David Cox
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Latest property news
Tenant fees ban will cost nearly £10,000 a year per branch, says government
The government's own assessment of the fees ban is likely to cost the industry £340m during the first year, or nearly £10,000 per branch.
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Latest property news
Landlords increasing rents to pay for extra regulatory costs
Read how ARLA says more landlords are increasing their rents to pay for deluge of new legislation being introduced to regulate and tax the sector.
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Features
The Negotiator Conference & Expo 17
It was the biggest agency networking day of the year, attended by over 500 property professionals, Iain Duncan Smith and hosted by Radio 4’s Justin Webb.
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Latest property news
Even landlords support tenant fees ban, claims Welsh minister following consultation
The Welsh Housing Minister has claimed that the “vast majority” of people and organisation who contributed to a recent consultation on letting fees in Wales support her government’s proposed tenant fees ban including a “significant number of landlords”. Rebecca Evans, Minister for Housing and Regeneration (pictured), said 700 responses were received from tenants, landlords and letting agents and said early analysis of these responses revealed “strong support for action in this area”. Although a full response to the consultation is not expected until the New Year, the Minister says support for a ban is strong enough for her to reveal that a ban will now go ahead, bringing Wales in line with Scotland and soon, England. “I have therefore instructed my officials to proceed with plans to develop legislation,” she says. “Officials will also begin a programme of engagement with stakeholders to share information and help us shape detailed plans about how future legislation would work in practice.” Tenant fees ban It would appear that the Minister has not been swayed by ARLA’s postition that a ban would make renting more expensive in the long run, a claim it made in July when a proposed Welsh fees ban was unveiled.…
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Latest property news
Lettings legislation: is Government listening to the professionals?
Chancellor Philip Hammond’s autumn budget has failed to address the challenges faced by Britain’s ten million renters, says Belvoir CEO Dorian Gonsalves (pictured). “We are disappointed that despite persuasive arguments from many key financial and industry experts, there has been no reversal of the punitive tax changes that were imposed on landlords by George Osborne in 2015,” says Dorian. “We believe that reversing those tax changes would have been an important factor in helping to increase the supply of rental properties in this country and would alleviate some of the pressure on a Private Rental Sector (PRS) that is facing unprecedented stress as tenant demand continues to increase and less good quality housing is available to accommodate this. Dorian says that it isn’t just a lack of a deposit and affordability issues in buying a home that aree driving tenant demand – “In many ways this budget seemed almost to put an unhealthy emphasis on home ownership and failed to recognise that many young people are actively choosing to rent rather than to become first time buyers. “The reasons for renting are numerous, the English Housing Survey of 2015-16 showed that first time buyers are increasingly likely to live in…
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Latest property news
Agents have at most 16 months to get ready for letting fees ban, says ARLA
The letting fees ban in England is expected to be introduced in April 2019 at the latest, the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) has confirmed, to give agents time to implement the looming Client Money Protection (CMP) regulations before the ban goes live. “Mandatory CMP needs to come into force before the letting fees ban does to prevent some more unscrupulous agents from propping up their businesses through their client funds when the ban comes into force,” ARLA’s Chief Executive David Cox told The Negotiator. He also revealed that ARLA is to tender to become one of the government’s approved CMP providers when the scheme goes live. Approved provider In its consultation document the government says it would prefer for CMP to be administered by an approved list of providers rather than civil servants running a centrally-run scheme, in the same way the deposits protection and redress schemes work. ARLA’s existing CMP scheme – members must have it in place to join – is the largest in the industry with £1.6 billion of the total £2.7 billion client funds held by the industry covered. “It’s all about creating a level playing field – people assume that the industry is regulated,…
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Latest property news
I’m a star! ARLA member to feature centre stage in next TV ad for Propertymark
