Guarantee for natural void periods?

Reply to the comment left by "Vanessa Warwick" at "20/08/2013 - 17:03":

OK thanks, I do not follow Property Tribes so would not know (although I may do so now). I wasn't just meaning you, I think it would be good for others who have a profession or financial status related to residential lettings rather than or as well as being a landlord. I think if people make an offer of help or recommendation any interest should be declared. Otherwise it's advertising by stealth!

What is your view Mark?

I am a small time landlord.

Reply to the comment left by "AC Forscutt" at "20/08/2013 - 16:41":

Thanks AC, my questions:-

How many of the 70 Northwoods Franchisee offices are registered with SAFEagent?

If a Northwoods franchise were to fail, is their any written guarantee to the landlords clients of the failed franchisee that the franchisor would step in to honour the Guaranteed Rent agreements entered into by the failed franchisee?

Does the Northwoods Guaranteed Rent Scheme provide any guarantees to the landlord in terms of the state of repair and cleanliness of the property at the end of the contracted Guaranteed rent period and if so what are they?

If the Guaranteed Rent Scheme agreement between Northwoods and their Landlord clients is not an AST, does Northwoods make it clear to their landlords clients that they should check with their mortgage lender whether they would be operating within their mortgage conditions by signing the contract?

Thanks in advance.
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Reply to the comment left by "Puzzler " at "20/08/2013 - 17:23":

Hi Puzzler

Vanessa's member profile makes it very clear that she is the co-founder of Property Tribes and once you visit their website it is very obvious who their sponsors are. Therefore, I am very happy that Vanessa's motives are sound. We both post links back to each others forums for the benefit of our members and I think that's a good thing. I have been banned by other forums for doing the same thing, which I believe is very short sighted on behalf of those forum owners. Yes, they may consider it to be traffic stealing but whilst I was listing to BBC radio this morning they were happily discussing an ITV programme. What's the problem? People don't just want one channel, regardless of whether it's TV, radio or internet forums. Sharing is caring 🙂

More generally though, yes we would like members to declare any commercial interests and I do follow your point about stealth advertising, not that that was what Vanessa was doing, I'm sure the Property tribes sponsorship from Northwoods would be on that basis.
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Thanks Mark, from what I've seen over the last few days, your latest comments on this thread are about right.
I got the impression on first scout around that here and property tribes were run by LLs, just wanted to be sure.

being an LL seems a bit one sided and this site and tribes seems helpful (understatement)

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "20/08/2013 - 17:44":

I wasn't casting aspersions on Vanessa's credentials at all. I just haven't read those things and thought that others might not have either. I don't have a problem with " traffic stealing" - the more information and dialogue the better. What I meant was those who recommend or offer help, of which there seem to be quite a few on this forum, should qualify whether they are offering professional help. It may be there in the headline but I for one often don't read them!

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "20/08/2013 - 17:08":

yep, that was the one, thanks Mark

Reply to the comment left by "Puzzler " at "20/08/2013 - 17:54":

Yes I can see why that might be considered best practice, some might see it as overkill. Remember, there is a link to the member profile with every comment posted. If a member doesn't declare an interest in either their comments or their member profile then that's stealth marketing which I DO NOT approve of. Neil and I do monitor comments very closely and we do spot trends when a member promotes the same business over and over. It happens very rarely, in fact I can only think of one example this year - see this member profile and the ding dong battle I had with him over his repetitive comments, all promoting the same letting agency. >>> http://www.property118.com/member/?id=762 He lost his rag with us when we kept editing out the letting agents name from his posts LOL I cant prove whether he has a commercial interest but if you look at all 17 of his comments there is a very common theme!

if you spot anything like that, please let us know by using the "report to moderator" function.
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It is my belief that only a site with a sales agenda would ban the posting of links.

We allow all outbound links to other forums/sites/sources of information, as we believe in sharing for the sake of sharing.

Sadly, most other forums apart from P118 do not afford the same courtesy as their agenda is to control what their members are exposed to.

So in terms of transparency, a forum that allows outbound links is probably a lot more transparent than a forum that doesn't.

It's futile to try and control where people go on the web, and, if they find out that is what you are doing, they will kick against it.

At PT, we believe that people should roam far and wide to get whatever information they want/need, and have multiple inputs to build up their own view on a topic.

Naturally, we endeavour to make PT the best source of landlord information on the web and we continually strive to improve our user interface.

But we will always respect people's freedom to roam and get information from different sources, and we actively encourage that.

We want people to be on PT because of the value, support, friendship, community, and landlord intelligence it delivers, not because they have been forced to stay on it.

Otherwise it is the equivalent of having a pub, then locking the doors when everyone is inside.

There should be more than one pub in town, and it is healthy for all if there is.

Hopefully it won't be long before PT and P118 are recognised as the best pubs in town! 🙂

Reply to the comment left by "Vanessa Warwick" at "20/08/2013 - 18:15":

I've given you the thumbs up for that comment Vanessa, i wholeheartedly concur.

I recently had several links and comments deleted by the moderators of the BMV Facebook group. One of it's members was being given terrible advice and I wanted to direct the reader to an extremely authoritative discussion thread on Property118 but the link was deleted. I have also had comments deleted from that group as a result of sharing my opinion that experienced landlords should share their successes free of charge or not at all. If the self proclaimed guru's running courses were as successful as they make out to be, why would they need to charge? Either share for the sake of sharing or don't bother I say.
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Kirsty, another angle to consider is if you have a mortgage on your property check with your lender whether you can enter into such a contract. I looked into Northwood's scheme about 4/5 years ago and two of my lenders criteria wouldn't allow me to use them as they considered it to be sub-letting.