Latest articles from The Landlord Blog

Potential tenants wanting to rent a property must have a gross income of at least two and a half times the amount of rent payable (it can be up to three times the rent payable, depending on an individual’s circumstances). For a property with a monthly rent of £800, a potential tenant with a good credit history would need to prove gross annual income of at least £24,000. Read more about Tenants find it hard to pass Letting Agent checks

A letting agent in Plymouth stops trading leaving landlords and tenants out of pocket. What can landlords do to protect against their letting agents doing the same? Read more about Plymouth Based Letting Agent Closes after 12 months

The average house has increased in price by £30 every day since the beginning of the year. What does this mean for landlords, tenants and the letting industry? Read more about £30 a day: That’s the rise in house prices so far this year!

Local Housing Allowance (LHA) is already a bit of a mess, with many landlords choosing to shy away from this sector of the rental market (see 2 reasons why landlords say "no" to housing benefit tenants). Now, with the Government's budget cuts, even more landlords will be turning away housing benefit tenants. Read more about Should landlords lower rents to fund housing benefit cuts?

Because there are more tenants around than properties available to rent, landlords and letting agents are quite rightly, selecting the tenants in the best position. And given the choice, landlords would rather rent their properties to people in employment than people claiming housing benefit. Here, we discuss the reasons why. Read more about The 2 reasons why landlords say "no" to housing benefit tenants

Capital Gains Tax (CGT) is a tax payable on a profit. The profit is calculated when an asset is disposed of e.g sold or given away. As landlords, we pay CGT when we dispose of a property other than our main residence. Profits are subject to an 18% tax for basic-rate taxpayers and 28% for higher-rate taxpayers. There are many exemptions and reliefs available to landlords to help reduce the amount of CGT payable. Read more about Landlords and Capital Gains Tax

Over the last 18 months, many landlords on variable rate deals have been making relatively low mortgage payments. In terms of cashflow at least, some landlords have never had it so good. But what happens when interest rates go up? And they will go up. Read more about Landlords and Interest rates - when will the love affair end?

Tenants are seeing an increase in rents due to a lack of supply in the rental market. As the number of available properties to rent remains low, compared to the number of potential tenants looking for property to rent, rental prices are pushed upwards. Read more about Lack of properties to rent in East and West Sussex causes higher rents

From Phillip James Letting Agents in Worthing and Brighton & Hove. 

Landlords are achieving a better rate of return on their property investments than they have since December 2009. The latest Buy to Let Index from LSL Property shows that landlords are yielding an average of 4.8% on their buy to let properties.

Read more about Rental yields rise on buy to let properties

Phillip James Letting Agents in Worthing and Brighton & Hove is a full member of the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) , the National Approved Lettings Scheme (NALS) and The Property Ombudsman for Lettings. Read more about Failure to regulate letting agents and managing agents will hurt leaseholders