Do you find that staying to top of property safety checks is a time consuming and often neglected process?  By not addressing such tasks you could be leaving yourself, and your landlords, at risk to prosecution in cases where poorly maintained equipment could result in an injury or fatality to tenants renting properties owned or managed by you.

The HSE (Health and Safety Executive) is warning landlords about potentially unsafe gas installations - particularly in rented properties. The warning comes after a recent case in which a lettings business in Burton-on-Trent was fined £40,000 for gas safety offences stemming from the fatality of a single man living alone.

RentPro can help you stay on top of safety checks.  With RentPro lettings management software, you can define any safety check you want against a property and subsequently be notified when these checks are due to take place, thus helping to ensure that oversights don’t occur.

To find out more about this, and a host of additional benefits RentPro can bring to your lettings business, take the RentPro product tour.

From October 1st 2008, landlords offering property to let will be legally required to provide an Energy Performance Certificate, costing about £100, to prospective tenants.

Failure to comply with this new legislation could result in the landlord receiving penalties of up to £200 per property for non-compliance.

More information on how to comply with this legislation can be found on the Communities And Local Government website.

The number of properties up for rent has jumped as people who cannot sell their homes decide to let them instead.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) says the slump in house sales is forcing many more people to become either landlords or tenants.

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Source: BBC News

On 7th April 2008 the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) was introduced into the UK to replace Housing Benefit (HB).

LHA is based on the area in which the tenant lives, the number of occupiers in the property and household size. Another interesting difference between LHA and HB, is that with the new scheme, if the determined LHA rate is higher than the rent agreed with the landlord / letting agency, then the tenant can keep any excess benefit up to a maximum of £15 / week.

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So — with demand falling from new buyers — is there any positive news to be had out of the current housing market conditions?

Well, yes…. if you’re a landlord.

Source: Motley Fool

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With an increase in demand for rental property many landlords are finding that rental values are on the increase.

Source: BBC News

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The buy-to-let property market is still thriving, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). The number of buy-to-let loans rose by 23% last year, taking their number to 1,038,000 and accounting for 10.3% of all outstanding mortgages.

Source: BBC News

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Landlords to being warned to review the energy efficiency of their properties ahead of new energy performance rules being introduced later this year. From October 1st 2008 landlords will be required to make an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) available to prospective tenants as part of the lettings process.

Source: Finance Daily

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The level of tenants seeking to rent property privately has hit a five year high in the UK, the Association of Residential Letting Agents (Arla) says.

Source: BBC News

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