PM 3.0 suggestions

We have plenty of really useful comments about ways to improve the upgraded version of the Property Manager for landlords PM3.0. You only have to look at the comments section housed within our FREE online software to know that there are plenty of landlords actively using the software to manage their property portfolios.

I have one suggestion myself. Having just completed my tax return and having used the PM3.0 to calculate my rental profits from my portfolio. I was left thinking it would have been useful for the software to be able to format and print the information including the expenses and rental income contained in the tax summary screen in adobe? Perhaps I'm the only one who thinks this. Let me know...

Free property management software, Free tenancy agreements

BTL mortgages - most popular

Max LTV	Initial Rate	Term	Completion fee	Booking fee	Incentives	Overall Cost for Comparison
85%	5.99% Fixed	2 Years	1%	£130.00	No	6.6% APR
80%	5.69% Fixed	Feb 28 2014	£800	£199.00	No	6.3% APR
80%	4.99% Disc.Tracker	2 Years	£2995	£0.00	Refund of valuation to a maximum of £500 and free legals for remortgages only.	5.7% APR
75%	5.35% Fixed	Mar 31 2014	3%	£150.00	No	5.9% APR
75%	4.78% Fixed	2 Years	£1999	£0.00	Free legal fees for remortgage	5.7% APR
70%	3.75% Fixed	Mar 1 2014	2.5%	£0.00	£500 cashback	5% APR
70%	3.89% Tracker	2 Years	£995	£245.00	Free valuation and free legals for remortgages (properties valued up to £500,000).	5% APR
65%	3.79% Tracker	Dec 31 2013	0%	£250.00	Free valuation up to £700 for purchases and remortgages and free legals on remortgages only.	4.7% APR
60%	4.24% Tracker	2 Years	1.25%	£0.00	£500 cashback on completion	5% APR
60%	2.99% Fixed	Oct 31 2013	£2495	£250.00	No	5.2% APR

IMPORTANT! Due to current market conditions, lenders are withdrawing and replacing products with little or no notice.

Please check our website regularly to see the most up-to-date products available.

Email: info@propertyhawkbtlmortgages.co.uk

Tel: 029 2069 5446

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgages.

The Financial Services Authority does not regulate some forms of mortgage.

December rents

The average rent in England and Wales fell by 0.8% to £711 per month during December according to LSL Property Services, following a small fall in November.

The figures tally with Rent Index figures which show a fall of 2.45% over the last 3 months.

This comes as no surprise to landlords as December is traditionally a difficult month for letting.

"Rents dipped again in December, but the drop-off was much smaller than a year ago" said David Brown, commercial director of LSL Property Services.

"The rental market was sheltered from the full impact of the seasonal lull by the strength of underlying tenant demand as many prospective renters took the opportunity to move in the run-up to Christmas at a time when the market is traditionally less competitive."

New Rules on Flood Insurance

According to SearchFlow, a property information firm, billions of pounds worth of property is at risk of being left un-insured as the rules on flood insurance change.



Currently, the government’s “statement of principles” agreement means that up until June 30th 2013 insurance providers must continue to cover properties that are at risk of flooding, but even so, from June onwards this year, it is expected that many insurers will be severely raising their premiums for flood risk properties or just completely refusing to cover those types of property.



This is expected to have huge ramifications for not just homeowners but also business owners with a premises at risk of flooding and also commercial property owners who may find that their landlords insurance renewals do not cover flood damage anymore.



When asked about the situation, Richard Hinton, Business Development Director at SearchFlow, said “Although buyers will be able to obtain flood insurance for the next few months, the long-term prospects of properties at risk of flooding are potentially bleak.”

He went onto say that the situation was especially bad news “for buyers purchasing in high-risk flood areas, the possibility of very high premiums, significant reductions in value, less access to mortgage finance – even action taken by the mortgage lender due to breach of the mortgage agreement – is high.”

BTL set to boom?

The 'usual questionable data monkeys' have their statistical evidence regurgitated in the form of a Daily Mail article. This time its a 'BTL set to boom' angled piece, next week it could be a 'BTL set to crumble rant' depending on which way the journalist has their chair swiveled.

Does that sound like a don't believe the British free press? Sorry.

Anyway enjoy the article here

Discounted landlord insurance and multiple quote options here

Finance dominates expenses

I've just been calculating my tax return for 2010/2011 using Property Hawks PM3.0. A great improvement on PM2.0 in my humble opinion.

One of the additional features on PM3.0 shows that there is an almost 4:1 split on my expenses between finance and maintenance. The vast majority of my expenses are still interest charges despite the historically low interest rate. Interesting!

How does your rental portfolio compare?

Landlord insurance - best internet rates

Yorkshire BS relaxed lending

Yorkshire Building Society will be lending criteria as it moves its focus out from the South East to the rest of England and Wales.

Changes to its lending criteria are minimum property value down from

£150,000 to £100,000, minimum age reduced to 25 and minimum income down to £20,000.

Jeremy Law of Yorkshire BS, said: "We have listened to brokers and taken the opportunity our staged entry has provided to revise our lending criteria.

"However, our lending policy will still reflect the values of the Yorkshire as a prudent mutual and our primary focus is, and always will be, the interests of our members."

For a whole market search of BTL mortgages go here

Rental yields key

The Financial Times highlighted at the weekend the importance of buy-to-let rental yields in obtaining the best rates on buy-to-let finance and also the highest loan to value (LTV). This is because most buy-to-let lenders look at rental cover when accessing the acceptability of the loan. Rental cover is the amount of rent received or projected to be received compared to the size of the proposed mortgage payments.

