Today the High Court will begin hearing the legal challenges to the governments so called “bedroom tax”.   10 families, who each feel they have been discriminated against by the penalty for under-occupation of their social housing, have started legal  proceedings. The penalty came into force on 1st April.  Working age social tenants who are…

The so called “bedroom tax” was introduced on 1st April 2013.  The “bedroom tax” is a change to how much housing benefit a tenant is entitled to, which is calculated by the number of bedrooms a tenant needs.  There are various criteria which dictate how many bedrooms a tenant is permitted, and tenants have seen a…

In the aftermath of the news that landlords will now be required to check that their migrant tenants have the right to be in the UK, there is a large amount of confusion over who needs a visa, what type etc. For more information about the type of visa your migrant tenant requires, please visit…

Private landlords will be legally responsible for ensuring that they only let properties to people allowed to be in Britain under immigration laws to be announced in tomorrow’s Queen’s Speech. Almost two million buy-to-let property owners will be responsible for checking the immigration status of potential tenants, with fines running into thousands of pounds for…

Rightmove have just released their latest TV ad.  See the rightmove adverts from the past: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/news/articles/rightmove-news/rightmove-tv-adverts-through-the-years

The case of Johnson v Old is one that could have had a huge impact on landlords who take payment of a number of months rent in advance. On serving their tenant with a section 21 notice, the tenant, Ms Old, argued that their 6 months lump-sum rent payments were, in fact, deposits, and should…

Homelessness charity, Shelter, have released research which says that children’s lives are harmed by growing up in rented homes. Richard Jones, policy director at the Residential Landlords Association, has accused Shelter of ‘scaremongering’. He said the charity was playing a ‘dangerous game by frightening off investors from increasing the supply of much-needed private rented housing’….

Barnet Council have won their case against a landlord who failed to use his empty property grant to make improvements to his property and raise it to a habitable standard. In February 2009 the council offered Peter Savva an empty property grant to help with improvement to his empty property in Mill Hill. The £18,285 grant…

We were recently asked by LandlordZONE to write an article which could be published on their website, and sent out in their monthly newsletter, and here it is! Now that the sun is out, tenants are starting to think about moving. If you are looking for new tenants, it’s important that your property stands out…

Eleanor White from The Online Letting Agents was recently asked to comment on the situation of housing benefit being paid directly to landlords. Universal Credit trials have been taking place across the UK, and the results have shown a rise in rent arrears.  There is a growing concern in the industry that the introduction of…