50% rental Yield On Commercial Buy To Let Property!

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Is buy to let dead? Here is a commercial Buy-To-Let (BTL) property offering a phenomenal 50% rental yield? …And later in the video, I will share with you where this is coming up for sale and how you can buy it!!

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Conveyancers blame councils for property purchase hold-ups as window closes for landlords

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Landlords buying investment property might not be able to complete before the stamp duty holiday cut-off in March, warns The Conveyancing Association.

Long turnaround times for local authority searches caused by staff shortages and redeployment are causing the biggest hold-up, with almost a third of English councils taking 20 days or more to reply.

Harrogate Council is one of the worst offenders, currently estimating an average reply time of 70 working days.

The association reckons that it’s currently taking sellers an average of 77 days from listing a property to getting a viable offer and a further 123 days from offer to exchange, meaning they could miss out on savings.

Director of delivery, Beth Rudolf (left), says that while the Government’s Local Land Charges project to digitalise local authority search records will make a big difference, it only covers the 12 parts of the register. 

“The second part of the search – the CON29R – asks for around 163 data sets from the local authority and there is no plan to digitise that,” she tells LandlordZONE.

“You will get the local land charge from the Land Registry instantly online which is brilliant but will still need to go to your search provider who will have to jump through the required hoops at the local authority to get the CON29 before you exchange.”

Rudolf suggests that sellers could order their local search and drainage and water search at the time of listing so that there’s time to deal with additional enquiries about planning permission or un-adopted roads. She says the information would then be available to the buyer before they choose a mortgage.

The current stamp duty holiday applies for purchases under £500,000 although landlords still have to pay the second home surcharge of 3%.

Visit the Conveyancing Association.
Learn more about tax planning during the Covid crisis.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Conveyancers blame councils for property purchase hold-ups as window closes for landlords | LandlordZONE.

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Salford consults on HMO licensing expansion as conversions soar by up to 400%

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Salford is the third council in Greater Manchester to announce ambitions to ramp up landlord licensing schemes in recent weeks.

Following Tameside’s bid to introduce a selective licensing scheme to cover all its private rented properties and Manchester’s plan to vastly expand its scheme, Salford Council now aims to introduce landlord licensing for shared homes housing three or four tenants.

Salford has reported a massive growth in private renting and conversion of properties into HMOs as the city is seen as an investment hotspot.

Only houses with five or more tenants sharing have to be licensed under the current mandatory HMO scheme, along with any rented home in parts of Broughton, Charlestown and Lower Kersal and Langworthy, Weaste and Seedley where selective licensing schemes apply.

The council says that in the last five years, conversions to HMOs have risen by 460% in Eccles, 410% in Langworthy, Weaste and Seedley and 196% in Broughton.

HMO problems

It reports that 92% of the three and four-person HMO homes inspected showed problems while complaints about all HMOs have risen from 152 a year in 2015/16 to 265 in 2018/19.

Deputy city mayor, councillor Tracy Kelly (left), says the idea of licensing smaller shared properties is to improve housing conditions for tenants and to reduce problems in neighbourhoods.

“There is currently no legal requirement for landlords of three and four-person HMOs to have their property licenced by the council,” says Kelly.

“An extended licensing scheme to cover these properties would enable us to be sure that people are living in safe and decent conditions and not causing issues for the wider community.”

Landlords have until 5th January to register their opinions with Salford’s consultation. The area recently featured in a three-part BBC series ‘Manctopia‘ about the local property rental and sales market.

Read more about the Salford PRS.
Advice: Understanding HMO rental contracts.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Salford consults on HMO licensing expansion as conversions soar by up to 400% | LandlordZONE.

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How to prepare for the 2021 Property Market Crash

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Most property investors believe, that the current property market mini boom won’t last for long, and when the bubble bursts, there will be a property market crash in 2021. What does that mean for you?

This could be a huge opportunity for you if you are ready for it.

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British Ex-Pat Bank Accounts to be CLOSED

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Hundreds of thousands of British Ex-Pats living in the EU will have received a shock letter in the last few days.

Customers of Nat-West, Coutts, RBS, Barclays, Bank of Scotland and Halifax are among the list of those affected.

