Posts Tagged ‘landlords’

Renting commercial property can be a complicated business. It is not unusual for commercial agreements and leases to have in excess of 50 pages of detailed conditions that will impact on you financially. In addition to this, new legislation might have come into force that you are unaware of – complicating things further by imposing more requirements on you that aren’t actually written into the lease. Listed here are 12 things you should understand before you rent commercial property.

1. If my place is unusable due to fire damage, I can stop paying the rent and look for somewhere else.

If your business premises are destroyed or seriously damaged, you will have all the problems of finding alternative premises from which to trade. But what about the old premises? The law says that the lease continues and you must carry on paying the rent until the end of the lease.

2. I do not need to worry about insuring the property – that is the landlord’s problem.

The lease will deal with who is responsible for the insurance, including what is covered by the policy. What is covered by the policy requires careful consideration and in certain instances you may need to take out your own cover as well. It is vital that you ensure that all eventualities are covered.

3. If I am renting commercial premises, there is no need to carry out searches against the property.

Landlords offer no guarantee as to whether the premises will be suitable for your requirements. It is important that you make all relevant searches and enquiries in relation to the premises prior to the commencement of the lease. Once you have signed up to the lease you will be liable for the rent. Consequently you simply cannot stop paying rent if something arises that affects the suitability of the premises for your business. Searches can reveal issues such as:

- That your Local Authority are going to create a pedestrian zone on your street

- That the land may be common land or registered as a village or town green. This will prevent any planned development or construction taking place.

- The planning history relating to the premises. Many tenants assume that planning permission is the landlord’s problem, however breaches of planning control can be enforced for up to 10 years after the breach occurred. It is important to check that all planning permissions have been complied with.

- If the property carries an obligation to contribute to the cost of repairing the chancel of the local parish church. This will almost certainly be responsibility of the tenant.

4. I am renting property to use as a workshop. The lease allows me to use the premises for any purpose – I assume this is advantageous to me.

This is not always the case. The use to which the premises can be put may have the effect of increasing the amount of rent payable when the landlord comes to review the rent in the future. The broader the use to which the premises can be put, the more valuable the premises.

5. I am renting premises for use as a butcher’s shop. The lease permits this use but no other. I assume this is not a problem for me.

Whilst it is fine for your business purposes, the restriction may cause problems in the future. For example, if your business is not a success and you need to transfer the lease, then any person to whom you assign the lease would also have to use it as a butcher’s shop. Consequently it may prove difficult to find a suitable tenant.

6. I am not registered for VAT and the landlord has insisted on adding VAT to the rent I agreed.

Whether the landlord can do this will depend on the exact terms of the lease. However this matter should be clarified when the lease is initially negotiated.

7. My lease gives me a right to park 5 cars in designated parts of the communal car park. The new landlord claims they are not bound by these rights and has reduced the number of spaces allocated to me.

Unfortunately seemingly simple matters like car parking are very complicated from a legal perspective and are often not properly dealt with by the landlord in the lease. Subsequently, the new landlord might not be tied by these conditions.

8. My landlord has stated that there will be car parking at the premises.

Not necessarily. The lease will need to be checked to establish whether or not there is an allocated parking space or spaces or whether there is only a right to park on a ‘first come first served basis’ in a communal car park.

9. I plan to rent the premises through a limited company. If this company becomes insolvent, I can walk away from the property and the lease.

Not necessarily. It is likely that the landlord will try to obtain personal guarantees from the directors of the company. Careful consideration should be given to the terms of any personal guarantees provided. For example, the tenant should aim to include a term enabling any guarantee to be released on assignment.

10. The success of my business will not affect the rent which I have to pay.

It might! It all depends upon the terms of the lease. The landlord’s ability to change or ‘review’ the rent is a very important part of the lease. It requires careful consideration when the lease is being drafted.

11. I do not need to be concerned about Asbestos Regulations.

Under the Control of Asbestos Regulations all commercial premises must have a report detailing the presence of asbestos at the premises. This report must be updated at least annually. As a tenant, the lease may force you to fulfil these requirements, which can be expensive. It is vital that this is discussed when the lease is being negotiated, and before it is signed so that the tenant will not be liable for compliance with Control of Asbestos Regulations.

