Being A Landlord in the U.K.

Report Reveals Renting From Small Landlords Is Cheaper

Big news from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation! They released their Housing Market Insight report at the beginning of the month. Individual investors and private corporations own about 90 per cent of Canada’s purpose-built rental apartment units and most markets with a higher concentration of individual investors have lower average rents. In other words….Units owned by individual investors tend to have lower rents than units owned by other ownership types. This is most pronounced in smaller markets in Canada.

Individual Investors are defined as: all non-incorporated owners of rental housing stock, mainly comprised of individual investors and small joint ventures, representing 49.3% of the market.

Individual Investors are well-represented across all 35 metropolitan centres that were assessed as part of the report. The average rent associated with the units they own tends to be lower than the rent associated with other ownership types in most centres, including Montréal. However, the difference is generally smallest in centres with high overall rents, including Vancouver, Edmonton, Toronto and Halifax.

This isn’t really a surprise here. Smaller, private, non corporate landlords are better. It’s simple to see why.

They have a lot more to lose and generally rely on rental income as supplemental for retirement or for their daily lives. These kinds of landlords are exactly who we’ve created Renting Well for. Small landlords are like small businesses. Generally speaking, they have an interest in keeping tenants happy, ensuring that their units are in good shape, and have an inclination towards a more personalized approach. They have a tendency to be easier to contact and more often than not, they have a vested interest in avoiding turnover. Keeping tenants is cheaper than getting new ones. Even across the pond, english tenants were surveyed about satisfaction levels with their tenancies as part of the English Housing Survey 2015/2016. Tenants in the private rental sector were more satisfied with their accommodation than those in the social rented sector.

Home Insurance Industry Kicks Montreal Landlord To The Curb After Repair

Montreal property owner Sari Buksner is in the midst of a nightmare of sorts, courtesy of her insurance company, and she’s yet to wake up from it.

Back in 2012, one of her tenants alerted her to a leak dripping from the second floor to the first. Her insurance firm saw the problem was a valve linking to her water heater on the second floor. They also proactively noticed a completely separate leak, near the toilet of her third floor. The estimate on the repair work for both claims originally came in at a little under 20K.

According to the original CBC News piece, Buksner said she settled with a contractor recommended by the insurance company after the first one she found declined the job, indicating it was beyond their capabilities. Once she started with the recommended contractor from the insurance company, the work began, and unexpectedly continued for months. Some of the reasons for this included a lack of proper insulation for the new pipes, which froze, creating an even bigger issue than the initial leaks. A rip up was required, and a complete re-do of the work – as in new pipes, gyproc, drywall, painting, etc. etc. The initial $20K that was speculated turned into a little under $87,000 in construction/renovation costs. On top of this – the insurance company paid her $58,155.00 in lost rental income while the work was taking place. The total payout to Buksner was about $145,000. Whoa.

After the work was done, her insurance company decided not to renew her policy – something that insurance companies have the right to do.

So far, she has only found a willing insurer in the substandard market, and that policy would cost her around $11,000, roughly $4,000 more than what she was last paying, per year. Adding insult to injury, she’d be required to pay the whole thing up front and wouldn’t receive water damage protection. Jesus.

Thoughts? Comments? From personal experience, water damage claims aren’t exactly a cakewalk. Here’s another kicker – water damage claims are on the rise in Canada.

10 Traits Of A Great Landlord

There are a variety of characteristics that make a leader great, or a manager great, or even a husband or a wife great. We thought we’d look at the important job of being a landlord through that same lens. Here’s a few items to chew on…