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Landlords must now issue TWO Section 8 notices to get around ‘crazy’ eviction rules

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Increasing numbers of landlords are being forced to issue a second Section 8 notice to tenants who have stopped paying their rent as the sector grapples with the ‘crazy’ evictions rules in place now, it has been claimed.

The UK’s leading lettings industry trade body ARLA Propertymark says the Covid eviction rules which require landlords to give six months’ notice of their intention to evict are now forcing many to issue a second Section 8 notice when their tenants fall more than six months’ behind in their rent.

“We’re looking at situations now where the clients have served a six-month notice initially, when the rent arrears are quite small, but when we get to that six months [of arrears] mark, we might be serving another notice because…of the shorter period [of four weeks’ notice],” Robert Bolwell (left), Senior Partner at Dutton Gregory, which manages the ARLA Propertymark Legal Helpline, told a Goodlord webinar yesterday.

“The general rule is, it’s never wrong to serve additional notices.”

Paul Shamplina of leading evictions firm Landlord Action, agrees: “We are already serving additional Section 8 notices for landlords.

“Our team is dealing with clients who have four months’ rent arrears, telling us that they are hoping the tenant does not pay the next two months, so they can serve the four week notice period; it’s crazy. 

“You will get tenants catching on to the new time frame periods who will make small payments to keep the arrears to under six months, so the landlord can’t serve a four week notice period.

“It’s going to be really tough on landlords, the reality is landlords are very unlikely to be able to re-coup the lost arrears.”

Visit Landlord Action.
Read Tom Entwistle’s brilliant guidance on Section 8 notices.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Landlords must now issue TWO Section 8 notices to get around ‘crazy’ eviction rules | LandlordZONE.

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Dogs and Domestic Animals (Accommodation and Protection) Bill 2019-21

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A new Parliamentary Private Members’ Bill sponsored by Andrew Rosindell, Conservative MP for Romford, would seek to give tenants who own a dog or other domestic animal the right to have it live in their rented home, provided they demonstrated responsibility and care for the animal.

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LATEST: How much more does Airbnb earn landlords more than traditional lets?

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Property owners in Bath, Belfast, Brighton, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Manchester and Newcastle could make more money listing their spare room on Airbnb for one night a week than if they rent it out full-time.

A new handy guide from Vanquis bank does the maths in 21 of the UK’s biggest cities using data from SpareRoom and Airbnb to find the winners and losers.

Cardiff came out as the most profitable city for Airbnb, with homeowners earning £6,344 a year – 86% more than traditional renting, which pays £3,408 – while Cambridge came out as the least profitable city for Airbnb where homeowners could expect to earn an annual income of just £3,744, 35% less than the average rental income of £5,772.

The Government’s Rent a Room Scheme currently allows home owners to earn up to £7,500 a year without having to pay tax on this revenue.

£8,126 a year

Unsurprisingly, London came out on top as the best city for renting, with homeowners able to make £8,126 per year, compared to £6,084 via Airbnb.

The Vanquis calculator will no doubt incur the wrath of local councils whose cities are already saturated with Airbnbs.

Edinburgh in particular has the highest incidence of Airbnbs with 29 active listings for every 100 properties and is likely to be one of the first local authorities in Scotland to start licensing short-term lets when new rules take effect in the region next spring.

Vanquis isn’t the first to highlight such opportunities, as earlier this year a similar wheeze from bespoke blinds company Thomas Sanderson angered local councillors in Brighton and Hove.

Its online rental return calculator showed how landlords in the city were making an average monthly income of £1,375 by renting their property, whereas Airbnb could pocket them £2,241 a month. 

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – LATEST: How much more does Airbnb earn landlords more than traditional lets? | LandlordZONE.

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EXCLUSIVE: Latest selective licensing plan is ‘contrary to government’s own guidance’ say landlords

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A council’s plans to expand its selective licensing scheme while Coronavirus is wreaking havoc is reckless and could lead to a lack of housing stock, say East Midlands landlords.

Gedling Council in Nottinghamshire has launched a consultation to expand the Netherfield pilot scheme into Colwick, Carlton Hill, Daybrook and Newstead Village.

