Landlord Expo 2010 and Cheltenham Racecourse Hall of Fame

Landlord Expo 2010 in September was a great success for us, we were able to make face to face contact with Estate and Letting agents and private Landlords from across the county. Many thanks to all those who attended and we look forward to doing business with you. We were very busy the following day with all the follow ups which we managed to finish by mid afternoon.

Cheltenham Racecourse ‘Hall of Fame’ was a great venue with loads of parking and all the facilities you’d expect from a sizeable corporate venue. Lunch was provided by the organisers for the exhibitors and tea and coffee was ‘on tap’ for all.

We had a wide range of enquiries mainly concerning epc regulations and discussions on the best ways of improving the result. Nearly everyone we spoke to was keen to improve the epc rating of their property but we were, after all, preaching to the converted.

On that note – we had a visit from the Trading Standards Officer who is responsible for policing the implementation of epc’s and he was asking our opinion of  the landlord compliance rate. We said that it was excellent, of course, but landlords only come to us if they intend to comply. I think there is a larger non-compliance in the commercial sector.  So if you don’t have an epc and you should have – look out.

On the subject of non-compliance – consider this. If you have to approach the court for any reason to do with your tenancy, perhaps a section 21 repossession, non-payment, damage or anything else, you will be asked for documents to prove the tenancy is compliant.  If your epc or any other document you should have is missing your case will fail and I don’t need to tell you the problems that will bring – so for the sake of £50 !

The other subject area was Inventories which Landlords are now much more aware of since the Deposit Protection Scheme was launched. I don’t intend to talk of the benefits of having an inventory on this page although you can find those details on our main site. The general response from landlords when approached was ‘ we do our own’ which is probably better than not doing one at all but the word ‘unbiased’ came to mind.

I’m sure there are cases where Landlords have successfully claimed damages by presenting their own inventory but in the main the Dispute Resolution Service will want to see a professionally prepared and unbiased report. Even letting agents who produce in-house inventories have had problems in the past due to having a ‘vested interest’. There are some interesting case studies on the Dispute Resolution Website.

That’s all for now – thanks for reading.

Tony