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I don’t know if it’s climate change, the credit crunch or the desire to see the back of George W. Bush but this year is flying by! Not only is the year flying but as each month goes by another scam comes to light. I am going to have to reframe my attitudes because quite frankly I should no longer be shocked. However, I do still find my chin hitting the floor! The latest shockers arose from a recent site we took over the management of whereby the previous agents were making a 1,000 per cent mark up on sell

Recruiting staff can be stressful with all the legislation. Most organisations involve specialists such as Claibon to assist. For anyone handling such matters there are several considerations, starting with the job advert. Recruiters must be sure the best candidate for the job is chosen. Recruiters need a clear understanding of the requirements, responsibilities and rewards of the role to be filled together with the characteristics of the successful candidate in terms of skills, qualifications, previous

News & Information about Flats News on the Block is all about flats. Informative and practical, with each edition of the magazine you’ll get: •           articles about property management •           in-depth news coverage of the residential leasehold sector •           detailed legal articles about the law relating to flats •           feature interviews of the sector’s top names •           expert opinion and commentary Subscribe online today or call us on 08700 600 663 to receive 6 print issues for ju

Is the Vesuvius of the Leasehold Enfranchisement World about to erupt again? On 21st April 2008, Leave to Appeal to the House of Lords was granted in the Earl of Cadogan v Sportelli case. Leave to Appeal in the case has been granted in respect of “Hope Value” only.What is Hope Value? To understand the concept of “Hope Value”, consideration must first be given to another familiar valuation concept : “marriage value”. When a leaseholder is buying the freehold or extending their lease, he has to pay som

Blake Lapthorn Tarlo Lyons is pleased to announce that it successfully represented Hamptons International and Mrs Treld Bicknell in the Court of Appeal in a case which is now the leading authority on estate agents' commission. The judgment was handed down on Wednesday 23 April 2008. Mrs Bicknell appointed a firm of estate agents to find a purchaser for her house. The agents were appointed in accordance with their terms of sole agency. At a viewing in July 2005, the agents showed the person who was to bec

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February 26th 2008, London - ruralZED™, a consortium of architects and specialist manufacturers at the cutting edge of the eco house-building industry, today launched the UK’s first affordable, carbon neutral house at the annual EcoBuild exhibition. The ruralZED™ housing system is set to revolutionise the house-building industry over the coming years and has been awarded on-site Code 6 status, the highest level in the Code for Sustainable Housing, eight years ahead of the government’s targets for carbon

425,000 council tenants have exercised their right to buy their council home over the last nine years, spending a collective £15.7billion, according to research by Connells Survey & Valuation. They have benefited from discounts totalling £10.3billion. In the last year, 16,896 became home owners spending £1.15billion. The numbers are much smaller today than in the past as new rules have restricted eligibility and reduced the discounts that tenants receive. The peak year was 2003/4 when almost 70,000 fam

The National Landlords Association (NLA) has revealed it received a record number of calls from landlords seeking advice during 2007. The NLA Advice Line, offering free advice during business hours to member landlords, received an average of 2,600 calls per month last year on a wide variety of topics. Throughout the year this amounted to over 31,000 individual enquiries.* The average call took just under 13 minutes and, in April 2007 when tenancy deposit protection became mandatory, the NLA Advice Line wa

Hurford Salvi Carr’s expert lettings division is pleased to offer a stunning New York loft style apartment - the first-ever commercial warehouse to be converted into residential apartments in the UK. Converted in the late 1970s, Charterhouse Square in Clerkenwell kicked off the trend for open-plan loft apartments that swept London and New York in the 1980s. Favoured by artists for their high ceilings and studio-like room sizes, loft apartments have retained their appeal in today’s market as the average sq

Average mortgage costs to income for first-time-buyers are now higher than they were in the 1990s at the peak of the last housing boom, while increasing numbers of households are moving into private rented housing, according to the newly published UK Housing Review. First-time buyers were devoting nearly 35 per cent of their income to mortgage costs by the third quarter of 2007, compared with the previous high of nearly 34 per cent in 1990¹. The sharp rise in house prices and mortgage costs over the las

This my first address to members as the CEO and it seems appropriate to review what FPRA currently does – and why – and what we should do in the future. So: what does FPRA do now? I suggest we empower members. We enable you to know and do things you that you would otherwise probably unable to do. Specifically: • FPRA enables members to keep abreast of current and proposed legislation – largely through the Newsletter. • FPRA enables members to have a voice in the corridors of power –primarily though our l