INTERVEW: Meet the landlord who’s built an ‘Airbnb for long-term lets’

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If anyone was likely to build a renting platform for landlords and tenants then it should be Toks Adebiyi, who has observed rental property from every angle.

The 38-year-old is a landlord but has also been a tenant, run a property investment group with 1,000 members, established his own estate agency and trained as a letting agent.

But it took one of his tenants ringing him while he was on holiday to set him on a path to what would become Clooper.

“I had been managing my properties via pretty crude methods of paper and maybe some Excel spreadsheets and I had always meant to try and build a digital solution,” he says. 

Better way?

“But it took a tenant phoning me on holiday requesting that something be fixed that was the final straw – surely there had to be a better way, I asked myself.”

Clooper has been in development for several years and he describes it as an Airbnb for the long-lets market rather than another landlord platform or an online estate agent.

“We are building a social platform that is home-centric and enables our users to be better landlords,” he says.
One key element of the platform is that landlords can, if they are busy or on holiday, enable tenants to get quotes to have issues fixed – the landlord then signs off the best quote.

The platform launched in earnest during March this year and in June raised £400,000 in seed funding from over 300 investors on website Crowdcube.

Empire Property

This included a major contribution from Paul Rothwell, the MD of commercial-to-resi developer and landlord Empire Property.

“Clooper has been built to serve the smaller landlords who will never use an agent because they prefer to manage their properties themselves, which is around 60% of the market,” he says.

“I like to think they are people who want to do it themselves but do it properly – and we already have many landlords using us who like that.”

Adebiyi says a more advanced version of the platform called Clooper PRO is waiting in the wings that will be for larger landlords and letting agents too.

Read more about Clooper.

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Check properties every three months or risk tenants from hell, landlords warned

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A buy-to-let investor in Bradford has called on fellow landlords to inspect their properties every three months after a ‘tenant from hell’ trashed his terraced house and cost him thousands in repairs and lost rent.

Hassanin Al-Assan has contacted LandlordZONE after a year-long saga that started when he rented his property (pictured) in the West Bowling district of the city.

The tenants started out as a hard-working couple with two children but after a few months began reporting damage to the property including a broken side-door lock, front door handle and, on the final occasion, a smashed rear kitchen window.

NHS job

“Just after they moved in I took a job working for the NHS in Glasgow so I had to leave Bradford and, along with several Covid lockdowns, this made it difficult to keep an eye on the house,” says Al-Assan.

“When the damage occurred I organised for the items to be replaced, but then the police called to say that the woman, who appeared to be living in the property with her kids but no partner, was being re-housed after anti-social behaviour outside the property.”

Drug use

The landlord says it transpired that the woman had been smoking cannabis in the house and owed money to her dealers, who had been causing the damage to the property.

“I asked a friend to check on the house and it was a total mess – dirty throughout including spliff butts everywhere, broken doors, windows and generally in a terrible state,” he says.

The tenant left the property without having to be evicted but Al-Assan say quotes to reinstate the house are around £3,000 on top of lost rent.

“I would urge all landlords to check their properties every three months and have that written into their tenancy contracts,” he says.

“And if you don’t have the time to do that, then use a letting agent; the cost and hassle are a lot less than the nightmare I’ve been through.”

Read more about tenants from hell.

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Relaxation of the planning laws could lead to poor quality housing

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From the 1^st of August, developers will be allowed to convert a wide range of business premises into residential apartments and flats.

Office to residential conversions are already allowed under permitted development rights (PDR), but as from 1^st August these rights are to be extended to include Covid hit vacant shops, restaurants and gyms.

There are of course some safeguards. To be eligible for these conversion rights, developer’s proposals must meet specific limitations and conditions set in the legislation. In some cases a prior approval application is required and even where a scheme meets all the PDR criteria developers can ensure that a scheme is lawful by applying to the planning authority for a lawful development certificate (LDC). In all cases initial consultations with local planners is essential.

The move to relax restrictions on conversions through PDRs, it is hoped, will help regenerate Covid hit town and city centres that will struggle to recover during and after the pandemic.

However, a recent study by insurers Zurich UK warns that some of these conversations are likely to lead to poor quality housing which not only fail to meet recognised space requirements, they will be vulnerable to overheating in summer.

With housing provision high on the political agenda, reforming the planning system has been a recurring theme over recent years with extensions of permitted development rights introduced in 2005, 2010, 2013 and 2015 and now in 2021.

A recent research report published by RICS has highlighted the benefits but also the problems introduced by extending permitted development rights. By having building conversions proceed without formal planning approval in England it limits planning authorities control.