The star of Propertymark’s latest TV advert has been revealed and it’s Adam Kingswood of Kingswood Residential in Nottingham (pictured, right). He will feature prominently in the soon-to-be aired follow-up to the NAEA/ARLA’s first ad which aired last month and included shots of several dozen agents carrying placards (see below) around a field, as well as a cow and a cheeky voiceover. Adam was picked from among the two organisation’s 20,000 members to star in the ad, which will be screened soon on several TV channels including More 4, Home, Good Food, Eden, Discovery, Sky Sports News and Sky Living. “The TV campaign has taken several months to develop, and it was really exciting to be involved in the filming of the advert,” Adam told the Nottingham Post. “By displaying the Propertymark logo in our agency window we’re letting consumers know they’re in safe hands and their money is protected. The launch of this television advert will help to raise further awareness.” Adam set up Kingswood Residential Investment Management in January last year and has ten years experience of the Nottingham property market including spells at Leaders, where he was branch manager, and PWR Lettings, where he started his career.…
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Latest property news
Leading Scots agent supports rent controls
One of Scotland’s best-known estate agents has said he supports rents controls. David Alexander, whose agency DJ Alexander operates across Edinburgh and Glasgow, says they could help make rental markets “more stable”. His comments come as Scotland prepares to introduce rent controls this December which, as well as ushering in a ‘new model tenancy’ to offer tenants greater flexibility and protection, will enable local authorities to identify rental pressure zones and introduce rent controls within them. David, pictured left, says rent controls could work if “implemented wisely” and that rental markets already self-regulate because landlords often choose tenants who they think will be reliable, and worry less about how much rent a property generates. “He or she will value a tenant who respects the property and who has a good payment record in more than just monetary terms; in other words, to retain such a valued customer, the landlord will invariably restrict any rent increase to the rate of inflation and in some cases not increase it at all,” says David, writing in the Scotsman newspaper yesterday. But David says he does not support the city-wide application of rent controls – which local authorities in Scotland have said they plan…
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Associations & Bodies
‘Make carbon monoxide alarms compulsory in all rental homes’
ARLA Propertymark has called for carbon monoxide alarms to be made compulsory in rented properties regardless of what heating system a property is fitted with. “At the moment, they only need to be in rooms [where there is] solid fuel burning, but we should be doing all we can to protect tenants,” says David Cox, its Chief Executive (pictured above, with Abrar Hyussain-Aziz from the Gas Safety Register). The comments come during Gas Safety Week, which runs from 18th to 24th September and is organised by Gas Safety Register, the registration body for the UK’s 120,000 gas safety engineers that replaced CORGI in 2009. This year’s event was launched last week in parliament with the support of Barry Sheerman, MP for Huddersfield (pictured, left) who highlighted how three of constituents recently died from carbon monoxide poisoning. This included a ten-year-old boy who was found dead in his bed after being poisoned by carbon monoxide leaking from a faulty boiler in the house next door. Chef Gordon Ramsay was caught up in a carbon monoxide scare recently when two members of his staff at the London House brasserie in central London were assessed for carbon monoxide poisoning, and adjoining flats evacuated.…
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Latest property news
How worried are you by the letting fees ban? Very, say 42% of agents
Nearly 42% of all agents in the UK believe the looming letting fees ban will be the biggest challenge to their business this year, it has been revealed. The next most important challenges are a lack of new landlords followed by online competitors, the research among 400 agents who between them manage 90,000 properties found. Fixflo’s annual report into the property management and lettings sector, its fourth so far, also looks at how agents are performing. This includes how it takes agents 71 minutes on average to respond to a repair request, an improvement on last year’s 94 minutes. And a fifth of agents take over three hours to respond while 12% of agents take less than half an hour, but it’s the way agents manage property repairs that has changed the most, the report highlights. Spreadsheets loss Some 65% of agents use software of some description to manage their repairs reporting and management, while the trusty Excel spreadsheet is almost a memory – only 13% of agents now use them. The report also reveals that agents are having to organise more repairs per property each year, up from 3.67 last year to 4.08 this year, while 10% of agents…
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