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International Law

The Landlord Law Blog

From Tessa Shepperson. Tessa, editor of www.landlordlaw.co.uk, ponders on life, the universe, and residential landlord and tenant law

Post Frequency: 1.7/day

Last Entry: November 25, 2009 at 08:47:00

The Landlord Law Blog has now moved

Posted on November 25, 2009
As mentioned in my earlier post, there is now a new Landlord Law Blog, and therefore this is the last post here. The new blog can be found at www.landlordlawblog.co.uk. Please can you change any links you may have to this blog, and any RSS or other settings...

Book Review - Furnished Holiday Lets, by Carl Bayley

Posted on November 17, 2009
Note - the Landlord Law Blog has now moved to www.landlordlawblog.co.uk.If you rent out furnished holiday accommodation, you should buy this book. At present there are tax advantages in renting out furnished accommodation, but on 10 April, this will all change...

Raising the rent a room tax rebate

Posted on November 15, 2009
The National Landlords Association (NLA) and spareroom.com are both calling for the rent a room tax scheme tax threshold to be increased. It has been Ł4,200 since 1997 and since then prices have risen considerably. To quote the NLA:"The NLA supports the Raise the Roof campaign's call for the Rent-a-Room threshold to be increased to Ł9,000 pa...

New developments on Landlord Law

Posted on November 12, 2009
Several things I have been planning for a while will come to fruition shortly. The NewsletterThe Landlord Law newsletter is an important part of my service. However, the newsletter mailer I have been using almost since we started in 2001, is now a bit old and clunky...

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Sherbet - Charity of the Month - (November 2009)

Posted on November 11, 2009
Well done High Court Enforcement company Shergroup for setting up the Sherbet foundation charity, aimed at families affected by enforcement. Shergroup along with other enforcement officers have a clear responsibility to enforce the orders and judgments of the courts...

Another tenancy deposit problem ? what happens when the receivers step in?

Posted on November 11, 2009
Note - the Landlord Law Blog has now moved to www.landlordlawblog.co.uk.I have been contacted by a landlord who has drawn my attention to a thread on the popular LandlordZone forum: ?Briefly, the rental property has been in the hands of the receivers since July 2008...

Book review - The Essential Guide to Flatsharing by Rupert Hunt and Matt Hutchinson

Posted on November 09, 2009
This book is written by the owners of the popular SpareRoom.co.uk flatsharing web-site. It is addressed to 'sharers,lodgers, and everyone renting out a room', and is very much a companion book to their web site service. As the authors have been working in the field for such a long time (their London flatsharing site, intolondon...

Landlord flouting the spirit of the tenancy deposit legislation says Judge

Posted on November 07, 2009
Note - the Landlord Law Blog has now moved to www.landlordlawblog.co.uk.There is new tenancy deposit case report in the November issue the Legal Action Magazine, Da Costa v. Pinter, which took place at Bromely County Court in April 2009.Here the tenancy agreement provided for a monthly rent of Ł1,950 but also stated 'Payment required in advance of Ł4,200'...

Tax Man in Hot Pursuit of Landlords ? guest blog by Roberta Ward of My Property Mentor

Posted on November 06, 2009
This post first appeared on Roberta?s excellent My Property Mentor Blog on 19 October 2009. You may not be aware of this- I certainly was not-but HMRC are actively searching for landlords who are avoiding paying tax either by accident or by design.HMRC is actively searching local newspapers for information on planning applications for flat conversions...

Snippets from the Property Investor News

Posted on November 04, 2009
Reading (rather late) the October issue of Property Investor News, I came across these interesting snippets of news:InsuranceApparently a survey by insurance firm Direct Line for Business has thrown up the fact that many landlords are cancelling their insurance policies 'to save money'...

Tenancy Agreements ? resources on Landlord Law

Posted on November 03, 2009
Note - the Landlord Law Blog has now moved to www.landlordlawblog.co.uk.Tenancy agreements and information on tenancy agreements is an important part of the Landlord Law service that I provide. Sometimes people find it difficult to locate all the tenancy agreement related resources on the site, so I have done this page of links to help them:If you are not sure what type of tenancy agreement you need, you can use the Which Tenancy Agreement Guide Here is a page with some general information about our tenancy agreements serviceThis is the tenancy agreements downloads home page...

Urban Myth - tenancies must be ?renewed? when the fixed term ends

Posted on October 31, 2009
Note - the Landlord Law Blog has now moved to www.landlordlawblog.co.uk.This is a myth largely created by letting agents, as an important part of their income stream comes from charging landlords for ?renewals? for tenants. But they are not actually necessary...

Where next for the Private Rented Sector?

Posted on October 29, 2009
At the recent CLT Conference I attended, there was an excellent talk by Professor Martin Partington OBE (former Law Commissioner) on possible future developments in the Private Rented Sector (PRS). I set out below a very condensed version of his notes (with his permission)...

Is excess interest to doorstep lenders really costing the economy Ł9 million per year?

Posted on October 28, 2009
I was interested to read a report sent to me by Sally Chicken (Director of the Rainbow Saver Anglia Credit Union) regarding some research carried out by Leeds City Council and its partners. This was to see whether resaerch carried out in 2004, which concluded that up to Ł9 million each year was lost to the local economy through people having to pay out excess interest to doorstep lenders, was actually correct...

