors in to deal with a mould problem.

Basic mistakes

Phiri says she discovered
that her new agent, who she had paid to serve a Section 21 eviction notice on
the tenant, had made so many basic mistakes within the document that it was
‘useless’ and she subsequently had to serve a new one herself.

To add insult to injury, she
then found out that the Nigerian-born tenant was an illegal immigrant and,
after reporting this to the Home Office, nothing has happened, and he and his
family remain in situ.

It also transpired that
neither agent was registered with a redress scheme and that the first agent had
not placed the tenant’s deposit within an authorised deposit protection scheme.

Phiri is astounded that
neither the agents, nor the tenant, have been tackled by regulators despite her
reporting all three to the relevant authorities, and that the regulatory system
seems in capable of protecting her from rogue operators.

“I am have been ripped off by two rogue agents and cannot get access to the tenant who is rude and aggressive towards me, even though he has no right to rent in the UK – leaving me exposed,” she says. “How did it come to this?”.

Read more about the eviction process.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – EXPOSED: a case that blows huge holes in the UK’s letting agent regulation and Right to Rent laws | LandlordZONE.

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Coronavirus may trigger Bank Base Rate cut

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Markets are starting to price in a Bank of England Base Rate decrease of at least 0.25% as central banks around the world marshal what monetary fire power they can against the potential economic consequences of a global Coronavirus pandemic.

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Average deposit cost has only increased 5% since 2014

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The latest research by Ome has revealed how much tenants are paying to secure a rental property and how this has changed in the last five years, as well as how this price increase compares to other items throughout our daily lives.

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The North looks to Rishi Sunak for innovative tax concessions

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New homes from old:

As we contemplate the possible spread of the Coronavirus (Covid-19), business proceeds as normal with the first budget of Boris Johnson’s majority Conservative government just over one week away.

The newly-appointed chancellor Rishi Sunak has confirmed that he will stick to the planned financial statement date of March 11^th to deliver what could be a game changing budget, given the Conservatives’ commitment to levelling the playing field throughout the country – with their first substantial majority for over 30 years the electorate has given the Conservative Prime Minister and his new chancellor carte blanche to radically reform taxation and public spending.

The party’s election manifesto was light on detail, but this does not mean there won’t be some radical changes in the Budget: this first Budget of several under the Conservatives is likely to be bold and eye-catching. There will be changes to tax, pensions, housing and social care as well as a relaxation of austerity spending restraint, and more investment in infrastructure, especially in the north of England.

One way to encourage even more investment would be to mobilise private funding and at the same time relieve the housing crisis: why not cut the rate of VAT to zero for property refurbishments suggests Carol Lewis writing in The Sunday Times.

There are literally thousands of old commercial buildings, many of these in the north, from Victorian cotton mills to bank and office buildings, ripe for conversion into new homes. By cutting out VAT and effectively reducing the cost of conversion developments by 20%, the move would not only provide desirable new living accommodation, it would preserve many old buildings which would otherwise be lost to the nation – some of these old decaying mills have stunning architecture of historical importance which is crying out for preservation.

The
current tax regime
does just the opposite: it encourages developers to demolish these
old heritage sites and replace them with new-build developments. Of
course not every site lends itself to building conversions, and in
some cases demolition is justified on brownfield sites, but there are
many instances where this is simply not the case.

Incentivising
refurbishments and
conversions by removing the VAT cost is something that is being
promoted by Historic England,
the public body that protects historic places. In
some cases it costs more to refurbish an historic building and
complete a conversion that will bring it up to modern standards, but
the finished product is often far more pleasing to the eye and
somewhere that’s very desirable as a residence – removing VAT
could mean the difference between such a project being viable or not.

According to the Sunday Times Historic England’s campaign for a VAT cut is backed by the Country Land and Business Association (CLA), which has written to the new chancellor calling for a change to be introduced in the budget on March 11th, which follows a similar message from RICS.

And
according to Historic England’s report “There’s No Place Like
Old Homes: Reuse and Recycle to Reduce Carbon,” such refurbishments
could actually help the government to reach their target of net zero
emissions by 2050 because new-builds produce up to 13 times as much
embodied carbon dioxide as refurbishing a traditional Victorian
terrace. Not only that, refurbishment can save millions of tons of
waste that’s produced when old buildings have to be demolished and
the site cleared.

Ben
Cowell, chairman of the Historic Environment Forum, a committee of
heritage groups says,

“This
is game-changing research, It shows how living in the past can help
us to step into a carbon-friendly future.”

There
are 542 former textile mills
in Greater Manchester and 540 in Lancashire, which Historic England
argues would create
25,000
new homes. By cutting VAT
to zero, or even to 5%,
which is the rate currently
applied to conversions from
commercial to residential use, would
provide a real boost to the redevelopment of these old heritage
buildings. These attractive
buildings would otherwise be
lost to the nation and the regions
forever.

On another theme, the CLA is calling for help with affordable homes in rural areas. Many young rural folk are priced out of their heritage villages because of the cost of housing, house prices and rent levels. Their suggestion is that by exempting owners from inheritance tax on these buildings, if they let their properties at affordable rents, then the number of affordable homes could be increased by as much as 30%.

RetroFirst: Is the heritage sector adapting to reuse?

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – The North looks to Rishi Sunak for innovative tax concessions | LandlordZONE.

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Today in politics: Regulations and Universal Credit

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Today we look at a question on the government’s policy regarding regulation and publish new DWP guidance on Universal Credit. Government considering ‘one-in-two-out’ policy Philip Davies MP (Conservative, Shipley) has received a response to his written question asking whether it remains government policy for new regulations to be subject to the one-in-two-out rule. Business Minister, Nadhim Zahawi MP, […]

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March licensing update for landlords

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Each month in our Licensing Update blog, we share a list of councils that are currently consulting on licensing plans. We also take a look at some of the RLA’s most recent responses to licensing consultations, and look back on licensing related news from the past month. Licensing news Liverpool plan ‘alternative’ licensing scheme In […]

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EPC vs Environmental Health?

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I had an EPC RATED”E”issued November 19 (valid for 10 years), but Environmental health are trying to enforce MEES on lovely small 2 bed flat above shop.

I’ve had the same “HAPPY” tenant for last 8 years and showed the Licensing officer the EPC rated “E”.

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