lettings
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Latest property news
No spare change for rented spare rooms?
The number of tenants in the UK renting a property with a spare room has nearly halved from 60% in 2010 to just 35% today, the lowest proportion on record according to Countrywide’s latest monthly lettings index. Also, the extra cost of renting a property with a spare room is now £295 a month, an increase of 14% over the past five years. “As affordability pressures have risen, for many tenants, extra space has become a luxury,” says its Head of Research Johnny Morris (pictured). “Sacrificing extra bedrooms and sharing has helped renters to absorb higher prices. But those living in the South are close to a point where there’s not much more room to squeeze, meaning rental growth is likely to be capped by tenants’ incomes for some time.” The squeeze on affordability in most British cities is also revealed by the research, which says that on average only a quarter of tenants in many urban areas of the south have a spare room including Bristol (24%), Oxford (28%) and Cambridge (27%). Those tenants living further north are more able to rent a spare room, the research shows, and for example in Liverpool the figure is nearly double at…
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Latest property news
Is Airbnb going too far?
The increasingly important role Airbnb plays in the UK property has been exposed following a recent Sunday Times investigation, and now questions are now being asked within the property sector about the true aims of the business, which started out as a way for home owners to make money from short term lets. “Short-term lets are undoubtedly playing an increasingly important role in the UK’s housing mix, and websites such as Airbnb make perfect sense for landlords who need to fill their property fast for a short period between tenancies,” says Richard Price, Executive Director of UKALA. “However, the emergence of Airbnb has rightly raised questions about the role they should play in the wider lettings market; after all, with demand for houses at an all-time high the last thing anyone needs is right now are rented homes taken out of circulation.” The Sunday Times also revealed that a significant number of short-let management companies have sprung up specialising in the management of Airbnb properties on behalf of landlords. Several suggested to the paper’s reporters that UK planning laws, which usually restrict rental periods to 90 days, are easy to break and poorly policed by local authorities. “The most important thing is…
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Latest property news
‘Proptech and eviction laws are emboldening tenants’
The rise of proptech-led apps coupled to the introduction of regulation to prevent the worst kind of predatory evictions has emboldened tenants and is one reason why more are asking for rent reductions, says David Cox, ARLA’s Managing Director. Last week ARLA revealed that the percentage of tenants asking for rent reductions has increased from 2.1% to 3%, the highest proportion since ARLA began keeping records. Cox says the relationship between landlord and tenant is now more balanced. This, he says, is because the plethora of private rented sector data now available online via both the portals as well as new apps such as recently-launched Movebubble mean many tenants are now more aware of local rental prices and whether their rent is fair or not. “Tenants are looking around and if they see that similar properties nearby are available to rent for much less, they now feel secure enough in their tenancies to start the rental re-negotiation process with their landlord,” says Cox. He says that many tenants who had complained to their landlord in the past about the condition of their property and subsequently asked for a reduction in rent would have been open to a retaliatory eviction, but that now this has…
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Resources
Rental market buoyant as tenants stay put
Rent across the country climbed again during July, building on the increases in the first half of the year, the latest HomeLet Rental Index shows.
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Latest property news
Families are largest lettings group
Families are the most common household type in the PRS for the first time, according to the latest research from the National Landlords Association (NLA). The findings show that more landlords now let to families with children (48 per cent) than any other household type, overtaking young couples (47 per cent). This represents a shift compared to four years ago, when young singles made up the largest group (53 per cent), followed by young couples (51 per cent), and then families with children (51 per cent). For the majority of families surveyed, renting privately is a stable option, with almost 8 in 10 (76 per cent) reporting they were happy with the length of their tenancy and a similar proportion (79 per cent) reporting their tenancy was renewed or stayed the same at the end of the initial fixed term. Richard Lambert, CEO, said, “There is a genuine contrast between the experience of renting in the 21st century shown in this research and the prevailing housing culture in Britain that only views it as a stopgap – something to be tolerated while waiting for the opportunity to buy your own house.”
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Features
Safe deposits
In April next year it will be ten years since compulsory deposit protection was introduced. So are the deposit protectors doing a good job?
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Latest property news
Profits up at LSL Property Services…
Good news indeed …but we are in uncertain times, says Simon Embley.
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Agencies & People
The identity parade
Can you smell a wrong ’un? How can really you be sure that you know that your prospective tenants are who they say they are and will behave as they should?
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Latest property news
Name and shame rogue landlords
Criminal landlords in London should be named and shamed according to a new RLA survey in which members backed Sadiq Khan’s plans to create a rogue landlord database.
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Features
Sun, sea… and problem tenants
Letting agents – do your landlords’ tenants give you grief? Maybe they do, but probably not as much as these tricky customers...
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