Liverpool
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Latest property news
Letting agent apologises after mistakenly trying to charge tenant illegal fees
Cautionary tale shows how careful agents must now be when issuing documents to ensure old charges aren't included in tenancy agreements.
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Latest property news
Liverpool is second city to transfer Local Land Charges to national online register
Move to make 'local searches' easier and cheaper follows move by Warwick, which was the first, with a further 17 local authorities folllowing suit this year.
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Latest property news
Faster home purchases promised as Land Registry begins putting councils’ local search data online
The Land Registry is to begin digitising the UK’s hundreds of Local Land Charges or ‘local searches’ registers in a bid to speed up the house buying process, a move it claims will help up to 125,000 house purchases over the next two years. Waiting for local searches to be completed by councils can be both frustratingly slow and, the Land Registry says, varies widely across the UK in speed and cost. This has created a ‘local search lottery’, it claims. Costs vary from £3 to £76 to complete searches which in some areas can take up to 30 days to complete, unnecessarily holding up thousands of home purchases every year. Local Land Charges information, which include checks on restrictions such as tree preservation orders, listed status and conservation areas, will soon be available within an updated central online database that solicitors will be able to access as either searchable PDFs or Excel spreadsheets. “This is a significant step forward in the Government’s ambition to make the house-buying process simpler, faster and cheaper,” says Land Registry Chief Executive Graham Farrant (pictured). The digitisation project has begun at 26 local authorities and the first to offer the service will include Blackpool,…
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Latest property news
Lettings sub-contractor jailed for eight years after huge cannabis farm network found
A man who worked as a lettings manager and builder has been jailed in Liverpool for eight years after using his network of 33 properties to set up a cannabis farm that turned over £7 million. For a period of two and a half years beginning in February 2015, 52-year-old Robert Zielinski sub-let the properties off legitimate letting agents and landlords in the city and promised to either find tenants for them or do them up, Zielinski got access to the properties by saying he could find a large supply of tenants from the Polish community and help rent out properties on a large scale. But instead Zielinski (pictured, left), who is from the Toxteth area of Liverpool, began growing cannabis at many of the addresses and, when arrested in July, some 9,500 plants were discovered at the houses with a street value of £7 million. “The growing of cannabis brings dangers to neighbouring properties because cannabis farms pose a very serious fire risk,” says Superintendent Mark Wiggins. “There will generally be a number of hot lamps hooked up to dangerously overloaded electricity sockets as well as an extensive watering system. “Clearly, electricity and water are never a good combination, and…
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Latest property news
Controversial rental property licensing scheme is ‘raising standards’, it is claimed
Liverpool’s citywide rental property licensing scheme is helping improve standards within the city just seven months after it began, Liverpool City Council has claimed. It says anti-social behaviour in ‘targeted’ streets has dropped following the introduction of the scheme, which requires landlords or their agents to manage anti-social behaviour within the properties. Errants tenants have to be given warnings about their conduct and, where necessary, licence holders must start legal proceedings against them or end their tenancies. The scheme has attracted several critics, who claim that the licence application form is in breach of the Data Protection Act and that landlords who join the scheme can be prosecuted for non-compliance in relatively grey areas of responsibility, particularly when dealing with anti-social behaviour, and that it requires landlords agents to ‘spy’ on tenants. The most vocal of these is Larry Sweeney who, in conjunction with website Property118.com, has attacked the ‘sham scheme’ for its failings including its rules on evictions. Sweeney claims the scheme’s rules contravene Section 33 of the Deregulation Act 2015 concerning the period after which a Section 21 notice can be served. “The scheme has drawn a lot of comment and challenges but taking the wider view of different stakeholders, early evidence…
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