Tips for new landlords from Savills

Thinking of becoming a landlord? Read our tips for letting out a residential property: https://t.co/H3TV9Yonzd pic.twitter.com/OwBIifXHRU

— Savills (@Savills) August 17, 2016

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Why are landlords demonised?

Rented homes are desperately needed, so why are landlords demonised? https://t.co/MEFYIRsfob pic.twitter.com/IQAIyT6VPY

— Telegraph News (@TelegraphNews) November 15, 2015

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More Friends than Rising Damp

The Telegraph provides a helpful article for the new wave of landlords wanting to rent out their spare rooms.

Seems that this new generation of landlords is seen as more Friends than Rising Damp, more cappucino than Camp coffee, more smiley than slimey.

But we all know thats all surface veneer, deep down they're as misery as Rigsby but with the surface affectations of Joey.

Read the full tips article here in the Telegraph and welcome to the dark side my young apprentice.

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Buy-to-let total returns

Property services company LSL has claimed that as a result of the recent declines in house prices, the total return from investing in buy-to-let over the last year dropped slightly to 10.1 per cent in July.

The average landlord would have made a total return of £15,961 in the last year, £8,706 in capital gains and £7,255 in rental income.

An investor buying property now could expect a total annual return of 3.5 per cent, the equivalent of £5,838.

However, these figures are likely to underestimate the real return made by many landlords. This is because landlords frequently target higher yielding properties where the ratio of rent to capital value is higher than for the average property.

What has also been seen over the last 12 months is the exodus of many of the accidental landlords who decided to rent their property out rather than sell into a depressed and falling market. Many of these landlords are now attempting to sell their property; resulting in the disappearance of the glut of properties and thereby forcing rents higher.

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Remortgages lead the way

According to an industry expert Andy Young of TBMC, remortgages accounted for over 40 per cent of all buy-to-let mortgages in the first three months of this year.

Mr Young said: "TBMC has seen a steady growth in the remortgage market over the last three quarters, with 45 per cent of applications received in the April to June quarter for remortgages up from 41 per cent in the first three months of this year."

Any Young of of TBMC believes that the strength in remortgages reflects the recent availability of some competitively priced buy-to-let mortgage products in the market place.

For the latest buy-to-let mortgages have a look at Property Hawk Mortgages.

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Latest possession research

The latest research by the NLA shows that almost half (47%) of possessions by landlords are due to the tenants failure to pay their rent.

The research also showed that 57% of landlords reported that the tenants took less than 3 months to move out.

Over 4 out of 5 cases (81%) were resolved in 5 months.

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Buy-to-let lending up in 2nd Qtr

The latest figures on buy-to-let lending reveal that lending has risen to its highest level since the fourth quarter of 2008.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) figures revealed that in the 2nd quarter of 2010 the number of buy-to-let mortgages taken out rose to 24,900, up 13% on the previous quarter. This figure was also 15% higher than the he same period last year.

At the end of June, there were 1.26 million buy-to-let mortgages outstanding, worth a total of £149 billion, accounting for 12% of all mortgages - the highest proportion since records began, the CML said.

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Property Hawk has almost reached the magical 1000th follower on Twitter.

That's a thousand landlords and property investors getting the latest landlordnews every day.

If you not signed up to follow us do it now & the thousand follower will win a once in a life time prize!

Yes the winner will be awarded a Property Hawk cup cake....

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Landlord views

According to the latest research in Q1 2010 three quarters of landlords think life as a landlord is getter harder. Is that just because we are getting older?

Whilst we all think landlording is getting tougher; over 40% of us remain positive about being a landlord.

We all seem to believe that property investment is about safeguarding our future; with over 80% of landlords in agreement with the statement that 'my property is my pension'. With the Stockmarket suffering bouts of schizophrenia and deposit accounts paying diddly squat.

Amen to that!

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NLA award validity

A follow up on our questioning of the validity of the NLA women in property awards, that any regular PH readers would know we haven't got a great deal of time for. (but that might say more about us)

(... maybe we're just too metropolitan man for our own good and should take a chill pill and fire up the quattro back to 1980s attitudinal).

Anyway following on from a comment placed on the post a Moregeous has posted questioning the validity of the whole judging criteria.

She questions -
"How can the judges decide on the regional winners, based on the competition’s stated criteria, when:

No verification checks have been done about the claims made by the entrants on their own entry forms
No evidence has been provided as to how they run their businesses, in the form of an interview, or references provided by, for example, a bank or trade contacts
No examination has been made of the condition of the entrants’ properties, even in the form of photographs, which every landlord has for marketing purposes."

Alongside this seemingly it's not really a competition about women running successful property businesses but rather which women can bring along the biggest sob story.

Morgeous continues to inform us that "The organisers then admitted that “overcoming personal obstacles” was one of the criteria given to the judges, even though it hadn’t been advertised, so those entrants who’d also included a great sob story were at an advantage."

Cue the music and tears and where's Cilla Black when you need her.

Not a patronising, opportunistic PR opportunity then?

Read Moregeous very enlightening post here

PS Before we annoy the NLA any further - we do think they are the best of all the landlord associations.

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Landlords still optimistic

The latest quarterly research of over 500 landlords conducted by BDRC Continental reveals that optimism amongst landlords continues to recover with more than a half of respondents (57%) considering their business prospects for the next three months as good.

