Rentcharges are, in theory, a very useful way of securing a positive obligation to pay against freehold land owners. They are mainly now created to cover estate service charges to ensure freeholders will pay common expenses incurred in looking after communal areas of a development and to help ensure positive covenants are enforced which is … Continue Reading
The headline news from the Housing and Planning Act 2016 (the ‘Housing and Planning Act’) makes it look as though there is a good new solution to enable residential landlords to get their property back in their control when it has been abandoned. In practice it contains a number of provisions that serve only to … Continue Reading
Properly employed, sweeper clauses are designed to catch service charge costs that may be unforeseeable at the time of drafting. This is an essential fall back when drafting a long residential lease whose term will be somewhere between 99 and 999 years and subject to a statutory right of extension on the same lease terms. … Continue Reading
The snappily titled Assured Shorthold Tenancy Notice and Prescribed Requirements (England) Regulations 2015 come into force 1st October 2015. In a nutshell, the landlord of any AST granted from 1 October 2015 onwards must provide the following to the tenant: Government factsheet “How to Rent: the checklist for renting in England”. To ensure you always … Continue Reading
Residential landlords of properties in Wales need to be aware of the extra regulatory burden that applies to them and particularly because breach could be a criminal offence. The Welsh Assembly has added an additional layer of regulations which affect private rented residential property in Wales only and which are expected to come into force … Continue Reading
As increasing numbers of investors now include residential and mixed use properties in their portfolios there are bound to be issues dealing with the residential element of service charges and you really can’t be too careful about the administration of residential service charges. From our perspective it seems like an almost endless stream of cases … Continue Reading
The Deregulation Act 2015 (the “Act”) is an eclectic mix of legislative tinkering. However, amongst the measures relating to sellers of knitting yarn and trustees of child trust funds are some key provisions that will affect residential landlords. We have already commented in an earlier blog on the provisions contained in the Deregulation Bill intended … Continue Reading
It is now the best part of a decade since the tenancy deposit protection provisions in the Housing Act 2004 (the “Act”) came into force on 6 April 2007. A string of Court of Appeal decisions resulted from ambiguities and inconsistencies in the Act and later regulations (the Housing (Tenancy Deposits) (Prescribed Information) Order 2007). As … Continue Reading
It is the time of year when the Great British weather batters buildings up and down the country causing signs to fall off some and roofs to cave in! Beware, though, if you are the Landlord or manager of a mixed use building – emergency repairs may cost you more than you think. Section 20 … Continue Reading
