Is this the beginning of the end for dodgy property investment gurus?

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Accreditation scheme has been launched to protect consumers by requiring trainers and courses to stick to the highest standards.

Tougher policing of the property investment education sector has taken a step forward this week following the launch of an accreditation scheme for those conducting courses.

The scheme will require those in the scheme to be ‘fit and proper’, not make unverifiable claims, allow their course materials to be inspected, offer customers a complaints procedure, offer money back guarantees on one to five-day courses and not act dishonestly.

As LandlordZONE has been reporting for some time now alongside many other media organisations including Property Tribes, Daily Telegraph and the BBC, the property investment education sector is doing its best to eradicate the small number of unethical operators who continue to undermine public trust in property investment courses and advice.

Reports of financially inexperienced people being persuaded to sign up to expensive courses of questionable educational value have become more common, including about the most high profile one, Samuel Leeds.

He was the subject of a BBC investigation which featured the tragic case of former soldier Danny Butcher who killed himself after trying to clear his debt by paying for a £13,000 course run by Leeds and his organisation, Property Investors.

To help bring higher standards and greater transparency to the sector the Property Investors Bureau has launched the Property Educators Accreditation Scheme (PEAS) following a three-month consultation.

“PEAS aims to bring much needed change to the property education sector and will act as a catalyst for improving standards and increasing consumer protection,” says Cyril Thomas, Chairman of PIB.

“We are enthused by the vast support for the scheme and will continue to embrace all who want to be a part of the solution.”

By becoming accredited through PEAS, credible property educators are able to differentiate themselves from less credible operators as well as being automatically signed up to the Property Redress Scheme which will adjudicate any complaints against them.

Several high profile names have already signed up to PEAS including Simon Zutshi of Property Investor Network, Gill Fielding of Fielding Financial, Kevin Wright of Positive Property Finance and John Howard.

Find out how to join the scheme.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Is this the beginning of the end for dodgy property investment gurus? | LandlordZONE.

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Scots landlords face a long and expensive wait to get properties back following Coronavirus

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As housing charities call for the government to extend its evictions moratorium into 2021, landlords are warning that many of its ranks will face bankruptcy even under current restrictions.

The Scottish Association of Landlords (SAL) has warned that it could take until this time next year for landlords to repossess some properties if the current eviction moratorium is extended, putting many at risk of going out of business.

Charities including Homeless Action Scotland and Unison Scotland have issued a joint call to the Scottish Government to extend the current moratorium beyond the current time-frame of up to six months, and to only decide on lifting it after the restrictions around COVID end.

Homeless Action Scotland says: “The Scottish Government
has given a handout to landlords with the passing of the second Coronavirus
Bill. We recommend that the Scottish Government now considers giving a hand up
to tenants.” 

However, SAL believes that even if the
First-tier Tribunal re-opens in July, there would be a large backlog of cases
and this could mean that landlords need to have suffered at least 12 months of
rent arrears before getting an eviction.

“If a tenant hasn’t paid rent from the start of lockdown, it would be the end of June before they can issue the Notice to Leave – this six months’ notice takes it to December before you can make an application to the First-tier Tribunal,” chief executive John Blackwood tells LandlordZONE. “Most landlords can’t sustain such long-term losses.”

He adds: “We’re encouraged to hear stories
where landlords are working with tenants to arrange re-payment plans. However,
many landlords are not able to access financial support and inevitably will go
out of business. We must do everything we can to avoid this happening.”

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Scots landlords face a long and expensive wait to get properties back following Coronavirus | LandlordZONE.

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£100,000 Coronavirus emergency donation by Paragon

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The Buy to Let specialist Paragon Bank has split a £100,000 between the NHS, Solihull Change into Action, Age UK and the company’s 2020 charity, Macmillan.

Nigel Terrington, Paragon Banking Group Chief Executive, said: “Coronavirus is impacting on all of our lives and we hope this donation will help make a difference to some of the charities that are doing fantastic work in these difficult circumstances.”

NHS

The donation to the NHS will go towards helping frontline staff who need accommodation and food whilst they care for patients

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UK’s leading commercial landlord reports £1.1 billion loss as it collects just 43% of rent

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Retail and office giant sees losses rise nearly four-fold as its core markets are battered by both the Coronavirus crisis but also retailers struggling against online competition.

One of the largest and most powerful
commercial landlords in the UK is reeling from the effects of lockdown on the
nation’s shopping habits.

British Land,
which owns shopping centres around the UK and
office properties in London, suffered
a £1.1 billion loss in the year to the end of March – three times higher than
the £319 million loss it reported a year ago.

Pressure on retailers from higher costs and online competition affected property prices, while shop owners struggling with a massive hit to their income also meant the landlord only collected 43% of retail rent due in March for the current quarter.

It accepted lower rents and shorter leases for some shops to maintain occupancy while tenants falling into administration or using insolvency procedures to cut rents or close shops affected 118 units.

Rent reductions and store closures accounted for £11.3 million in lost
rental income; British Land has written off £2 million in rental income to
support small retailers and has agreed about £35 million of rent deferrals from
those facing financial difficulties.

