Landlords and tenants in the Private Rental Sector will see significant changes to Local Housing Allowance (LHA) during the next few years. The 1st April 2011 is the first date to be aware of if you are in receipt of Housing Benefit. During 2010 the coalition government carried out its spending review and the benefits [...]
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Response to BBC’s Panorama Investigation into Rogue Landlords
BBC’s Panorama investigates rogue landlords in the private rented sector. Panorama’s exposé ‘The Great Housing Rip Off?’ comes hard on the heels of Shelter’s national campaign to evict rogue landlords and stop the exploitation of tenants in the private rented sector. Launched in September 2010, the investigation revealed shocking evidence of widespread abuse by a [...]
New research shows that almost one million tenants in Britian have been a victim of a scam
New research by the housing and homelessness charity Shelter reveals that almost one million Britons have fallen victim to scams involving a private tenancy or landlord in the last three years. Shelter commissioned YouGov to conduct an online survey of 2,234 GB Adults – 2% of whom said they have fallen victim to a scam [...]
LHA Tenants should be given the choice to pay the landlord direct
Tenants should be given the option to make Local Housing Allowance (LHA) payments directly to their landlord. According to the National Landlords Association (NLA), the government has already promised to tackle this problem, with rent arrears waste totalling millions of pounds. Public affairs officer at the NLA Vincenzo Rampulla stated that it would be an [...]
Rental survey reveals missed opportunity
A recent survey conducted by rental website lettingaproperty.com, showed that 14% of enquiries received were from tenants that are unemployed and that 8% of these tenants were claiming Local Housing Allowance (LHA). The survey, conducted in response to the current economic climate, was to assess the quality of enquiries received by the website based on [...]
Tenants struggling to pay rent
Most letting agents have seen an increase in tenants struggling to pay their rent, research has found. A survey by Arla found 55 per cent of letting agents said tenants were finding it harder to find the money to make their rent payments. Ian Potter, operations manager of Arla, said unemployment was the main reason [...]
TDS fees – how could this affect tenants?
The TDS is one of the largest government backed deposit schemes in the UK. They are responsible for over £1b of tenant’s deposits. Recently, they hiked up Letting Agent member fees to counter-act the cost of handling disputes they receive each day. As with most business operating costs – these are normally passed or absorbed [...]
Private Landlords to join a National Register
LettingaProperty.com have learnt that the Government are proposing a national register for private landlords. The aim of the register is to crack down on rogue landlords that fail to fulfil their duties when it comes to property repairs and returning of tenants’ deposits. The new legislation which will likely be introduced in the autumn will [...]
Tenants warned of latest deposit scam
Attention all Tenants. A new scam has been brought to light by the Deposit Protection Service (DPS) involving property that is advertised to rent on certain private-to-list websites. Scam artists posing to be Landlords are using sites like Gumtree and are asking unsuspecting tenants to prove that they can afford to pay the deposit and [...]
Should I rent a property instead of buying?
The British Property Federation is just one of the groups advising house hunters to consider rentals as apposed to buying a property, but why? Andrew Teacher of the British Property Federation has recently told Sky News in an interview that the UK’s fixation with home ownership has led us to the current high volumes of [...]
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