12. I do not have to worry about Fire Regulations.

Under the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order specific rules for the preparation and updating of a risk assessment and fire precautions will attach to both the landlord and the tenant., It is essential that both parties liaise to ensure they not only know and apply the Regulations correctly but dovetail their activities to prevent loss or damage occurring, A criminal prosecution is likely to follow any failure to comply as these rules are for the protection of your employees and the general public. An experienced commercial property solicitor can advise you on the appropriate searches and enquiries that should be made relating to the premises.

When entering into a commercial lease, make sure that you instruct a solicitor experienced in dealing with commercial leases who can interpret and negotiate the terms for you before agreeing a lease. Ideally this should be prior to the communication of the Heads of Terms which record your agreement with the landlord. Failure to do so can prove expensive

Tim Bishop is senior partner at Bonallack and Bishop ( http://www.bishopslaw.co.uk ), a firm of Andover Property Solicitors highly experienced in advising both commercial tenants and landlords. He is responsible for all major strategic decisions and has grown the business by 1000% in the last 12 years. Tim sees himself as a businessman who owns a law firm.

Author: Tim Bishop
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Are you a landlord or a house owner who has let out a house on rent? If yes, then you might be running the risk of default on payment of rent. You can not predict when the tenant may miss out on paying the rent. As a landlord, you may be prone to suffer heavy losses when tenants default on making payments. If you were to find yourself in a similar situation, how would you cope up with the situation? The only way to deal with such a situation would be to get rent guarantee insurance.

With this kind of insurance cover, for a relatively small annual fee, landlords can protect against loss of rent. Landlord rent protection insurance is combined with Legal Assistance Insurance wherein the landlord’s legal costs of recovering rent and/or evicting a non-paying tenant are covered.

With help from rent guarantee insurance, a landlord can get the rent on time. He can be rest assured of getting the rent easily with its help. Herein, tenants are professionally credit checked before handing over the keys. This kind of insurance is very useful as it helps them keep their property protected without a letting agent, as the necessary checks involved actually tend to deter rogue tenants.

With rent protection insurance a landlord can protect his interests. Tenants who are likely to default on paying rent can keep themselves protected. Rent guarantee insurance is a type of insurance that keeps a landlord protected against any kind of proceedings to evict the tenant from the rented property where applicable. If you are protected against voids and non-payment of rent, including legal expenses and the cost of evicting tenants, you can make it happen through this kind of insurance. Rent guarantee protection service can help you keep protected.

By availing this kind of insurance, you can look forward to:

o Instant protection if your tenant fails to pay the rent
o Cover up to £2,500 a month in rent
o 6 or 12 month cover option
o Payment within 14 days of default, minus excess
o Expenses for legal action and tenant eviction
o Get Rent Guarantee insurance cover from less than £10 a month and protect against non-payment of rent in a short period

Rent Guarantee and Legal Protection can help you keep protected against all kinds of risks that you may be prone to against tenants. Now, without worrying about the tenants, you can lend your house or property safely.

Sadhna D, Expert Author

Building and Content Insurance:

Building and Content Insurance

Buy to Let Landlord Insurance:

Buy to Let Landlord Insurance

Author: Sadhna D
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Are you a landlord or a house owner who has let out a house on rent? If yes, then you might be running the risk of default on payment of rent. You can not predict when the tenant may miss out on paying the rent. As a landlord, you may be prone to suffer heavy losses when tenants default on making payments. If you were to find yourself in a similar situation, how would you cope up with the situation? The only way to deal with such a situation would be to get rent guarantee insurance.

With this kind of insurance cover, for a relatively small annual fee, landlords can protect against loss of rent. Landlord rent protection insurance is combined with Legal Assistance Insurance wherein the landlord’s legal costs of recovering rent and/or evicting a non-paying tenant are covered.

With help from rent guarantee insurance, a landlord can get the rent on time. He can be rest assured of getting the rent easily with its help. Herein, tenants are professionally credit checked before handing over the keys. This kind of insurance is very useful as it helps them keep their property protected without a letting agent, as the necessary checks involved actually tend to deter rogue tenants.

With rent protection insurance a landlord can protect his interests. Tenants who are likely to default on paying rent can keep themselves protected. Rent guarantee insurance is a type of insurance that keeps a landlord protected against any kind of proceedings to evict the tenant from the rented property where applicable. If you are protected against voids and non-payment of rent, including legal expenses and the cost of evicting tenants, you can make it happen through this kind of insurance. Rent guarantee protection service can help you keep protected.