Inevitably this optimism comes in part as improved profitability for portfolio landlords see rental levels at record highs as interest rates remain on the floor.

Over three quarters or 79% of all landlords say they are making profits up from 73 % in the third quarter of 2009. Almost a third of landlords (32%) claim to be making enough profit to save money and this figures reaches 48% of professional landlords, those with 20 properties or more.

Added to this good news for revenues landlords were treated to a capital gains system which was much kinder than many landlords had feared.

And the sun is shining! No wonder we are a happy lot...

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Prices slashed by £14,700

The average price reduction for one of the 66,445 properties reduced in price last month was a massive £14,700.

This is according to property portal Home which currently has over 800,000 properties on it's books.

The conclusion is that many vendors are over valuing their properties and are then forced to subsequently reduce them. Any property investor should be still looking to drive down the price of a potential acquisition especially if they are a cash buyer or have ready access to mortgage finance.

Buyers are still in short supply say the website home and the average time to sell now stands at 94 day.

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Remortgaging at 5yr low

Latest figures from specialist lender Paragon Mortgages indicate that the proportion of remortgages handled by buy-to-let mortgage brokers is at its lowest level in 5 years.

Paragon's confidence tracking quarterly index showed the proportion of buy-to-let business sold through intermediaries fell to 13 per cent of total mortgage business, down from 14 per cent in the previous quarter.

According to the index, remortgaging accounted for 28 per cent of buy-to-let business during the first quarter of 2010. This was down from 30 per cent in the final quarter of 2009 and is the fifth consecutive quarterly fall.

John Heron, managing director at Paragon Mortgages, said: "There is little incentive for landlords to move from their existing lender, and even if they wanted to there is a serious lack of buy-to-let mortgage products available."

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Landlords opinion survey

For those landlords that love statistics here some from the Young Index quarterly survey of landlord attitudes.

In essence they point to the fact that most landlords see property as a long-term investment.

Interestingly they reflect the fact that landlords are largely positive about the prospects for the property market. Of those landlords questioned 78% believe prices will be higher in London in a years time compared to 49% who thought this to be the case outside the capital.

· 100% of landlords intend to hold their residential property investments for the next 12 months.

· 47% intend to hold their assets for at least 10 years.

· 24% of landlords intend to retain their property investments for the next 20 years or more.

· The average period that residential property investors expect to hold their property investment assets is 12 years.

· 49% of investors are considering purchasing additional residential property assets within London over the next 12 months.

· 22% of investors are looking at opportunities in the UK outside of the capital.

· 78% of respondents believe that London prices will be at current levels or higher by this time next year.

· For UK property outside of the capital, 49% expect prices to be at current levels or higher by this time next year.

· Landlords expect to see an average price increase of 1.48% by this time next year, twice the increase they were expecting last quarter (0.7%).

· The predicted 12 month outlook for UK property prices outside the capital is a fall of 0.58%, compared to the drop of 1.0% predicted last quarter.

· 94% of respondents expect the Bank of England base rate to be higher than the current all time low of 0.5% by the beginning of 2011.

· The average base rate expectation for Q1 2011 stands at 1.25%, up from the 1.1% predicted for Q4 2010 in last quarter’s Index.

· 93% of landlords believe that Estate Agencies should be regulated.

· 86% of landlords believe that individual estate agents should be subject to regulation.

· 68% of landlords believe that they themselves should be regulated.

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Tories call to revoke HMO regs

The Tory leader David Cameron has raised the issue of changes to the planning system to require planning permission for HMO properties and has called for the changes to be revoked.

Shadow Housing Minister Grant Shapps recently spoke to Property Hawk regarding the HMO changes which become law next week. Commenting on the new planning regulations Grant said:

"As ever this government turns to heavy handed legislation without really thinking through the consequences. The idea that all dwellings with three or more people should require planning permission is cumbersome and bureaucratic. It will lead to planning departments being bogged down with pointless applications. The government has already been warned off precisely this approach by their own housing reviews from experts like Rugg and Killian & Pretty. A lighter touch solution would be to provide the powers for councils to identify areas in their own local plans with a saturation of HMOs and then only require planning permission in these zoned places."

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HMO Changes to become law

From next week, landlords who want to rent an existing family home to three or more unrelated tenants will need planning permission.

The cost of making a planning application for a so called change of use is £335. This does not include the associated costs of employing an agent or the costs of drawing up the plans required to make the application. A decision on the planning application for a change of use will generally take up to 8 weeks for the local planning authority to decide on.

For a full run down of the new HMO regime effecting landlords have a look at our recent magazine article.

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News merges with blog

It's spring again - so time for a clear out.

We're constantly adding new things to the site, consequently we felt that it was looking a bit confusing, especially the homepage.

So as a way of tidying things up we have merged the landlord news with the landlord blog.

If users want to look at the historic news posts then they can still see them here.

We hope users like the changes, let us know what you think.

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Gosport Borough Council Landlords Forum

Gosport Borough Council's landlords' forum is taking place tomorrow at the Chapel, St George's Barracks, from 4pm to 7pm.

Any landlords who wish to go need to call the council on (023) 9256 5511 or email psh@gosport.gov.uk, to enable them to judge the quantity of biscuits required.