Of five local authorities studied by RICS, with high rates of permitted development schemes, Camden, Croydon, Leeds, Leicester and Reading, including site visits to 568 buildings, inconsistencies were found in the quality of developments. RICS found that only 30% of conversions delivered through PDR met national space standards.

While the chartered surveyor’s body did find examples of “extremely high-quality housing conversions”, there were also examples with “no amenity space, low quality design and were poor locations for residential amenity.”

The study concluded that office-to-residential conversions under PDR had produced a higher number of poor quality housing than those governed through full planning permission.

The Zurich UK study warns that the drive to convert more town and city centre commercial space into residential housing risks creating more poor quality homes that are vulnerable to overheating in the summer.

The company fears that “A rush to redevelop shops and offices left empty by the pandemic could create a swathe of sub-standard homes that are vulnerable to climate change.”

Zurich thinks the problem could be so severe that small self-contained bedsits and studio flats in particular “could potentially become uninhabitable during increasingly hot summers.”

Warning that properties in built-up areas, towns and cities, are affected by what is termed the “urban heat island” effect, where temperatures are much hotter than suburban and rural outlying areas. There is also the danger in some locations of flash flooding as we have seen in recent weeks, caused by heavy downpours on mainly paved, tarmacked and concrete surfaces.

Tony Mulhall, associate director of the land professional group at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors say:

“The post-Covid city may need to quickly adapt to new modes of behaviour, which could see many building types adapted for purposes not originally intended.”

According to the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the independent body which advises the government on climate change, says that already 20% of homes in the UK are susceptible to overheating. This, the organisation warns will result in a tripling of the heat related death toll by 2050 as temperatures continue to climb.

According to the Zurich UK study, over 64,700 flats have been converted from unused offices in the last five years and between January and March this year, applications for office-to-residential conversions in England have risen by 28%, to a three-year high.

Developers are currently buying up office blocks which have been left vacant by an exodus of workers from city centres and which are now ripe for conversion to residential. The conversions typically have large windows, but no air conditioning. If all the windows face south, it can create a sweltering flats, with no escape from the heat.

A government spokeswoman for Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) has refuted some of Zurich’s claims, arguing that the claims are based on unfounded assumptions and that homes delivered through PDR have continued to make an important contribution to housing delivery.

“Our reforms will transform unused buildings into much-needed new homes, and all new homes must be of high quality and meet national space standards and building regulations, including ventilation requirements,” the spokeswoman said.

Mr Mulhall for RICS has said that the changes to PDR mean:

“A generation of hermetically sealed commercial buildings may now fall into this category to be repurposed for housing, needing to satisfy a completely different set of standards.”

Adding that energy poverty may mean that some residents cannot afford to heat their homes during the winter, “The other increasing concern is residential buildings which, due to increased natural temperatures, are tending to overheat,” he said.

Those flats developed out of a commercial buildings, from a large square floor-plates, often have only one facing aspect and no outside space which this means they can’t get the cooling effect of a good through-draught.

Zurich says it wants ministers to look at ways to climate-proof buildings, including cooling measures in flat conversions. Fitting heat-reflecting windows, installing window shutters and sunshades and using reflective surfaces and improved ventilation systems are suggested solutions.

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BREAKING: Managing agent bodies ARMA and IRPM put merger proposals to members

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The Association of Residential Managing Agents (ARMA) and The Institute of Residential Property Management (IRPM) have proposed a merger.

The UK’s two largest property management profession bodies want to establish a united and stronger voice for the industry, at a time when managing agents and property management professionals face unprecedented changes and as legislation begins to make its way through Parliament. 

ARMA executive chair Nigel Glen (main image, left) says the bodies have worked together on a wide range of topics including the building safety crisis, sector mental health and wellbeing and regulatory reform.

A merged organization would give it greater power and enable it to support both managing agent firms and professional individuals. 

Effective support

“Combining our resources, data and expertise allows us to more effectively support our membership through guidance and business support, raise standards through enhanced professional qualifications, multi-channel training and ongoing professional development opportunities, and provide a more influential and representative voice to our ongoing government and stakeholder engagement,” says Glen. 

The proposal would be subject to approval by members at their forthcoming general meetings.

If approved, the two organisations and their respective secretariat teams would come together before the end of the year and the two brands would be retained for a period of time under the new organisation.

It is proposed that IRPM CEO Andrew Bulmer would become CEO of the new organisation, while Glen would become the executive chair of the new board. 

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