Landlords and university jointly launch unusual student week initiative

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Landlords and student groups have teamed up to tidy Leeds’s streets during student changeover week.

The city hosts about 37,000 students, the vast majority of whom will move house each year at the same time, leaving behind large amounts of rubbish, overflowing bins, furniture and personal items, initiating a huge clear up operation.

The Leeds Property Association (LPA), along with the University of Leeds, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds City Council and student housing charity Unipol aim to reduce the impact of this year’s changeover on local residents by promoting recycling and waste disposal options.

Landlords will take part in the Blue Bag Collection Scheme, providing thousands of blue bags for students to donate clothing, bedding, books and electrical items that they don’t need.

Bags are being delivered through students’ letterboxes and given out by student letting agents DEU Estates, Pickard Properties and Sugarhouse Properties.

Vulnerable

Donations will be distributed to the British Heart Foundation or given directly to vulnerable community members through other local charities.

LPA chairman Andrew Parascandolo (pictured) says it’s important that responsible landlords and letting agents in Headingley and Hyde Park recognise their responsibilities to the community by helping the council keep the streets clean and tidy. 

“To assist the council workers, the Leeds Property Association has once again sponsored two caged wagons to collect some of the waste,” he explains. “Last year over 7,000kg of waste was removed from the streets.”

Richard Napier from Sugarhouse Properties adds “We already run a pop-up foodbank in our office so it’s great to be part of a wider coordinated initiative to promote re-using and responsible recycling.”

Landlords that want to take part can find more information at https://lpa.org.uk/

View Full Article: Landlords and university jointly launch unusual student week initiative

Labour’s Lisa Nandy rejects rent control pleas

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Lisa Nandy, Labour Party’s shadow housing secretary, has rejected calls for rent controls – despite saying at the Labour Party conference last autumn that she supported them.

Now, she believes that rent controls are a ‘sticking plaster on our deep-seated problems’.

View Full Article: Labour’s Lisa Nandy rejects rent control pleas

Exclusion of landlords from mortgage help scheme ‘a mistake’ says Labour

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Omitting BTL landlords from the government’s mortgage charter will only hurt supply and push up rents as landlords are forced to pass on their costs, says Labour.

The new agreement revealed by the Chancellor this week between the UK’s largest mortgage lenders and the Financial Conduct Authority aims to provide a set of universal standards to help and reassure borrowers worried by high interest rates.

Borrowers won’t be forced to leave their home without their consent, unless in exceptional circumstances, in less than a year from their first missed payment, while those approaching the end of a fixed rate deal have the chance to lock in a deal up to six months ahead, starting from 10^th July.

Ignorant

However, during a debate on mortgage and rental costs, Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves (pictured) asked ministers if they had considered the consequences of not including BTL mortgages.

“Treasury Ministers remain ignorant or indifferent to the plight of renters,” she told the Commons.

“The Tory mortgage bombshell is experienced whether people have a mortgage or not. Renters are seeing huge increases in their rents – on average 10% in the last year. Renters right now are exposed to their landlords passing the higher costs of their mortgages on to their tenants.” 

Many of her Labour colleagues echoed Reeves’ concern, including Derek Twigg MP who said he had been contacted by an increasing number of constituents whose landlords were being forced to sell up as they couldn’t afford their own mortgages.

Chief Secretary to the Treasury, John Glen (pictured), replied that the agreement included a growing number of lenders. “I hope that more and more lenders will be added to those 85% of providers. The details will be known in the next few weeks.”

View Full Article: Exclusion of landlords from mortgage help scheme ‘a mistake’ says Labour

INTERVIEW: The young duo shaking up the ‘guaranteed rent’ sector

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A twenty-something entrepreneurial pair aim to shake up the HMO sector by building on their upmarket guaranteed rent model.

Liverpool-based Cosi Living founders Joe Duggan, 24 and Olivia Maher, 25, (main picture) only rented their first property as a lockdown project in May 2020, but already manage 256 rooms and tenants across 60 properties in the city.

“We take on a house that’s run down and where the landlord is getting voids and might be thinking of selling,” Maher tells LandlordZONE. “We improve its value by spending between £10,000-£15,000 putting in a new kitchen and decorating and then manage it for the landlord in a guaranteed rent package.”

The company commits to properties for five or seven years and makes a profit by turning a £300 room into one that can command £500.

Any old stuff

“A lot of people have the mindset of putting any old stuff into HMOs, but we make sure ours are furnished to a high standard – that way, tenants look after them,” she explains.

“We also care about our tenants and are hands on. For example, if we find there’s a blocked drain during an inspection, we’ll ask the tenants to sort it out, so it doesn’t get left and becomes a bigger problem for the landlord.”

Cosi Living typically rents to groups of students and single tenants, who it is careful to house sympathetically in its HMOs, so that young girls wouldn’t be housed with an older man, for example. This has resulted in some tenants staying on since the beginning.

Growing demand

And with growing demand in the sector, the firm has plans to expand and is hiring a finance and admin assistant, portfolio manager and an operations assistant/general manager, taking the number of full-time staff to six.

“We have a passion for property and plan to become one of the leading HMO agents in Liverpool before expanding to other UK cities,” she adds.

View Full Article: INTERVIEW: The young duo shaking up the ‘guaranteed rent’ sector

The Midlands shines as a rental hotspot amid dip in renter interest

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Despite a slight nationwide drop in rental interest, the Midlands is emerging as an exception to the trend, a rental demand index reveals.

The latest findings from Barrows and Forrester highlight that Dorset is the current epicentre of the rental market

View Full Article: The Midlands shines as a rental hotspot amid dip in renter interest