How to protect yourself against rogue landlords

Posted on October 25, 2009
An interesting article in the Cash section of the Observer today looks at the increasing tendency of tenants to check up on their landlords before signing a tenancy agreement. And quite right too! As has been reported on this blog in the past, innocent tenants have been known lose their homes at short notice and through no fault of their own, due to their landlords dishonesty...

Four tips for Landlords on problems with HMOs and HHSRS

Posted on October 24, 2009
At the CLT Housing Conference last Wednesday which I attended, some interesting points were made by David Smith (of Pain Smith Solicitors) in his talk. Consultation for additional licensingLocal Authorities can apply for additional licensing powers but the regulations include requirements that proper consultation be carried out first with relevant parties, which should include, for example, local letting agents...

National Landlords Association Conference

Posted on October 24, 2009
The National Landlords Association (NLA) conference is to be held this year at Birmingham on 20/21 November. I will not be there (having already travelled once to Birmingham, from Norwich, for the Landlord & Buy to Let Show I felt that was enough). However it looks to be a good event...

Summary of posts on the Foxtons case

Posted on October 23, 2009
I wrote several posts on the Office of Fair Trading v. Foxtons case in July. As I find I am having to refer to these quite a lot in advice to clients, I have decided it would be helpful to have one page with links to them all. OFT Victory in Foxtons unfair contract terms case...

NLA gets Tory promise for direct payment of LHA to landlords

Posted on October 22, 2009
When speaking to Simon Gordon of the National Landlords Association (NLA) recently at the Landlord & Buy to Let Awards dinner, he was telling me about their lobbying work, and how they attend all of the party conferences. Well it seems as if all this has paid off as the conservative party have now announced that they will reinstate direct rent payments to landlords where housing benefit tenants choose, if they become the next Government...

Lecturing for CLT

Posted on October 21, 2009
As some of you will know, today I was speaking at the CLT 12th Annual Residential Landlord & Tenant Update. The great thing about speaking at one of these events is that there are eight other brilliant speakers to listen to (and I get CPD). The day started with an interesting overview of recent developments from Rafael Runco, the Deputy Housing Ombudsman,...

Another devious agents ploy

Posted on October 20, 2009
At the recent Landlord & Buy to Let Awards ceremony, the presenter Konnie Huq had an interesting story about a ploy used by a large firm of agents she now regrets having used.The told her that they had found a tenant who was willing to rent her flat for five years...

The Landlord & Buy to Let Show and Awards

Posted on October 18, 2009
I was at the Landlord & Buy to Let Show at the NEC Birmingham on Friday and Saturday. An enjoyable two days, although I had a bit of a journey to get there (4-5 hours cross country by train from Norwich). I arrived at about 3.30pm, so was able to talk to a few people before doing my talk (Essential Legal Points for Landlords)...

Urban Myth - Tenants who stay on after the end of their fixed term are ?squatters?.

Posted on October 17, 2009
I do come across this view sometimes. Landlords telling me that their tenant has no right to stay on in their property, because he (the landlord) only agreed to let them live there for (say) six months. In a way the law is rather pitched against landlords...

Médecins Sans Frontičres - Charity of the month (October 2009)

Posted on October 15, 2009
Médecins Sans Frontičres is an international humanitarian aid organisation that provides emergency medical assistance to populations in danger in more than 70 countries. This means not only those places in the headlines but other countries and places that few have every heard of...

I am 'twitterviewed'

Posted on October 14, 2009
Lance Godard is am American twitterer who interviews lawyers on twitter 'one tweet at a time'. All interviews have 22 questions and follow a similar format. Once done they go on his web-site 22tweets.com. I was 'twitterviewed' on 13 October, and Lance has given me permission to reproduce it here...

The Dispute Service Annual Report

Posted on September 29, 2009
The Dispute Service have published their annual report, which can be downloaded from their web-site (a direct link is here) and it makes interesting reading. I list below the points which struck me.Generally it looks as if the service has been under some strain during the year, due partly to the increase in tenancies covered and partly due to a huge increase in deposit disputes...

New Apple store opens in Norwich!

Posted on September 26, 2009
The nice people at Apple having sent me an email to say that they were having a 'Grand Opening' of their new store in Chapelfield (a shopping mall in Norwich) this morning, I decided to pop along to see. (Having invested in my wonderful Macbook in January)...

Amazon are selling my blog!

Posted on September 25, 2009
I was rather startled to learn today, via one of my feeds and reports, that Amazon appear to be selling a monthly subscription to this blog on Kindle for $1.99 per month! Can they do this without asking me first? It seems a bit of a nerve.Mind you, the blog will not be of huge interest to most Americans unless they own property in England which is rented out...

Plumbing problem

Posted on September 24, 2009
My Mother belonged to one of those schemes, where you make regular payments, and that is supposed cover callout charges for plumbers etc. Last week she had an urgent plumbing problem. She duly rang the help line but after punching a series of numbers into her phone, was eventually told that no-one was available to take her call and that she should ring back...

Long term tenants in Norwich

Posted on September 23, 2009
As a solicitor I see a lot of problem tenants and find myself writing a lot about problem situations, so it is nice to do a post about a tenancy, reported here on Norwich Evening News 24 website, which has been 100% successful. Doris and Jack Goodson have been tenants of their home in St Lawrence Street, off Pottergare, since 1967 and they have loved every minute of it...

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