Are your tenants drug dealers?

Police have warned landlords to carefully vet prospective tenants after properties were turned into makeshift cannabis factories. In the last year officers have raided 15 rented homes in Bristol and seized drugs with a street value of about £1 million.

In most cases, the owners were totally unaware that their properties had been used to grow the illegal weed until police knocked the door in or the tenants had left.

Some landlords have been left with repair bills totalling £50,000 to put right the ad-hoc alterations made to turn the houses into greenhouses and the damage caused as a by-product of growing the plants, which require a large amount of water and strong, hot lighting, which together create damp - full article

“Blood in the water” in Florida property market

Phone books that were delivered but never opened rot away next to empty driveways and overgrown lawns, telltale signs that once-booming southwest Florida is now the center of the U.S. housing storm.

Until two years ago, middle-class retirees vied with property speculators for houses and apartments in Cape Coral, a town near Fort Myers on Florida’s sun-drenched Gulf Coast. Now almost every other house on some of its streets has a for-sale sign outside - full article

RICS commercial property survey

Published quarterly, the RICS commercial property market survey covers all business property markets across England and Wales.

The survey covers trends in demand, surveyor confidence, new occupier enquiries, floorspace availability, expected rents, lease lengths and inducements across commercial, office, retail and industrial sub-sectors - full report

Mugabe - a Step Nearer Ruin

President Robert Mugabe has extended his unscrupulous survival tactics by ordering all landlords in the country not to increase their rentals charges as economists allege that he is fighting to keep the inflation at controllable levels.

In a speech to honour fighters who died in the country’s 1970s war of independence from white minority rule, Mugabe warned that rentals were now being controlled by his government.

“Landlords take care: the moratorium on rent increases remains in force,” he said to cheers from a crowd of several thousand at Heroes’ Acre , a national shrine on the outskirts of the capital - full article

Property price fears fuel growth in rentals

Demand for rental accommodation is outstripping supply at the fastest rate for six years as fears grow that further increases in interest rates may trigger a property price crash.

Letting agents say rental demand has exceeded all expectations this summer and the trend is widely expected to continue for the next year - full article

Unhappy landlords hit the roof

- but so do profits.

LANDLORDS are fighting back. From the Victorian slums, through exploiters such as Peter Rachman and Nicholas van Hoogstraten, to Rigsby in TV’s Rising Damp, providers of private rented housing have rarely had a good image.

But I sense a strident new tone in some of the recent communications coming out of the sector.

The Scottish Association of Landlords, in the latest issue of its house magazine, rails against “oppressive” legislation. Its main gripe is that the SNP won’t overturn rules that require landlords to register with their local council, and makes them responsible for the anti-social behaviour of their tenants - full article

University Towns Give Best Rental Returns

RENTING property to students can earn landlords considerably bigger returns than other buy-to-let investments, according to a leading broker, writes Teresa Hunter.

While this is good news for investors, it makes grim reading for students, who often have to pay exorbitant rents.

It may also encourage parents to buy their offspring a house to live in throughout their study years, which can save them money and earn them a valuable income full article

HIPs Inspectors Facing a Crisis

The Government’s Home Information Packs (Hips) scheme has created an “industry with no work”, with thousands of home inspectors facing indefinite unemployment.

Little more than a week after the introduction of Hips for houses with four or more bedrooms, many inspectors are abandoning the profession, it can be revealed.

No date has yet been set for Hips to apply to the rest of the housing market and loopholes in the legislation allowing homeowners to avoid the packs have left thousands of inspectors with the prospect of little, if any, work. Most of the 3,000-strong task force have yet to complete a single job full article

FSA to Investigate Sub-Prime Brokers

The FSA is taking action against five brokers that sell sub-prime mortgages. After reviewing of the market, the FSA has said some lenders and brokers are offering loans to people who should not be approved. Sub-prime mortgages are aimed at people with poor credit histories and and a far greater chance of defaulting full article

Women Main Earners in 25% of Households

According to an authoratitive report by think tank The Future Foundation to mark this year’s 50th anniversary of Premium Bonds. The analysis found that in 50 years large numbers of women will have taken over a traditional preserve of men by taking control of key financial household decisions full article