By availing this kind of insurance, you can look forward to:

o Instant protection if your tenant fails to pay the rent
o Cover up to £2,500 a month in rent
o 6 or 12 month cover option
o Payment within 14 days of default, minus excess
o Expenses for legal action and tenant eviction
o Get Rent Guarantee insurance cover from less than £10 a month and protect against non-payment of rent in a short period

Rent Guarantee and Legal Protection can help you keep protected against all kinds of risks that you may be prone to against tenants. Now, without worrying about the tenants, you can lend your house or property safely.

Sadhna D, Expert Author

Building and Content Insurance:

Building and Content Insurance

Buy to Let Landlord Insurance:

Buy to Let Landlord Insurance

Author: Sadhna D
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Are you a landlord or a house owner who has let out a house on rent? If yes, then you might be running the risk of default on payment of rent. You can not predict when the tenant may miss out on paying the rent. As a landlord, you may be prone to suffer heavy losses when tenants default on making payments. If you were to find yourself in a similar situation, how would you cope up with the situation? The only way to deal with such a situation would be to get rent guarantee insurance.

With this kind of insurance cover, for a relatively small annual fee, landlords can protect against loss of rent. Landlord rent protection insurance is combined with Legal Assistance Insurance wherein the landlord’s legal costs of recovering rent and/or evicting a non-paying tenant are covered.

With help from rent guarantee insurance, a landlord can get the rent on time. He can be rest assured of getting the rent easily with its help. Herein, tenants are professionally credit checked before handing over the keys. This kind of insurance is very useful as it helps them keep their property protected without a letting agent, as the necessary checks involved actually tend to deter rogue tenants.

With rent protection insurance a landlord can protect his interests. Tenants who are likely to default on paying rent can keep themselves protected. Rent guarantee insurance is a type of insurance that keeps a landlord protected against any kind of proceedings to evict the tenant from the rented property where applicable. If you are protected against voids and non-payment of rent, including legal expenses and the cost of evicting tenants, you can make it happen through this kind of insurance. Rent guarantee protection service can help you keep protected.

By availing this kind of insurance, you can look forward to:

o Instant protection if your tenant fails to pay the rent
o Cover up to £2,500 a month in rent
o 6 or 12 month cover option
o Payment within 14 days of default, minus excess
o Expenses for legal action and tenant eviction
o Get Rent Guarantee insurance cover from less than £10 a month and protect against non-payment of rent in a short period

Rent Guarantee and Legal Protection can help you keep protected against all kinds of risks that you may be prone to against tenants. Now, without worrying about the tenants, you can lend your house or property safely.

Sadhna D, Expert Author

Building and Content Insurance:

Building and Content Insurance

Buy to Let Landlord Insurance:

Buy to Let Landlord Insurance

Author: Sadhna D
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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The rise in the buy-to-let residential investment market in recent years has been accompanied by the appearance of the so called ‘property investment guru’. These ‘gurus’ spend all their time instructing property investors how they too can make millions out of investing in residential property.

As an experienced residential property investor I am instantly suspicious of anybody that appears to want to tell you how they made a million and how you can do it too. The question is always why if you have found such a brilliant way of making money would you want to share the secret with a whole load of potential investment competitors?

What’s in it for me?

The answer is normally that these property investment gurus are trying to sell landlords something and make money in the process. Most property gurus have traditionally tried to sell residential investment property for which they will receive a commission from the seller or the property development company.

Some of these property gurus are currently trying to ‘flog’ investment properties to UK investors sourced from the United States.

The ‘property investment guru’ markets the attraction of these residential investment properties to landlords as being property investments that have:

* An unbelievably low price.

* A headline rental yield in double figures.

* A potential of uplift in the capital values that might occur as the area improves.

UK & US property ‘chalk & cheese’

On paper these residential investment opportunities may seem appealing. However, anybody that knows anything about the US and the UK residential investment property markets and planning systems will know that they are very different property markets.

What anybody may say about the UK property market is that it has one thing in it’s’ favour. As Mark Twain famously advised “Buy land they are not making it anymore”. He clearly had the UK in mind when making this comment. It is obvious to any UK resident and landlord that we live on a very crowded isle where land supply is restricted. This is particularly true of development land, which is constrained by a restrictive planning system and the Green Belt. These facts means that development land and therefore property will always be relatively expensive particularly when demand for accommodation from owners, renters and investors driven by high levels of immigration is so high.

