What new at Landlord Law

A new way for landlords to avoid problems with the law - an Easy way!

Tessa Shepperson — Fri, 25 May 2012 06:40:43 +0000

New content on Landlord Law

Although there is a certain amount of new content on Landlords Law - I have done a >> FAQ on legionnaires disease for example and >> new Q&A have been loaded up, during the past month I have mostly been working on my new course.

A new course for Landlords

This is specially designed for landlords (although letting agents will also find it most helpful) and is looking specifically at legal issues.

What it covers

For example

I look at how the statutory codes (which regulate most tenancies) work and consider the underlying rules. For example the difference between a tenancy and a license
We have a section on HMOs and look at the rules as well as the rules which operate anyway when several people share a tenancy
We look at tenancy agreements, the law relating to tenancy deposits and how to increase rent
There are also sections on disrepair and health and safety issues and, of course, on eviction of tenants
I also have sections on the little known law of agency which should underpin the way agents treat their customers, but sadly often does not

Who is teaching it

The course is not being taken by me alone though. For example

Solicitor Simon Parrott of Sharman Law will be recording an interview with me on practicall issues in agency law and taking one of the tutotials
John Murray of Emsleys and Residental Property Tribunal Chair, will be discussing the work of the Residential Property Tribunal and taking a tutotial
David Smith of Anthony Gold solicitors will be recording an interview on HMOs and taking a tutotiral
Health and safety expert Paul Marsh will be talking to me about fire safety and general health and safety issues
Surveyor David Porter will be discussing disrepair issues
Local Authority tenancy relations officer Ben Reeve Lewis will be talking about unlawful eviction and harassment

There will be a few others who will be announced later.

How it is being taught

To make it easier to learn, the course will be delivered in various formats. For example

Articles on standard web pages
Audios of these articles
The interviews discussed above (which will be available as vidoes or audios)
Specially recorded video content
Interactive diagrams
There will also be a number ot tutorials (delivered via an online 'classroom') which students can sign up for, plus
There is a separate discussions area where people can disucss the course and ask questions of the tutors

How much it will cost

As the course is going to be delivered in 10 modules over 20 weeks, the standard price of £180 (£150 plua VAT) is rather reasonable.

There are discounts for registered charities and for organisations where several people from the same office will be attending.

How to sign up

For more information and to book your place >> click here.

New tenancy deposit regulations come into force

Tessa Shepperson — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 08:41:18 +0000

Updated content

April 6 is one of the two days in the year (the other being 1 October) when new regulations come into force. Here are the two main regulations which affect landlords.

Tenancy deposits

As all landlords and agents should now be aware, the tenancy deposit regulations have been tightened up to stop up the loopholes exposed by the cases of Tiensia and Hashemi.

All landlords MUST now protect deposits within 30 days or be at risk of a claim by the tenant for the penalty of between one and three times the deposit sum, until the limitation period expires in six years time.

I have gone over the site and have updated all the FAQ and articles I can find which mention tenancy deposits.

If anyone spots anything I have missed please let me know (Landlord Law is a very large site).

I have also reviewed and updated the Landlord Law the prescribed information form.

I give a guide to landlords on what to do about the changes on the Landlord Law Blog here.

Energy Performance Certificates

This is the other regulatory change. Again things are being tightened up and landlords and agents now need to have an EPC within seven days or marketing a property or risk getting a penalty from Trading Standards (although in reality you will generally get a warning first).

Credit Unions

Finally, I have added a new credit union to my list of Credit Unions which will accept LHA payments for onward payment to landlords - Kent Savers Credit Union. If you know of any other credit unions which should be on my list, please let me know.

You can see the list here.

New notification forms and a new eviction service

Tessa Shepperson — Wed, 14 Mar 2012 09:46:48 +0000

New content

New Q and A are regularly loaded up to the site.

Notification forms - these are handy forms you can use to record the meter readings at the time the tenant goes into the property and also the time he (or they) vacate.

The forms also confirm that you can inform the utilities, for example of the tenants forwarding address after they have vacated. They can save you a whole load of problems.

They are also often popular with tenants who are only too pleased to let you deal with the tedious business of keeping utilities informed of a change of occupier.

Members will find them >> here.

New all in one repossession service - see further on this below

Deposit Guard complaint tenancy agreements - one is now availbale for our Tenancy Agreement for a room in a shared house where the landlord pays the bills - added at the requst of one of our members. If YOU would like a Deposit Guard complaint version of one of our other agreements then just (assuming you are a member) let us know.

