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Latest property news
John D Wood says goodbye to Faron Sutaria with… free coffee?
Countrywide recently announced that the Faron Sutaria brand would be disappearing and its remaining branches rebranded as John D Wood & Co. But the change of name has been “celebrated” in an unusual way. Every day this week and into next week staff from the re-branded central London branches are to give away nearly 2,000 cups of coffee to bleary-eyed commuters. The on-the-go coffee give-away is taking place during the morning rush hour near five branches; Notting Hill Gate, South Kensington, Fulham Broadway, Earls Court and Sloane Square. Coffee vans The coffee will be supplied by the kind of mobile vans familiar to city dwellers these days, which were hired from and staffed by London-based coffee firm Café Santiago. Today’s activity was on Earls Court Road at which members of the local John D Wood branch were present including (from L to R) Lisa Cavanagh-Smith (Senior Lettings Manager), Samiye Mahmoud (Office Manager) and Jiselle Jessop (Senior Lettings Operations Coordinator), Jessica Wright (Associate), William Miles ( Sales Negotiator) as pictured, above. The campaign kicked off on Monday in Sloane Square and then moved to Fulham Broadway on Tuesday (see picture below) and each morning 250 cups of coffee are being given away which a John D Wood…
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Latest property news
Minister comes down hard on rogue letting agents and landlords with £30k fines
The government has published details of a tough new system of civil penalties to tackle rogue letting agents and landlords. From today onwards these enable local housing authorities to issues fines to both landlords and their agents of up to £30,000 for a range of housing offences. The measures are part of the promises made in last month’s Housing White Paper to “create a bigger and better private rental sector”. “These measures will give councils the additional powers they need to tackle poor-quality rental homes in their area,” says Housing Minister Garvin Barwell (pictured, left). “By driving out of business those rogue landlords that continue to flout the rules, we can raise standards, improve affordability and give tenants the protections they need.” Offences covered include: Failure to comply with an Improvement Notice; HMO offences Failure to licence houses in areas where such schemes are operating Failure to comply with management regulation for HMOs. These new powers, which were introduced by section 126 and Schedule 9 of the Housing and Planning Act 2016, are designed to offer an alternative to councils to the costly and often lengthy process of prosecuting rogue landlords and agents. The penalties will be applied through a…
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Latest property news
NALS agents to get free legal helpline and services
Agent members of the National Approved Letting Scheme (NALS) can now use a free legal helpline supplied by London and South of England legal firm Moore Blatch. NALS says the move is designed to help letting agents tackle the 145 Acts of Parliament, health and safety requirements and 100s of regulations that now apply to the private rental sector. Agents can access the legal helpline both on the phone or via email between 10am and 5pm Monday to Friday, and will be offered advice and support by Moore Blatch’s team of specialist landlord and tenant lawyers. As well as the helpline, NALS members will be able to use a full range of standard documents, an online service that automates Section 8 and Section 21 notices covering possession, eviction and debt recovery. There will also be a separate and what NALS describes as a ‘simple’ system that will enable agents to produce legally-enforceable notices, letters and court documents on a solicitor’s headed paper. “There’s no doubt it’s a challenging time for agents, and we want to be able to support our firms in every way possible,” says Isobel Thomson, chief executive of NALS (pictured). “The legal landscape is constantly changing and…
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Latest property news
Big three portal traffic approaches 200 million visits a month
Both Zoopla Property Group (ZPG) and OnTheMarket have reported record traffic during January while Righmove appears to have stopped reporting its traffic entirely, although total portal traffic to the three sites is likely to be just under 200 million visits a month. But both ZPG and OnTheMarket have at least stopped throwing brickbats at each other and neither of their traffic reports mention each other, a change from recent times when both sides have questioned their competitor’s figures. ZPG says visits to its property sites Zoopla and Primelocation increased to a record of 53 million during January driven largely by mobile-based searches, which now constitute 72% of its traffic. The company also says the number of leads it generated increased by 73% year-on-year which, it says, are worth £50 million to its partner agents. “This is a great start to the year for both the business and the property market,” says Mark Goddard, MD of ZPG’s property division (pictured, left). “The numbers demonstrate that we continue to deliver incredible exposure, value and results for our partners.” OnTheMarket also had a record January, it says, receiving 11.2 million visits, an increase of 85% on the same month last year, when just…
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Latest property news
Heavy regulation has been good for Scottish rental market
