Wales confirms ‘sharp and deep’ Covid fire-break with non-essential travel and gatherings banned

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Wales is to go into a two-week ‘fire break’ lockdown that will see non-essential and non-food retail, hospitality and leisure businesses close and everyone confined to their homes from 6pm on Friday 23^rd October to the 9^th November.

Cross-border travel between England and Wales will also be severely restricted, and non-essential travel within Wales will ‘have to stop’.

Everyone in Wales will be required to work from home and the only exceptions will be critical workers and jobs where working from home is not possible. People will also be able to leave their homes to exercise and, presumably, buy food.

Detailed guidance has been promised before the lockdown begins on Friday, but at the moment the announcement says only essential travel will be allowed, and indoor or outdoor gatherings between those not already living together will be banned during the circuit-breaker fortnight too.

This means landlords hoping to complete tenancy check-ins or viewings have a short window in which to complete them.

Deadly virus

In justification of the measures, First Minister Mark Drakeford (pictured) said: “Unless we act the NHS will not be able to look after the increasing number of people who are falling ill due to this deadly virus.

“This is the shortest we can make it, but will be sharp and deep.”

The First Minister also confirmed that students will be required to lockdown in their student accommodation, and also an enhanced package of support for businesses including an additional £300 million added to the country’s Economic Resilience Fund.

Smaller businesses will also automatically be given £5,000 if they are required to close.

“A fire break period is our best chance of regaining control of the virus and avoiding a longer and much more damaging national lockdown. This is the moment to come together to protect the NHS and to save lives,” said Drakeford.

Read the announcement in full.
Read more about Wales.

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Window to Conservatory: HHSRS cat 1 hazard

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Portsmouth City Council (PCC) Licensing team have just done an HHSRS inspection of one of my student HMOs and given one of the rooms a Category 1/ band B hazard rating for ‘excess heat’ due to the room’s window opening onto a “conservatory”

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To charge or not to charge?

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I own and manage a small HMO and rent the individual rooms on an AST of 6 months. In August a new tenant moved in, 7 weeks into her contract she told me she was now on the shortlist to move to a council flat

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University putting landlords in danger of prosecution for unlicensed HMOs

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Following the recent revelation that the University of Warwick is dumping hundreds of private landlords in favour of its own student accommodation, it has today come to light that as part of this strategy it appears to have deliberately put landlords subject to Coventry City Council’s controversial Additional Licensing scheme at risk of prosecution and massive fines.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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