Chief executive Chris Grigg says: “This was
already a difficult year for retailers, many of whom have been severely
impacted by the lockdown and the early effects of the crisis were reflected in
the value of our retail portfolio.”

British Land believes that as the lockdown eases, it’s well placed to respond to new ways of shopping as retail parks are more conducive to mission-based trips and social distancing while it’s currently progressing 220,000 sq ft of office deals under offer with a further 160,000sq ft being negotiated.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – UK’s leading commercial landlord reports £1.1 billion loss as it collects just 43% of rent | LandlordZONE.

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£18.49bn of Bounce Back Loans agreed

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HM Tearsury publish management information each Tuesday for each of the three Covid-19 emergency loan schemes schemes (CBILS, CLBILS, BBLS), including: The total number of applications, number of approved applications and the value of loans approved.

The applications figure includes approved applications

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Agreed rents drop steeply in key areas of London, leading agency reveals

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While the property industry has been keen to talk about a surge in pent up demand within the housing market, in reality over supply and the effects of tenants’ financial insecurity are driving agreed rents down in the capital.

An alarming drop in agreed rents in London has been revealed by one of its leading property firms, which also says rents in the capital are unlikely to rise ‘for quite a while’.

Hamptons International says that while rents have dipped by only 1.3% on average during the first four months of the year, this masks reductions in rents achieved of nearly 8% in some areas.

These figures suggest that many landlords have been forced to drop their asking rents to attract tenants during the first five months of the year, no doubt in part due to the Coronavirus crisis, a trend that may spread out of London

Hamptons International says rents dropped by 5% in central London, 6.9% in Zone 2 – such as Fulham, Clapham and Hammersmith – and by nearly 8% in Zone 3 (e.g. Tooting, Tottenham, Golders Green).

Further out into suburbia, Hamptons International says it’s a very different pictures with rents rising in Zone 5 and by 2.2% in Zone 6. But despite the reductions in agreed rents, they continue to vary significantly depending on where you look, from £2,910 per property in Zone 1 to £1,370 in Zone 6.

Hamptons International’s chief housing analyst Aneisha Beveridge says the price falls are down to an imbalance of supply as landlords try to fill vacant properties set against tenants who are reluctant to move, and that many tenants feel financially insecure and unable to afford more expensive properties at the moment.

“I don’t think we understand the hit to people’s affordability yet, so I don’t expect rents to rise again for quite a while,” she says.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Agreed rents drop steeply in key areas of London, leading agency reveals | LandlordZONE.

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Campaigning website accuses Airbnb hosts of flouting London’s 90-day limit

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As Airbnb prepares to recommend whether hosts should face mandatory registration, Inside Airbnb says up to 40% of short-let properties in the capital are being run year-round as professional accommodation.

A campaigning group which monitors Airbnb listings in the UK has claimed that 40% of the platform’s properties in London have been breaking the 90-day rental limit agreed for the city.

Inside Airbnb, which is a privately-funded website that offers landlords and tenants free tools to analyse Airbnb listings in cities throughout the world including London, claims that some 35,250 Airbnb listings in the capital are entire vacant homes that it classes as ‘highly available’ year-round for tourists.

It claims that these ‘could be illegal’ because many landlords use both Airbnb and other platforms to rent their homes out and circumvent the 90-day rule.

Airbnb currently lists 87,235 properties in London, although the platform has been blocking bookings nationally during the Coronavirus crisis.

The Inside Airbnb data is mentioned within a new document published by The House of Commons Library to brief MPs ahead of next month’s expected report from Airbnb following a 10-month tour of the UK by its executives.

This report will recommend the best way forward but is expected to suggest a system of property registration across the UK for short-term rentals and, if they adopt proposals already put forward by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, require property owners to register their properties before they could be rented out.

The government has, effectively, outsourced regulation of Airbnb and its competitors to the Short Term Accommodation Association which it has made the lead body to oversee suppliers in the sector. An attempt by Labour MP Karen Buck to introduce legislation failed after it ran out of time in parliament.

See the data on London.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Campaigning website accuses Airbnb hosts of flouting London’s 90-day limit | LandlordZONE.

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£1bn fund to remove dangerous cladding to support private leaseholders

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Building owners have been urged to act and put the safety of residents first as the government’s £1 billion Building Safety Fund to remove dangerous cladding was launched by Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick.

It comes as the government published the prospectus for the fund which will meet the cost for remediation of unsafe non-ACM cladding systems on residential buildings in the private and social sector that are 18 metres and over and do not comply with building regulations.

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TONIGHT’s Baker Street LiveStream: How To Finance Property Deals After Lock Down

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The Baker Street Property Meet Livestream Networking Event is tonight, Wed 27th May at 7pm. Join 1000+ property investors in the UK’s largest online property networking event. Tonight’s theme is ‘How To Finance Property Deals After Lock Down‘

I will host and explore the theme with tonight’s guests:

Evan Maindonald

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