Heavy regulation of the Scottish rental market in recent years has been a good thing for all concerned, says housing charity Crisis Scotland. After a clamp down on landlords and agents over the past ten years which has included four pieces of legislation, Crisis Scotland claims that all the potential downsides claimed by agents and landlords have failed to materialise. This has included increased responsibilities for and regulation of landlords and agents including an end to ‘no fault’ tenancy terminations, a Repairing Standard to enforce minimum property quality, strict HMO legislation, landlord registration and a ban on letting fees. Neil Guy (pictured), policy and practice manager at the charity, says the legislation has not restricted the growth of Scotland’s privatge rented sector (PRS) over the past ten years and that it has expanded faster than England’s, according to Scottish government housing data. Agents generally agree that the market is robust; for example Fiona Hindshaw of Clyde Property last month said that the “the general consensus across the board in Scotland is that the lettings market [during the final quarter of 2016] demonstrated continued strength and growth when compared to the same period in 2015 and we expect to see this growth…
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Latest property news
Zoopla-backed Landbay launches landlord mortgages
Peer-to-peer (P2P) buy-to-let mortgage lender Landbay has launched a new range of products for professional landlords that meet new tighter lending regulations set by the Prudential Regulation Authority that came into force in this week. These require rent to be 125% of mortgage payments at 5.5% APR and are yet another squeeze on the buy-to-let sector. The move by Landbay, which gained full FCA authorisation on 22 December last year after launching in April, comes after Zoopla invested a ‘six figure sum’ in the company. Zoopla also now promotes Landbay’s P2P offering via its ‘investment channel’ on Zoopla.co.uk. “The buy to let market is set to become more complex in 2017, as landlords face an increasingly intricate lending landscape and tighter regulation,” says Landbay’s Chief Lending Officer Paul Clampin (pictured). “It’s in such a context that borrowers and brokers need solutions that meet their changing needs, so these new products have been designed to do just that for the growing number of professional landlords.” Landbay was one of four ‘promising and innovative start-ups’ that Zoopla pumped £1m into during February last year. The other three include online mortgage adviser Trussle, property management softwre company Fixflo and housing data firm Property…
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Latest property news
Minister gives £1.2bn starter homes scheme green light
A scheme outlined a year ago while David Cameron was still in power that enables first time buyers to purchase discounted starter homes has been given the green light by housing minister Gavin Barwell (pictured). He told Sky News yesterday that up to 500 brownfield sites within 30 local authorities will create up to 30,000 new homes during the current parliament, funded via a £1.2 billion Starter Homes Land Fund. The sites will include several town centres and, the government says, will support wider regeneration and growth of local areas. Barwell says construction will “start quickly” and that planning permission for the sites will be streamlined, simplified and therefore much less expensive than for normal developments, enabling the properties to be sold ‘at least’ 20% below market value. The homes will only be available to first time buyers between 23 and 40 years old and the scheme only applies to properties selling for a maximum of £250,000 outside London and £450,000 within the capital. Each of the 30 local authorities (see list below) has been selected because, the government believes, they can implement the new scheme the fastest. Authorities must now identify potential brownfield sites working in partnership with the…
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Latest property news
Fees complaint to ASA highlights new ‘hybrid’ landlord
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) today published a complaint about Ace Relocations, a hybrid HMO landlord that offers professional renters in London rooms within shared properties and blocks of flats and calls itself a ‘house share company’. The complaint was about an advert that the company had place on Spareroom.com, which stated that all bills were included and a cleaner provided. The ASA considered that the advert was likely to have breached its advertising code because “it does not make it clear that the cleaner, and some other costs, are not included in the monthly rent despite the main claim made in the ad”, the ASA said. Ace Relocations agreed to amend both its current website listings and any future adverts, and the ASA file case was closed. What this highlights is the emerging world of hybrid-landlords-cum-property-managers like Ace Relocations. It offers agents and indirectly landlords the opportunity to rent properties outside the traditional tenancy model. Ace Relocations says it is ‘not an estate agent’. It rents properties directly from agents via a ‘commercial contract’ and then rents them to professional tenants. The company doesn’t describe itself as a landlord but, like one, collects the rent and holds the deposit while, like an…
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Features
Why I don’t think Airbnb rentals are legal, reliable or safe
Demand for short-term residential lettings is rising, particularly in city centres, says Jeremy Leaf, but what are the risks for landlords?
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Charity
Tayler and Fletcher’s 100 mile ride
Jessica Bates BSc and Edward Bagnall FRICS, colleagues at Tayler and Fletcher in Stow-on-the-Wold took part in the Ride London 100 mile sportive in July raising £5,000 for their nominated charities.
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