Andy and Stuart bought over 45 properties in 2 years. We are now looking to help other people build their property portfolios and escape the rat race.

• Do you want to find out how to quicky replace your rat race income?
• Are you looking to buy your next investment property at least 25% BMV? Do you want to source your own leads?
• Do you want to have so many leads that you have leads to sell?
• Are you looking to get between £2k and £10k per month through harnessing your passion for property?

At last you have convinced us to do it. We will tell you ‘how we do it’. We agreed to hold an information packed 1 day course on 8th May 2010 to teach you what we do. Click here for more information. Numbers will be strictly limited,so that we can give one to one tuition on the finer points. Also lets face it, we cannot show everyone how to do it we have to think about the competition!

Andy has already done his first deal since getting back to his desk. This is the most unusual property deal that he will tell you all about. In a summary it will make him £80,000 in one month!

So many of you asked us to tell you how we do what we do that we have decided to run a comprehensive Property Trading Course to show you all of our tips and techniques.

The Property Trading Course will be held on Saturday 8th May 2010. We will both be there all day. Places are limited because we want to make sure that we can spend time with everyone on the course and answer all questions, so act now if you want a place.

Check out the website at http://www.propertymatchmakers.co.uk for full details.

For the purpose of this requirement the government is proposing to define a HMO as 3 or more unrelated people sharing a house.

So from April a HMO will require Planning permission (if 3 or more than unrelated people are to share);
there will be a new Register for HMOs;
Local authorities have been given more ability to impose their own licencing criteria;
EPCs will be required, subject to adoption of the appropriate legislation.

Hands up I am not an EPC expert. From my purely novice point of view I would have thought that 6 people sharing a normal family house would require less power (energy) than 6 people living in 6 separate dwellings. Surely there takes less power to heat 1 dwelling than 6?

When will the goverment start to support private sector landlords who are actually helping to address the housing crisis in this country? It seems like more and more obstacles are being put in the way of landlords making it more and more difficult to provide a constant supply of decent quality rental accommodation to meet the needs of our society. Statistics prove that more and more people are chosing to live single lives. Single people need somewhere to live and a HMO provides a suitable, cost effective, alternative to living totally independently.

The day flew by and the content was most enlightening.  These guys really know their stuff and have the ability to put it across on a level that suits everyone. 

Even though we are experienced landlords we came away with some great ideas.  We met some very interesting people who all had great positive attitudes on the future of property and were actively looking to add to their portfolios.  We find this is a real benefit that comes from these meetings.  If you get nothing else from going along to property meetings you should at least make some new contacts who may well help you in the future. 

We  have already connected with a couple from the West Midlands who want us to help them to source new properties for them and are actually looking at a few possibles as I write this.  So as well as some great content, great contacts, great conversation and really good coffee we could all get something extra from the day.  Not bad eh? Except it was run on Valentines Day so Andy and I both owe our wives a shopping day!

Sally Lawson, of Sally Lawson (www.sallylawson.co.uk) lettings, gave an interesting insight into the current lettings situation giving tips on how to manage your portfolio rather than your portfolio managing you. Key tips she referred to included:

Get your paperwork and systems in place from the start.
Do full credit checks on all tenants.
Make sure you carry out inventories, even on empty properties.
Carry out maintenance work as soon as it is needed (from little acorns big Oak trees grow).
Have a process for rent arrears that you follow in every instance, don’t make it personal.
Apparently 80% of her tenants are sourced via internet marketing, 2 years ago this would have been from newspapers.
Location is the key – buy the right property in the right area from the start which will always make letting easier.

John Davis gave an oversight into the Buy to Let Mortgage Market. As we all appreciate it is incredibly difficult to obtain BTL mortgages at the moment. His main message was a call to action, if you want to make money from property then buy property and make sure it earns money for you! Take action!

John also spent time discussing the lease options route to buying property advertising his course on protected lease options. Watch out we will write a page on this soon.

As this is prepared by the Treasury the focus is on the economic factors.  The initial premise is that the downturn in the property market and the general economic downturn has resulted in the return on investment being too low.  Landlords aren’t investing.  The Government acknowledges that there is a demand for private rented sector housing and wants to establish whether the economic forces will restrain the supply preventing from meeting that demand.

Click on the link below to access the document and have a read yourself, or print it off and leave it in the downstairs loo. 

Is it only me that thinks that there is a definite lack of ‘joined up thinking’.  First there is the announcement that there will be a change in the Use Class Order requiring planning consent for the change of use of a dwelling house to a HMO.  Second we are informed that is an alteration to the licensing regulations meaning local authorities can impose their own licensing criteria without recourse to the Secretary of State.  Then the same Government acknowledges that the Private Rented Sector is important in providing housing to meet the increasing demand for housing across the Country but we need more PRS housing!  It publishes a consultation paper based on assessing the economic drivers that prevent private landlords from investing. 

What about the fact that we landlords have to jump through more and more hurdles, backwards and with the property market on the downturn yes we do ask ourselves – IS IT WORTH IT!!!

Private Rented Sector Consultation

Visit your local locksmith and arrange with them that you create a master key that opens every front door that you own.  The initial outlay will be more because you will have to change each lock.  It is advisable to do it as you start building your portfolio or maybe from the next house onwards. 

Each tenant is then issued with a key that only unlocks the property that they rent.  Can you imagine the difference this will make to you (or if you are a husband and wife team to your marriage?   You will always have the relevant key to the property with you as all you will need to do is keep one additional key on your own key ring.  No more carrying a great big ring of keys.  A local locksmith should also arrange to issue additional keys for you when your tenant loses theirs, or walks off with it.  Remember that the tenants key only unlocks their own door, they will not be able to open all the doors in your property portfolio. 

Each master key costs about £40 depending on your locksmith.

Basically this is giving local authorities more ability to clamp down on the number of HMOs coming forward.  The official justification is to overcome the issue of the high concentration of HMOs, studentification, and all associated problems.  Neighbours complain that occupants of HMOs are more likely be transient, noisey, less neighbourly.  Local businesses say that these type of residents are less likely to support local businesses.

For a landlord it means once again we are all being tarnished by the same brush.  We will have to  jump through further hoops and deal with masses more paperwork in order to continue to provide accommodation for a sector in society who are largely overlooked.

HMOs do provide a useful form of accommodation.  More and more people are chosing to live the single life for longer.  Couples are splitting up.  A HMO provides accommodation for these single people, in a house share situation.

Lets face it from another point, HMOs are more environmentally friendly.  The heating is used for all occupants of the house.  If each of these people lived in their own dwelling they would be heating how many properties 3, 4 or 5.  Is that environmentally friendly, I think not.

Councils respond to NIMBYs (not in my back yard) who resist HMOs and many other forms of development or change from what they consider to be acceptable or the norm.