Search Results for: hmo
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Latest property news
Three letting agents fined £90,000 over unsafe and dangerous HMOs
Three letting agents in London have been fined a total of £90,000 this week for breaches of local HMO regulations.
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Latest property news
How can it be so cheap? Online agent launches £35 HMO service
Online lettings firm No Agent is claiming to be the first in the industry to offer landlords a fixed-fee management service for HMOs, charging £35 per room a month in England and £55 in London. The package includes a tenant finding service but not photos, which landlords will have to pay extra for. No Agent’s launch, which it says would work out at a 4.5% management fee excluding VAT, is designed to undercut traditional agents which it claims charge between 10-15% for a similar service. Landlords are charged a £100 set-up fee for its HMO package to pay for licensing and property condition checks. Photos are charged at £250 for the first room and £35 for each subsequent one, a cost which includes 30 days of accompanied viewings. The online agency, which has so far been funded partly through two crowdfunding campaigns and private VC investment, says its new HMO service is designed to attract landlords caught between the recent buy-to-let tax increases and the looming tenant fees ban. HMO service Its £35 service for HMO landlords includes quarterly inspections, rent collection, contract renewals and property management. No Agent also reports tenants’ rent to Experian if they agree to it…
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Regulation & Law
Government reveals HMO and ‘rogue agent’ crackdown
Housing minister Alok Sharma is to proceed with plans to significantly widen HMO licensing in the UK, and has also published the range of criminal offences that will soon trigger letting agents and landlords being automatically banned from the sector. The new measures will introduce significant additional responsibilities for landlords, letting agents and property managers, and stiff penalties for those convicted of certain criminal offences. The HMO measures, which apply to England and are to be introduced in April 2018 – assuming parliamentary approval – will see some 160,000 additional properties brought into licensing. The proposals frame these as those housing five or more people from two or more separate ‘family groups’. This significantly widens the range of property types included within HMO regulations, which used to only include properties with three or more storeys. Now, apartments and smaller houses will have to be licensed if they fit the new criteria. Enough is enough and so I’m putting these rogue landlords on notice – shape up or ship out of the rental business.” Alok Sharma, Minister for Housing Also, bedrooms offered by landlords and letting agents within HMOs will soon have to meet a new minimum size standard of 6.52…
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Features
How HMOs are getting trickier
Buying HMOs – Houses in Multiple Occupation – is an attractive option for investors, but, says Jeremy Leaf FRICS, – is it worth the cost and effort?
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Latest property news
Landlords turning to HMOs and commercial as extra buy to let taxes loom
Buy-to-let landlords are moving into HMOs and commercial property in a bid to mitigate or avoid the punitive extra buy to let taxes being introduced this April, it has been claimed. Allsop, which is the largest property auction house the UK, told The Daily Telegraph yesterday that it has seen three times the number of buy-to-let landlords entering the commercial property since the new taxes were announced last year by the then chancellor George Osborne. “We’re getting a lot of investors into our market because of the [tax] changes to buy-to-let. Once they have bought one, they can’t believe the simplicity and want to do it again,” George Walker, commercial auction partner at Allsop (pictured, left), told the paper. Landlords are also converting existing single-occupancy buy-to-let properties into HMOs in a bid to increase their income and offset the likely extra taxes, according to bridging loan specialist lender Roma Finance. The company says it funded more conversions cases of this type during 2016 than in any other year. “One landlord we worked with calculated that in one of their properties they could rent out five rooms, vastly increasing income and yield, for just a £30,000 conversion cost,” says Scott Marshall, MD of…
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Latest property news
Are your HMO landlords licensed?
Many landlords operating Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) properties are doing so without the correct licence in place, risking heavy fines, as well as potentially putting their tenants’ safety at risk, warns Rentguard Insurance. When a landlord recently received a huge fine for various breaches, including £3,000 in relation to violations of HMO regulations such as fire safety and being unlicensed, it added to a spate of cases highlighting the fact that many landlords are operating HMO properties without the correct licence in place. In another case, a Hounslow landlord who let out an overcrowded and rat-infested unlicensed HMO was recently ordered in court to pay nearly £40,000 in fines and legal costs. A total of 16 people were found crammed into the house and outbuildings, they included a family with a six-month-old baby living in a garden shed. Elsewhere, two west London landlords were ordered to pay a total of more than £50,000 for failing to register their property as an HMO and for breaching fire safety regulations after a fatal fire at their property in July last year. The landlords were prosecuted by Hounslow Council, which said that had the property been licensed as an HMO it would…
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Regulation & Law
Landlord’s £20,000 fine overturned after council runs out of time
High penalties are being imposed on landlords for minor indiscretions without any warning, warns London Property Licensing’s Richard Tacagni.
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Regulation & Law
Ombudsman supports landlord in rent-to-rent dispute with agency
Landlord Kusal Ariyawansa was shocked to discover his letting agent had signed a contract on his behalf.
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Housing Market
Majority of Reform’s corporate donors property-related
Property sector backing raises hopes any potential Reform government might take a more informed approach to housing policy.
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