In the United States the land market and planning system is very different.

* They have much, much, more of it.

* They don’t have a green belt or a planning system that is so restrictive, their system relies on zoning and then releasing big chunks of development land on the fringes of towns and cities.

* Land can be very cheap.

This means that U.S. towns and inner cities have suffered from inner city dereliction and decay far more than in the UK. The middle class residents of a town moving to a new suburb leaving great sways of the old town and city to the working poor or crack dealers. Property in these locations may be ridiculously cheap but don’t expect an urban regeneration miracle any time soon.

Property Guru warning
Any landlord looking to follow the advice of a ‘property guru’ needs to stop and think first, what are their motivations?

Property investors should make sure not to get caught up by a guru’s flash car, confidence, swagger, promises and pictures of a bright and wealthy future.

Instead what property investors should do is:

* Do as much research themselves. Use the Internet to dig around and find out about the gurus proposition and their background. Could it well be that the guru is not quite what they make out they are. Have they been in trouble with the law or their professional body.

* Try and understand why residential investors closer to the proposition aren’t ‘snapping’ up the investment opportunity. For instance if the investment proposition is so strong in the US, the heart of global entrepreneurship then why aren’t all the local landlords and property investors falling over themselves to buy such great property investments.

* Ask the most pertinent question. If these residential investment properties are such great property investments why are they not keeping quiet and buying them all themselves. To which they may reply that; ‘they don’t want to be greedy and that they have enough money already’. In which case you may want to suggest that they refund any commission that they receive for their sales.

After this careful research by a landlord it may well be that the residential investment proposition, and indeed the ‘property investment guru’ is not all they seem to be.

Chris Horne is an experienced landlord and property professional who now runs the website Property Hawk, a site aimed directly at UK Landlords. The site incorporates free property management software that enables landlords to track all their financial data relating to their portfolio. It allows users to print tenancy agreements and other forms FREE FOREVER. The site generates a real time rent book for each property as well as calculating a landlords tax liabilty. The service is totally free to use at propertyhawk.co.uk

Author: Chris Horne
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Canada duty rates

Are you a landlord or a house owner who has let out a house on rent? If yes, then you might be running the risk of default on payment of rent. You can not predict when the tenant may miss out on paying the rent. As a landlord, you may be prone to suffer heavy losses when tenants default on making payments. If you were to find yourself in a similar situation, how would you cope up with the situation? The only way to deal with such a situation would be to get rent guarantee insurance.

With this kind of insurance cover, for a relatively small annual fee, landlords can protect against loss of rent. Landlord rent protection insurance is combined with Legal Assistance Insurance wherein the landlord’s legal costs of recovering rent and/or evicting a non-paying tenant are covered.

With help from rent guarantee insurance, a landlord can get the rent on time. He can be rest assured of getting the rent easily with its help. Herein, tenants are professionally credit checked before handing over the keys. This kind of insurance is very useful as it helps them keep their property protected without a letting agent, as the necessary checks involved actually tend to deter rogue tenants.

With rent protection insurance a landlord can protect his interests. Tenants who are likely to default on paying rent can keep themselves protected. Rent guarantee insurance is a type of insurance that keeps a landlord protected against any kind of proceedings to evict the tenant from the rented property where applicable. If you are protected against voids and non-payment of rent, including legal expenses and the cost of evicting tenants, you can make it happen through this kind of insurance. Rent guarantee protection service can help you keep protected.

By availing this kind of insurance, you can look forward to:

o Instant protection if your tenant fails to pay the rent
o Cover up to £2,500 a month in rent
o 6 or 12 month cover option
o Payment within 14 days of default, minus excess
o Expenses for legal action and tenant eviction
o Get Rent Guarantee insurance cover from less than £10 a month and protect against non-payment of rent in a short period

Rent Guarantee and Legal Protection can help you keep protected against all kinds of risks that you may be prone to against tenants. Now, without worrying about the tenants, you can lend your house or property safely.

Sadhna D, Expert Author

Building and Content Insurance:

Building and Content Insurance

Buy to Let Landlord Insurance:

Buy to Let Landlord Insurance

Author: Sadhna D
Article Source: EzineArticles.com