Simon Coppen

Even down south, a non earning spouse with a couple of mortgaged BTLs won't make enough profit to use up their tax free allowance. Using an accountant would just knock £600 (or however much they charge) off the profit...?
My wife has just started working a few hours a week so for the first time I'm keeping all the receipts as she will in the future have a tiny bit of tax to pay. But I still won't use an accountant. My calculations will now take 10 mins instead of 5. S24 may add another 5 mins (but won't changes the numbers). If I make an oversight and miss out on a deductible expense or something I guess i could cost us £50, but I'd still save £550.
If our tax situation ever gets complicated in the future I would use an accountant; I'm not anti-accountant, it's just that at the moment they couldn't save me enough time or money for me to consider using one. There must be a lot of people in a similar situation, i.e. only one or two properties and not affected by S24.
I do concede that I should probably see a tax adviser sooner rather than later. We don't plan to sell the properties any time soon and I'm aware we'll need to change the ownership structure in the future. I'll do some more research on property CGT soon I promise...!... Read More

If you want to maximise your tax liability you need to swap over your beneficial ownership percentages. However, if you want to minimise it, as Neil says, your plan sounds good!
I personally have both our properties fully in my wife's name (I keep meaning to brush up on my CGT, so can't be sure what's best long term). I do her tax return for her and prefer not to pay for an accountant (there's no savings they could possibly make!). If you've only got one property and are happy to use a spreadsheet or calculator for 5 minutes then I've never seen the need for an accountant. Online tax returns are easy enough too, nothing that can't be done in a lunch break. However, I appreciate other people's tax situations can be far more complicated, in which case if you're not confident then play it safe and get one...... Read More

Thanks David. I probably will cut future ASTs down to 6 months, especially if I use a DOA for tenants wanting longer term assurance (since the tenant can't enforce the DOA if he's in arrears or breaching terms)...... Read More

David, I'm looking to tweak my ASTs, which are based on the gov.uk template, so that any periodic tenancy is contractual.

Some people are claiming online that if you have a fixed term (i.e. with end date), and then a contractual periodic tenancy, it is effectively creating two tenancies (i.e. no council tax protection). The AST in the link you provided looks to have avoided this by saying "...for a term of x months and thereafter continuing on a monthly basis...".

Other people say the opposite, that a fixed term can be defined and, if the tenancy goes CPT, it's still a continuous tenancy. If this is the case, I was going to leave 'The Term' (with dates) in my AST and simply change section 4.2 to read

"If the Tenant continues to live in the Property after the expiry of the fixed term and no further tenancy has been entered into by the parties, then from the expiry of the fixed term the Tenant shall occupy the Property under a contractual periodic tenancy from month to month until terminated by either party giving to the other one full calendar month’s written notice, provided that no such notice may be served during the first 12 months of the term."

Other than being a mouthful, does my proposed text above sound reasonable, or do I need to avoid defining an end date in the fixed term?

Many thanks for any advice anyone can give...... Read More

Thanks Mark, DOA template duly purchased!
This is likely to be useful with some existing tenants who were keen for a long agreement 11 months ago, but I was limited to offering 12 months. I'll have to think about their deposit though. I took a large deposit as they were retiring expats returning to the UK, in a good financial position but with limited UK credit history. As they've been great tenants I was going to offer them some of their deposit back (reduce from 2 x rent to 1.5 x rent), but I'm guessing I can't do this without making it a 'new' deposit. Maybe I'm better off leaving the deposit alone...... Read More

Martin, I've only ever used their £97+vat advertising, referencing and rent guarantee package, but have always been pleased with the service. Obviously this type of package doesn't require much service, but they've always got the advert online quickly, forwarded on enquiries and answered my queries pretty quickly.... Read More

If say offering a 3 year DOA, would there be any point in renewing the AST when it expires? I presume the tenancy may as well go periodic for the next 2+ years - I can't think of any disadvantages to the tenant?

I'm just buying a leasehold property, with mortgage limiting the ASTs to 12 months, and, as well as providing reassurance to prospective tenants, see that the DOA arrangement could save me paying £48 to the leaseholder every time I issue a new AST. It would of course also save on deposit (re)protection fees and some paperwork...... Read More

One look at the table and you can tell it's a load of rubbish, HSBC can't even get the title right. Over a 1,000 cities and towns in England alone and they reckon a 3.3% yield is a "Top 50" hotspot? It should be titled "50 random places with some random average prices, rents and yields"...

Fortunately the internet allows us to do our own research. Simply match up the rent and value of specific properties in the area you're looking at, take a large enough sample and calculate your own yield data...... Read More

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Just voted too, best of luck Mark!

P118 has become my "go to" site for everything property/landlord related. The knowledge and advice from the contributors is invaluable, and very much appreciated!

Although there are a lot of interesting financial and property investment articles, I also like a lot of the forum type questions that get raised by readers. The responses cover an interesting range of legal, moral and 'good practice' aspects of being a landlord.... Read More

So no one has a legal responsiblity to fix the fence, unless the landlord included it in the inventory where there may be an 'implied obligation' to repair it. Poor fence.

The patio doors would I presume fall under the landlords obligations to "use all reasonable effort to arrange for any damage caused by an insured risk to be remedied as soon as is practicable". I've no idea what the legal interpretation of a repair is, but would imagine it is more than a 'boarding up' job. And getting agreement from the insurers to get things fixed shouldn't take more than a day or two.... Read More

Thank you for pointing out my misinterpretation of LA, I was recently in a conversation where it was being used for Letting Agent!

I do hope that the landlord and agent get their fingers out, it's unfortunate that neither seems to want to fulfil their responsibilities.... Read More

Is there another issue that has been missed here - it appears, from the last paragraph of the original post, that the tenants are also the letting agents? Maybe the tenants are not directly involved with the letting of this property, but it sounds as if their branch/agency is.

Since they work for the LA, you would have thought that it would have been easy to apply some pressure on the landlord to see sense and get things sorted. Or, are the tenants (LA employees) fearful of their seniors and being told not to upset 'the client'? Maybe Sharon could clarify the tenant/LA/Landlord relationship...... Read More

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Messy indeed...

If there's an implied obligation that everything provided by the landlord should be kept working, then should we not be changing batteries in smoke detectors, CO alarms and wall clocks too...? Not quite the same thing I know, and usually explained in the inventory/schedule!

In any case, I think we're all agreed that to be "good" landlords we should be repairing and replacing appliances and not adding any exclusion clauses to the AST. S11 is there if a landlord really is struggling with heavy handed tenants...... Read More

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I agree that getting perfect photos would be worth a couple of days rent. Unfortunately though the purchase has taken longer than it should have and we're now likely to be completing 8 days before we go on holiday. If we advertise between exchange and completion we've got half a chance of getting tenants lined up before we go away. In other words, waiting to get our own photos could cost us several weeks rent.

I think the available photos and advert will be able to justify the above market rent. I like the comment "tenants pay for what they want, not what you want to sell them". I think we'll have what many people in our target audience will want. I feel that, with all the recent big developments in our area, there's a disproportionate number of modern, but very small flats. I've seen some of them and I can only laugh at how a single room with kitchen, dining area and lounge gets called "spacious, open plan living". Maybe others are. Anyhow, the place we're buying felt positively palatial!

p.s. I'm not anti modern apartments, I may even go for one next!... Read More