Often on my travels to letting agencies and landlord meetings, I experience the second-hand surprise (sometimes shock) that a tenant has gone bad in some way, shape or form.

Various exclamations are offered:

“I can’t believe a tenant would do that?!”

“They seemed so nice when we referenced them…!”

“He ‘suddenly’ stopped paying his rent.”

“She’s been on the phone again, ranting on about (fill in the blank…)”

Has this ever happened to you? Surprised at the unreasonable actions of a tenant? Shocked at a repair that has taken months to get this bad? Staggered that your tenant ‘suddenly’ stops paying the rent?

If you answered ‘Yes’ to any of the above with a big sigh and an exclamation mark (!), it’s likely you could have avoided the issue altogether, or at least avoided the surprise.

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Comments from Phil Martin and The Mortgage Rescue Network regarding the OFT recommendation that SARB should be subject to FSA Regulation.

http://www.oft.gov.uk/advice_and_res…nt/saleandrent
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/rep…on/oft1018.pdf

The OFT study is both comprehensive and accurate, I have found it extremely enlightening and it reinforced my views on best practise for the sector. Read the rest…

Vist Landlord Action

Apply both BTL financing models to the following scenario:

A commercial property is available at auction for £80,000. It may have potential to convert into 3 self contained residential units with values of £85,000 each. Hence, with some building costs and an initial purchase price of £80,000, there is potential to create 3 properties with a total value of £240,000. That is £160,000 of additional equity sitting there waiting to be created! Read the rest…

I have mentioned this in my previous book: The Landlords Guide to Surviving the Credit Crunch, however, it is an area that deserves further investigation and analysis. In the past few years this method was my bread and butter. I would do up to 15 of these deals a year and on each deal have plenty of margin to either hold on to the property and remortgage my initial investment back out (plus some extra) or to sell the property. Read the rest…

Make sure you use a solicitor experienced in creating leases. This may seem a relatively mundane process, but I assure it is of VITAL IMPORTANCE! When it comes to both remortgaging, and in future when you look at selling, a poor lease can mean you could lose thousands, if not tens of thousands of pounds in potential profits, and in extreme cases can prevent you from being able to sell a property. Let me illustrate with an example: Read the rest…

Now I do not intend to preach about the complexities and various skills needed to negotiate! Ways of dressing up, holding notepads, getting your friends to call you while you are with a seller, practiced facial expressions, keeping quite and all the other tricks of negotiating are available through numerous courses and manuals which handle this topic, so what I would say is that the key is to be able to gauge the lowest level at which a seller will accept your offer.

I do have one vital Rule when negotiating that I always remember when negotiating:

The first one to give a number LOSES!

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On the face of it, this method seems ludicrous in the existing housing market. Why would anyone be buying property when the value is highly likely to go down for any length of time. The last housing crash in the 1990’s saw prices go down by 30% over a 4 year period and took another 7 years to recover in real terms. Most people would not be willing to commit to putting any amount of money into a depreciating asset?
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