The higher the gross rental yield the more scope a landlord has to gear up their investment with a larger mortgage and a smaller deposit.

Mortgage search - 80% LTV

Problem LHA tenants

Latest poll figures from website Spareroom reveals that almost 9 out of 10 landlords have had problems with tenants on benefit.

The poll indicated that 87% of landlords who accept housing benefit tenants have had issues with rent not being paid on time, with one in ten (11%) saying they have had tenants who stopped paying their rent altogether.

A warning? Perhaps. A lot of landlords who are prepared to manage their LHA tenants carefully make a damn good living out of renting to people on benefits. The secret is that you need to manage your tenants more actively especially at the beginning to ensure the tenancy proceeds smoothly in the long run.

Landlord Insurance - professional cover available

Promoting PM3

We're happy with the new version of the Property Manager software.
 
Landlords have told us that the system is excellent - big improvement on PM2 and much easier than the previous version. It's very easy to navigate using the site map and has a better layout. Above all, we've not had any reports of problems that weren't easy to fix.
 
We're now recommending the new version over the older PM2 version. All the data is shared, so you can use either version, even swapping back and forth between them. Not everyone likes the change, so for them we've kept PM2 live.
 

	runs the new version
	runs the old version

BTL mortgages - most popular

Max LTV	Initial Rate	Term	Completion fee	Booking fee	Incentives	Overall Cost for Comparison
85%	5.99% Fixed	2 Years	1%	£130.00	No	6.6% APR
80%	5.49% Fixed	Jan 31 2014	2.5%	£0.00	Refund of valuation to a maximum of £500 and free legals for remortgages only.	5.8% APR
80%	4.99% Disc.Tracker	2 Years	£2995	£0.00	Refund of valuation to a maximum of £500 and free legals for remortgages only.	5.7% APR
75%	3.74% Disc.Tracker	2 Years	£1999	£250.00	No	5.4% APR
75%	4.19% Fixed	2 Years	2.5%	£130.00	No	6.6% APR
70%	4.25% Disc.Tracker	2 Years	0%	£199.00	Free valuation up to £335 for purchases and remortgages and free legals on remortgages only.	6% APR
65%	3.99% Fixed	Sep 30 2013	£1295	£250.00	No	5.5% APR
60%	2.99% Fixed	Oct 31 2013	£2495	£250.00	No	5.2% APR
60%	4.99% Fixed	2 Years	2.5%	£130.00	No	6.8% APR

IMPORTANT! Due to current market conditions, lenders are withdrawing and replacing products with little or no notice.

Please check our website regularly to see the most up-to-date products available.

Email: info@propertyhawkbtlmortgages.co.uk

Tel: 029 2069 5446

Your home may be repossessed if you do not keep up repayments on your mortgages.

The Financial Services Authority does not regulate some forms of mortgage.

---

Mortgages rates set to rise

More talk of coming mortgage rate rises - read article here

For the whole market BTL search use our free search tool here

Tenancy deposit protection news

Shelter's advice line saw a 40 per cent rise in calls about rent deposit issues last year .

It hopes that new laws on tenancy deposit schemes, will help when they are introduced later this year.

The new changes will mean that tenants will still be able to make a claim against their landlord after their tenancy ends, it will also block the loop hole that allowed landlords who were prosecuted for not placing a deposit in any of the registered schemes to sign up posthumously before the case comes to court, which did seem rather ridiculous.

Discounted landlord insurance and multiple quotes

Rogue landlord tales

The Express highlight the problem of rogue landlords focusing in on Dave Wells Properties which generates £10million in rent a year in southern England.

Usual ingredients, rats, damp, unsafe boilers and no hot water.

Come on landlords we can do better than this.

BTL Mortgage review of 2011

2011 was a good year for the BTL mortgage market with an increase in the number of lenders and products available bringing more competition, wider choice and better deals for landlords.

Kent Reliance re-launched into the buy-to-let market in 2011 through a restricted number of distributors. It is currently offering a range of competitive landlord mortgages via four selected intermediaries only, including the provider of Property Hawk Mortgages. The core product range includes a 4.19 per cent 2 year fixed rate up to 75 per cent LTV with a 2.5 per cent fee and is also available on houses in multiple occupation, limited companies, student lets and freehold units split into flats.

Kent Reliance also launched an 85 per cent LTV product – 5.99 per cent fixed for 2 years with a 1 per cent fee – available from a limited tranche of funds and accessed via its selected distributors only.

There are also some very attractive rates currently available from regional building societies such as Leeds, Hinckley & Rugby and Saffron.

There has been an increase in the number of products with incentives such as free valuations, free legal fees, no early repayment charges or no completion fee. The remortgage market is also showing signs of improvement with more options available – good for those existing landlords looking to release equity to expand their portfolios.

Whilst growth in the market has been steady over the last twelve months it is still the case that the demand for buy-to-let mortgages in the UK outstrips supply, and further product innovation is required to support residential property investors during the year ahead.

The eurozone crisis has added extra pressure to the already fragile financial markets and it is expected that the overall mortgage market will remain flat in 2012. However, many industry experts predict that the buy-to-let sector will continue to experience an increase in new lending.

As UK banks await the outcome in Europe, it is likely that the uplift in buy-to-let business next year will be driven by existing specialist lenders and regional building societies which have demonstrated a healthy appetite to lend to landlords.

However, there could be other developments and markets can move quickly. For example, Abbey re-entered the buy-to-let market in December with a limited range of products, which could be an indicator of its desire to be a serious player in 2012.

Overall, the outlook for landlords is positive and the ability to arrange buy-to-let finance should continue to improve during 2012.

Search the BTL mortgage market now - FREE SEARCH TOOL