kerbut

On 8/7/2023 at 7:49 AM, Richlist said:

I have to agree, it's looking very bad for BTL landlords. But you know, we don't just discuss private BTL's on this forum, occasionally we cover other areas of property letting. 

I think the smart money at the moment is in holiday lettings......provided you steer well clear of Wales.

We tried Holiday lets in Weymouth for 8 years on a sleep 8 property, when we did the figures for our tax return on this property last year, Dream Cottages commission, electricity, and gas (it was rated exempt as it was a small business) cleaners and laundry costs made it better to go back into residential letting, a 2 bed Flat in Dorchester with Booking .com. did not fare well either, with all the above costs made a profit £3000, without the hassle of change over days I sold all the furniture( in a Week), put it on the rental market again for £1200 pcm and let in a day to a married couple, both GP,s. The other property is a studio that sleeps 2 , my wife cleans and does the laundry on this one, so very few outgoings. We would not venture into holiday lets again apart from the studio

I was watching the Breakfast news yesterday and they said to charge an EV from a home supply costs10p per mile and from a fast supermarket charger 20 p per mile, think I will stick with petrol thanks.

In the end I settled for Alan Boswell @£215, but I have another coming up on 1/2 so will look at Saga.I insure 4 properties (Buildings Insurance ) through Saga and they cut their cost from the previous year, but went for a car quote and they were 50% more than LV.

I increased one this year by £200 pcm ., the first rent rise for that tenant for 20 years , his reply" thats fine "

Who is every one using these days ,  I have used Alan Boswell and PIB via Netrent for several years ,but their pricing has got really high (like everything else)

Hot air , we still heater water with Gas at night, yes they are inverter ones that double up as air con.

On 12/17/2022 at 8:15 AM, Richlist said:

My plan was to eliminate the need for a boiler service man forever......by installing air sourced heat pumps......probably two as we have a large house. All electric, powered in part by my solar panel array.

This week I've encountered a small snag that I hadn't previously considered. For the whole of this week my roof  (& the solar panels) have been covered in snow and have produced zero solar energy.

We are now running our house on 3 heat source heat pumps , at present impressed, instant heat etc, we now only use the gas boiler for hot water

Why does this site get so many bloody Yanks putting in their 5 eggs.

Yes but in the UK we use £ not $

I think B&Q have an offer on spades to dig up old posts.

Thanks , I am with mydeposits on a similar scheme , I have renewed the protection at no cost to me .

I am having a discussion tonight re protecting a tenants deposit ( I use mydeposits insured scheme ) , I say you have to reprotect it and give the tenant the prescribed information again , the other person says you dont have to reprotect it. Am I right or wrong?

OH, good

Only one good swimming pool, someone else,s , the rest are hard work

I really must do the same , I was doing my books this morning , as I number every purchase invoice in my filing system I entered number 7809 , I have never cleared my files for 25 years! Maybe a big shredding /bomb fire session soon.

Sounds about right to me , I paid £75 earlier this year to a gutter cleaner with a vacum pole with a camera to show he had cleaned them.

What's todays date ? 

I fully agree with this , we have 3 holiday lets , all bookings come through Booking.com , Air B&B , TripAdvisor or our website , I have a paper trail for every booking which are  more than 140 days per property.

Sounds like my recent experience with Palmer Snell, I will never deal with the Sequence group again ( Palmer Snell and Connells ), I will stick with our local Martin and Co franchise.

What a relief, the electricians arrived today to do the rewire and would need 2 days to do it BUT their boss told them to clean the metal conduits that are the supply to each flat  back to bare metal and to rebond  with new straps and a larger earth wire , this was done where the 3 phase comes in and then goes 5 ways , the conduit was bought back to bare metal in all 5 flats and all re bonded , perfect readings and only 2 tin wires surface mounted needed replacing in one flat. We called out SSE as the electrician said a incoming supply terminal need replacing and a modern earth bond need fitting along with larger input cables , the engineer agreed the readings and is going to report the cables need changing at SSE,s expense , good result from an electrical company who know what they are talking about , not the cheapest but value for money.

Its strange how things go full circle, I remember a grey  metal fuse box with the door hinged on the left hand side  ( MEM ?) ,then they went to plastic casings and now back to metal casings.

Your old fuse box was the same as ours ,a Wylex one which I recovered from the electrician , eBay here we come !!

Thanks for your tip about the "C", I will look , the property was a 14 bedroom house when I bought it 40 years ago ( built 1898 ) and converted it to 5 flats hence the splitting of the phases, we live in one of the flats. This is the final property(of 12) to have the test and the electrician has done my work for 30 years + ,so I do trust him, I bought 12 metal "trip boxes" from Toolstation when they had on offer Aixcom boxes  and extra RCD,s are only £2.   He showed the paperwork showing very high readings (which meant nothing to me ), told me the tin wiring needed replacing and about fitting a second ring , I said I wanted it surface mounting as I am expecting the tenant of 17 years to be returning to St Helena in a few years when he retires and we can lift floors when they have left as I will be changing the kitchen ,bathroom and carpets then.

I had an inspection done yesterday, it failed big time , the tails from 3 phase to single phase need changing , some of the wiring is in tin (whatever that is ), it is recommended a second ring is added , but the good news is the lighting circuit is fine, I have today had to buy a combined carbon monoxide and smoke detector and another smoke detector which now have to be hard wired with gismo that when one alarm goes off the other one receives a radio signal and it goes off also , I don't think I am going to see any change out of 3K

I beat you b y one year RL,I retired at 52 and still don't.

know how I had time to go to work