Be prepared for these landlord law changes from October 1st 2018 The laws affecting buy-to-let landlords are constantly changing, and there is a raft of new landlord laws coming into force on October 1st. All are designed to offer tenants extra protection from erroneous eviction. What they mean is that it will be harder to [...]
Tips to mitigate the risk of financial loss when you evict a tenant In the past, saying how much an eviction might cost a landlord has been a little like asking how long a piece of string is. Now, thanks to a study of government statistics by Simple Landlords Insurance covering the whole of 2017, [...]
How to evict without becoming the subtenant’s landlord Your buy-to-let has been sublet without your permission. You are at risk. Your property could be damaged. If an injury occurs to an unknown tenant in your property, you could be sued for millions because your landlord insurance is voided. Your mortgage lender could insist you repay [...]
Landlord responsibilities for gas safety Utility bills are a cost that never seems to fall. For some unsuspecting landlords in London and elsewhere, their gas bill is enough to make them faint. In 2011, London landlord James Long had to pay £30,000. He hadn’t understood his landlord responsibilities for gas safety. In one of his [...]
Abide by this law to keep your reputation intact In my last post, I examined Section 11 Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 and your landlord obligations. This piece of law is pretty detailed when it comes to what repairs you’re expected to make as a landlord. It also provides a lot of guidance about how [...]
Abide by this law to keep your reputation intact In our series of articles about the rules for the buy-to-let landlord to evict nightmare tenants, I wrote about the help the law gives when you need to carry out an eviction. The law also bestows you with certain landlord obligations. For example, if you don’t [...]
How to accelerate a Section 21 possession In this final part of three, I’m going to look at how you can speed up the process of eviction by a Section 21 Notice. You might already have been waiting for a couple of months for your nightmare tenants to leave, and still they simply won’t budge. [...]
Should you include a break clause in the tenancy agreement When I discussed the 10 essential tenancy agreement terms and conditions recently, one of the optional conditions I mentioned was tenancy break clauses. Here I look at these and what they mean in practice. What is a break clause? A break clause is simply a [...]
The powerful tools called Section 8 and Section 21 Last time I looked at the legal basis of asking a tenant to leave your property. Provided you have followed all the rules heaped upon you as a buy-to-let landlord, any reasonable tenant will leave peacefully and when due. But, of course, we’re not talking about [...]
Nightmare tenants – we all get them. It’s what you do with them that counts For the buy-to-let landlord, the good news is that nightmare tenants are few and far between (especially if you vet the tenant properly). Now the bad news – if you’ve never had a tenant from hell, then be warned that [...]