But only 5% of the 662 properties in the pilot scheme had problems requiring immediate action, according to the council, although 86% of these had hazards that needed work to protect health and safety.

Regional landlord group EMPO believes the consultation is contrary to MHCLG guidance asking local authorities to suspend this kind of activity until the crisis is over.

“Experience in Nottingham shows landlords pass the cost of licensing onto tenants in the form of higher rents,” says its business development director Giles Inman (pictured left).

“This increases tenant financial hardship and unmanageable demand for social housing.”

He says letting agents have reported landlords disposing of good quality housing stock over the last two years as a direct impact of selective licensing.

Local agent David James adds: “We still have client money sat in our client’s account in relation to licensing applications submitted in 2018. How can they justify extending this scheme when they haven’t even processed the 600-odd applications from the last two years?”

EMPO believes that the council already has extensive powers to deal with landlords renting dangerous housing, but council leader John Clarke insists the scheme has raised many renters’ living standards.

He says: “We want to create safer communities for our residents and reduce hardship and inequality and this scheme will help contribute towards that ambition. We also want to reduce anti-social behaviour and fear of crime and we have seen this happen during the pilot scheme in Netherfield.”

The consultation ends in January and, if approved, could be implemented mid-2021 – depending on the Covid situation.

Read our exclusive interview with Giles Inman.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – EXCLUSIVE: Latest selective licensing plan is ‘contrary to government’s own guidance’ say landlords | LandlordZONE.

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Scottish Parliament to consider rent caps following u-turn

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Pauline McNeill the Scottish Labour communities and equalities spokesperson, who had campaigned for the proposal by way of a member’s bill, says she welcomes the MSP’s change of heart.

Holyrood Parliament’s local government committee had said it was dropping its plans for the Fair Rents (Scotland) Bill due to a lack of time before May’s election, but it appears this will now go ahead.

The proposals put forward in the Bill would give private tenants the right to apply, at any time, to a rent officer for a “fair open market rent” to be determined; a similar process to that used for regulated tenancies under the Rent Acts in England.

If enacted the Bill apply to residential tenancies not lodgers, and would make private landlords enter detailed information about their properties in the Scottish Landlord Register, including the monthly rent charged. Rent officers would decide what is a fair rent taking into account the local market and the condition of the property.

The change of heart from the local government committee follows pressure from Scottish Labour MSPs and Mike Dailly at Govan Law Centre.

Pauline McNeill told The Herald, Scotland:

“I was very concerned about the position of back-benchers like myself who put years of effort into a bill proposal only for it to be dropped by a committee.

“For that reason, I was very pleased that Mike Dailly, of his own accord, took a petition to the Court of Session on behalf of his client Jayne Ely.

“I am absolutely delighted that the Local Government Committee have now had a change of heart… Scotland needs more than ever an effective set of laws that give tenants the right to have their rent assessed and action to curb above inflation rate increases.

“I call on the Scottish Government to listen to renters in these difficult times and support this bill as a first step in serious law reform in the private rented sector.”

James Dornan, Convener of Holyrood’s local government and communities committee, said:

“The proportion of households in private rented housing now stands at just under 15 per cent.

“As the private rented sector in Scotland has grown over the last couple of decades there have been various reforms to tighten the regulation of landlords and give tenants more rights. But the stated ambition behind this Bill is to change the balance of power further. It would cap rent increases to one per cent plus CPI and to allow tenants more scope to challenge rents.

“We are keen to hear views about whether this further change is necessary and whether the provisions in the Bill are workable and will have the intended impact.

“We also want to find out what the financial impact of this Bill would be upon private tenants, landlords, the wider rented sector and others, and we welcome the opportunity to hear views on this proposed legislation.”

The Scottish Government has published (October 2020) updated versions of the Model Private Residential Tenancy Agreement, with supporting documentation, along with a guide to help landlords with the Rent Arrears Pre-Action Requirements (Coronavirus) (Scotland) Regulations 2020 – https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2020/270/contents/made

Proposed Fair Rents (Scotland) Bill – Proposal & Consultation Document

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Scottish Parliament to consider rent caps following u-turn | LandlordZONE.

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