Great landlords are responsive. They respect the fact that someone is calling one of their units home, and take the job of addressing issues, concerns, and questions in a timely way, treating their tenants like customers.
Great landlords aren’t doormats. While treating their tenants like customers, they also stand firm with their expectations with respect to fundamental things – like paying the rent, being respectful of other tenants (if there are other tenants), following the rules, and taking care of a unit that a tenant is renting. When this doesn’t happen, they react appropriately and decisively and aren’t afraid of an awkward exchange or confrontation.
Great landlords know the law in their province or state with respect to residential tenancy. Knowing the law doesn’t only include being aware of rent increases. It also includes being familiar with legal dispute resolution, knowing how to do things like serve notices, and being aware of the rules for things like sublets, interest rates on security deposits or last month’s rent, and what you can and can’t do for things like pets. Know the whole law.
Great landlords are diplomatic. Resolving disputes with tenants shouldn’t be an emotionally charged exchange. They listen as much as they talk, and they know that you can catch more flies with honey than you can with vinegar.
Great landlords know that rent increases are important, when applicable. Not increasing the rent for years has an adverse affect on the property you’re managing. Expenses increase often at more than the rate of inflation. On the other side of that note – there are provinces and states that have an absence of rent control. Being a great landlord also includes not being a jerk and increasing someone’s rent by 400%, even if you technically can.
Great landlords understand the importance of always doing a good job. Even with a low vacancy rate, it’s important.
Great landlords take pride in the property they have. Being a slumlord is so 80s.
Great landlords are fair and flexible and expect the same of their tenants.
Great landlords don’t subscribe to doing things in the cheapest possible way. They approach everything from repairs and renovations to snow removal in a practical but correct and accountable way.
Great landlords aren’t evil. They manage to be effective at managing and operating an income property, while applying common sense to situations. They respect people’s privacy and rights even though they have the ability to enter into a tenant’s unit. They don’t dangle the ole’ “I own this place” statement above people’s heads. They even act politely and ethically when things go south.

Thoughts? Comments? Share what you think makes a good landlord great with us!

Introducing Rent Receipts

Dear landlords,

We rolled out a cool new feature for our active trials and current customers. It’s a rent receipts feature in Renting Well, that makes supplying receipts for rent received from tenants a *snap*.

As you may know, come income tax time, you may get a lot of requests from tenant for receipts. You’re obligated to provide a receipt if a tenant asks for one. All that to say, adding this feature was something we were keen on getting to post launch, and is part of a series of additions we’re going to be moving forward with over the next few months.

Firing off a rent receipt is dead simple. Next to each revenue item marked “rent”, you’ll notice a small button labelled “receipt”. Click that – and it’ll give you two options to either email the receipt directly to the tenant associated with the rent payment, or to print the rent receipt if you wish.

Questions? Comments? Share with us. We’d love to hear your feedback.

Property Investment Project U.K.

Came across this gem of a find, in Property Investment Project. It’s a website/blog dedicated to all of the ups and downs associated with buying, renting (letting as they call it in the U.K.), and managing income real estate. Besides being one of the most informative resources I’ve come across, this is one of the funniest takes on being a landlord I’ve ever found. Seriously. Whether you’re in the U.S., Canada, or the U.K. – there’s stuff to be gleaned here that you can find useful, regardless of the country you’re in.

The website has a comprehensive list of everything you’re going to want to know if you’re a landlord in the U.K. Everything. Their landlord F.A.Q. is an gleefully exhaustive list of topics and frequently asked questions. The landlord guide is chock full of seriously valuable “how-to’s” on a wide range of things, like finding tenants, pets, and even evicting tenants.

The blog is what sold me on reading this all night last. I literally read the entries for a couple of hours. It’s the equivalent of a George Carlin stand up routine, and really puts a human face on the job of being a landlord. I touched on this in the kick off piece we posted on the blog back on December 11th. Being a landlord isn’t easy – really – it’s not.

I really feel that the misconception about being a landlord needs to change, regardless of what country you’re in, and it’s something we’re trying to do with Renting Well. For every assumption that landlords are rich, there’s a slick marketing campaign advertising “how to get rich in real estate”, with a couple on a beachfront somewhere, clearly retired from all of the multi families and duplexes they bought, who assure you that it’s easy to do it to through their beaming whitened smiles. This kind of drives me bananas. I snicker a bit when I watch a lot of these home improvement shows too. As much as I genuinely love them, sometimes I find they present having tenants in a bit of an inaccurate light. Yes, you can invest 50,000 bucks into having a basement ensuite that looks like it jumped out of a catalogue, and yes, you can have your tenants cover your mortgage ( or a large portion of it) – but there’s a whole lot more to it than that. There’s the job. The landlord job. It gives the goods – warts and all. Definitely worth a read – but to be taken with a grain of salt.