Tenancy agreement review

As many of you will have seen in the recent newsletter, I am looking to do a general review of my tenancy agreement terms.

If you use the Landlord Law agreements it would be very helpful if you could let me know which agreements you use the most, and what (if any) changes you would like to see made.

I suspect that the review will take several months to complete as I want to give members time to comment, plus I may also be doing some small changes to the general document generator template.

Featured content - new all in one repossession service

I have been finding more and more with repossession work that a careful analysis of the situation at the start really is essential. Particuarly as tenants are now a lot more knowledgable and are more likley to defend a case if this is at all possible.

In several recent cases the client has instructed me to bring one type of claim only for us to find later that we needed to do something else. This involved one client in additional expense as I had to draw up two sets of proceedings - the type of procedure he had requested being unsuitable.

To deal with this I have now set up a new all in one service which includes a detailed analysis of the case to work out which is the best procedure to use.

Assuming the case is one that can be run at all (as I do not take cases forward if I consider that the tenant has an arguable defence) the all in price will include all the work involved. So if extra notices need to be served or the bailiffs instructed, I will absorb the additional cost of this into the all in one price.

The price include six months free Landlord Law membership for non members (existing +Plus members may be entitled to a proportionate refund).

Click here for more information. (Note that this page also includes information on the considerably cheaper step by step do it yourself option).

Deposit Guard compliant tenancy agreement and a new letting agent checklist for landlords

Tessa Shepperson — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 11:08:18 +0000

New content

New Q and A are regularly loaded up to the site.

Deposit Guard compliant tenancy agreements

As many of you will have seen in the news, a new tenancy deposit scheme has been launched by the Residential Landlords Association partnered with TDS. The scheme is cheaper than My Deposits, but the landlord will need to have special clauses in the tenancy agreement.

I am pleased to announce that we now have deposit guard compliant versions of my standard AST (the most popular one) and the rent a room agreement. I have also added a new tenancy version for both of these for use where a third party pays the deposit (and wants it returned to them at the end of the tenancy).

Questionnaire / checklist for landlords using letting agents

This is a handy list of questions to ask any letting agent you are thinking of using to manage your property, with space to jot down the answers. Questions kindly suggested by Sandra Savage-Fisher of QuaLETy Ltd. FInd it >> here.

Featured content - new tenancy agreements

We have a huge number of tenancy agreement templates. It is one of the features of Landlord Law. For example there are versions for the let of the whole of a flat or house, for a room in a shared housse, for tenant who is being allowed to keep a pet, for a tenancy where the landlord pays the bills and so on.

I now need to add, for all of these variants, a Deposit Guard version! However I will not be adding them all at once.

If you are a member and there is a version of my tenancy agreements, or a particular combination of types that you would like, just ask and I will put one online for you. I can usually do this within 24 hours, sometimes sooner.

School for Landlords videos and a new home page

Tessa Shepperson — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 08:23:35 +0000

New content

New Q and A are regularly loaded up to the site.

As you will probably have seen, we have a new home page design, and this blog is no longer featured there (although there are links). See more about the new home page below.

I have finally got around to doing a step by step guide to using the forum - for some reason people often get scared about using this - but now there is no excuse!

School for Landlords

Vidoes: This is my series of short videos which appear for two weeks on my Landlord Law blog and the School for Landlords free of charge for two weeks.

+Plus members however can see a superior version on the Landlord Law site permanently >> here - the video is bigger and there are links below to relevant content and sites referred to in the video.

The first module, which was on increasing rent, has now finished and you can see the whole series (if you are a +Plus member). +Plus members also see the following weeks video early, so you can pop in and see the first video of the new paperwork series >> here.

Featured content - the new Home Page

I have been thinking about this for a while. Some people still find it hard to find content, and I liked the idea of showing on the home page the different types of content available on the site.

So the site now has little boxes which link to special new index pages for the different topics. These show content for the different types of visitor - non members, standard members (landlord and tenant members) and +Plus members, although the members content is mostly via the existing index links which only members can view.

The boxes are also reproduced on members My Landlord Law pages, below the green and orange panes.

So if you are a new visitor to Landlord Law, you can see what the site offers both for the type of member (landlord, tenant, agent etc) and for the subject matter (tenancy agreements, eviction, tenancy deposits etc).