A landlords life can be rubbish

This recent case in South Wales shows what can happen if a landlord gets the wrong tenants in.

A landlord returned to their flat to discover the kind of 'crap' that some tenants accumulate.

Unfortunately, everything was left bar the rent.

In this situation a landlord is left high and dry with the clean up costs.

It does demonstrate how having a guarantor can be a landlords saviour if the tenant does a bunk.

What would really cap it all is if somebody has also walked off with the wheelie bin.

Sometimes being a landlord can be a load of rubbish!

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Tips on Tenancy Deposit Disputes 6: Evidence

Tip 6: Evidence. Keep Receipts for Everything

With thousands of deposit disputes being decided by the deposit protection schemes every year, if you haven’t been party to a dispute yet, it is only a matter of time. The essence of my advice in this week’s column is to make like a boy scout and be prepared.

You should be keeping accurate records of expenditure for tax and accounting purposes, but I am consistently surprised at the lack of documentation kept by some landlords. You cannot predict what will be the subject of a deposit dispute and you could find yourself needing to prove anything from the age, quality or condition of an item of furniture, to the service history of an appliance. If you don’t keep records and receipts of work done on your property, you may struggle to make a successful claim.

In my experience, most tenant’s submissions at adjudication boil down to one of four basic defences, which I will discuss in more detail over the coming weeks. Where your claim over the deposit relates to damage to the property, the relevant tenant defence is “it was like that when I moved in.” You need to constantly be thinking about how you will defeat this defence when taking any action relating to the property.

For example, imagine you let the property with stained carpets, but you agree to replace them after the beginning of the tenancy. The tenant then stains your brand new carpets. At the end of the tenancy you make a claim on the deposit for the cost of cleaning the carpet. The tenant disputes your claim and takes you through the ADR process, stating “it was like that when I moved in”. The inventory from move in will support the tenant. If you don’t have receipts or other evidence to support your claim, you will lose.

Tom Derrett is the Principal of Deposit Claim, an ex-adjudicator and an expert on the Deposit Protection Schemes.

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Propped Up

Scaffolding has gone up at Property Sparrow's flat. Work on the roof is in progress.

This is music to Property Sparrow's ears.

She used to think that scaffolding was a sign of damage, that something has gone wrong with a building, that it was distressed in some way. It can be, of course. In this case though, Property Sparrow feels reassured; the poor old roof is receiving proper attention and support at last. She loves all the clanking about, the planking and the strong poles.

Spare a thought for scaffolders. They have been badly hit by the recession and there are about 10 deaths and a number of severe injuries in the UK each year.

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Weirdest looking tenant

An American tenant has tried to run over his landlord with a mini- van...

.....that's not the interesting bit, the weird and wonderful element to the story is that the tenant has a pair of horns coming out of his head.

This made it far easier to identify him in the line up.

Is this the weirdest looking tenant or are there landlords out their with stranger looking tenants?

Only in America - read the full story on CBS news.

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Allsop residential auction results

Allsop Residential reported a major two-day sale this month raising £43.4m from the sale of 358 lots. The success rate stands at 78% at the time of writing, significantly higher than the 61.4% national average for June this year (Source: Essential Information Group). This brings the total revenue from Residential auction sales this year for the firm to £183.2m (86%).

The catalogue was dominated less than in previous sales by distressed properties. These only made up 27% of lots on offer (50% in May). 68 lots were offered on behalf of the firm's in-house insolvency team.

In addition, over 100 lots were ground rent investments offered on behalf of a variety of property companies and private investors. These proved very popular with 96% selling (see yield analysis below).

Commenting on the result, auctioneer and partner Gary Murphy said "this was a great result given the challenging conditions of the market. From the rostrum it was clear that bidder sentiment had hardened since our May sales. Buyers are less willing to take risks than earlier this year and there's a general apprehension about the duration of the economic recovery. This is exacerbated by continuing restraints on new lending."
Average Yield Analysis Summary:

Assured Shorthold Tenancies 8.27% 

Assured Tenancies 6.58% 

Regulated Tenancies 4.19% 

Ground Rents over 80 years 4.95%

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Craigslist best practice

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, has told American agents of how he sees best practice when posting online letting adverts.

Speaking at a conference he said "Disclose who you are and what agency you're in. Cut down the hype level. Just be straight with people. Treat people like you want to be treated. Remember you are dealing with people a lot like yourself," he said.

Also, "don't do any keyword spamming. That has to do with throwing in a lot of terms (in the posting) that don't have to do with your property. People online are getting smarter and smarter."

Seems like honesty is the best policy, however some letting agents might struggle with this concept.

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