New TV advert for the popular UK property portal FindaProperty.com.

The Hill magazine has asked the top agents in Holland Park to write down some tips for tenants looking to move to the area. All 12 have just one message for us – the stock is limited, competition between tenants is high, and if you really want that flat you better have your references and monies ready on the day!

- Stock is limited, with the sales market having been so strong across 2009. Family houses are seeing particular demand. If you see the right property, do not hang around. Limited stock means more competition. – Savills.

- With the shortage of good quality stock you need to act quickly if you find the perfect property. Be prepared to offer asking price or close to secure the property. – Knight Frank.

- With an increasingly competetive rental market, as a result of the rental property available, it is paramount that tenants are acting quickly and presenting their best offer as soon as possible. Great properties can  attract multiple bids. – Marsh & Parsons.

Read the digital issue of The Hill, the local magazine for Notting Hill, Kensington and the surrounding areas.

Experts say that the demand for rentals in London is increasingly on the rise:

“A rising number of more mature households in the private rented sector is likely to mean that it is not just studios and one-bedroom flats that will be required but, increasingly, small houses and family homes for those with children who have been unable to gain a foothold on the housing ladder,” says Yolande Barnes of Savills.

Read the whole story in FT Weekend.

Renters have started to run background checks on property owners, writes The Observer. As the number of mortgages in arrears has soared, tenants’ concerns are well founded.

So what are our options?

First, if you’re renting through a letting agent, ask them what type of background checks have they run on the property owner.

Without landlord’s consent we can confirm that their name matches the one on the property deeds. Log on to Land Registry – information for one property costs £4.

Landlord’s permission is needed for the following checks:

- Basic check for £15.88 with TenantVerify reveals an individual’s credit score, outstanding debts, whether there have been any county court judgments filed against them, and their main residence for the last six years.

- More comprehensive check with TenantVerify for £30.88 gives you the landlord’s contract of employment, earnings and character references.

“With almost ten people for every available property in Notting Hill landlords can look forward to an excellent return on any refurbishment work they perform.”

- Tom Mellon, Foxtons lettings manager, for The Hill.

10 people for every available property?!  Mad!

I was looking at this photo thinking – what, in heaven’s name, is that?!

Estate agent Hamptons description in the ad explains: “A slide that whisks you down through a trap door from the master bedroom into the reception.”

Check out Rainbow House on Portobello Road in Notting Hill W11 – a 3 bedroom house to rent for £4500 per week.

Woohoo!

Interesting new widget from Gumtree – Rent Smart Widget shows how your monthly rent compares to other properties in your area.

My place is currently a couple of hundred pounds cheaper than the average!

From The Westminster’s Reporter.

Residents at risk of losing their homes because of difficulties with mortgage or rent payments can now apply for an interest free loan under a new council scheme.

If you went to Soho Live this weekend you probably passed by this building, No.6 Greek Street, and saw the ad.

But if not, here it is:

Flat to let in the heart of Soho!

Greek Street leads to Soho Square, where the main festivities took place. More photos: RoR Streets – Greek Street W1

Here is what they are looking for:
- stories of people who have made great deals or are about to (like students renting a flat that would have been totally unaffordable last year).
- to see a negociation between a landlord and a tenant.
- new trends.

The interviews would take place next week.

Click here to read our interview for The Rat & Mouse.

One of the best ways to make sure you won’t miss any good offers during these busy months of August, September and October, is to register with an estate agent. Being on the agent’s database should give you an advantage.

As the estate agent Strutt & Parker website states:

So make sure to register yourself at the letting agent’s office to hear about the best offers first.

While it would be great if you could visit the agent’s office in person, we realise that you might be too busy to do that. We’ve made some changes to our London Letting Agents page in order to help you with that. Agents are now divided into postcode groups (listed in alphabetical order) and most of them have a register link.

You could of course prepare an E-mail, and send it to all the agents to save time but beware that it might not put you on the database automatically.

Jump to our London Letting Agents page.

Planning on moving to NW1 postcode area?

Did you know that men living in Somers Town NW1 are dying 10 years earlier than their neighbours in leafy Hampstead NW3?!

Males in the ward of St Pancras NW1 and Somers Town NW1 have an average life expectancy of just 71 – the same as boys being born in the war-torn Palestinian West Bank. The cause of early death is insecurity, which makes people smoke, abuse alcohol, forget about exercise and diet, reports Camden Gazette 24.

Those less than 3 miles away in the ward of Hampstead NW3 are reaching the ripe old age of 81 – the same as boys being born in Macau, the Chinese territory that last year boasted the longest life expectancy in the world.

Labour councillor Roger Robinson, who represents St Pancras and Somers Town, says: “There are very high levels of deprivation, very high pollution, and very little parkland – the nearest is Regent’s Park. We only have one youth club and not much in the way of playgrounds.

Community campaigners say people’s health suffers because they are forced to live in cramped flats with barely any open space. “It’s difficult to see how people can develop, and then retire in a respectable manner, when they are living in a sardine can. There are families with two, three, four children in two-bedroom flats.

Acknowledging the problem is the first step to solving it!

Our friends and acquaintances often turn to us when they are on the lookout for a new home in London. We usually help them by just spreading the word but often advise on which websites to use, which letting agents to contact, etc. We help a little bit more if they are new to the city, as we want to make sure they keep safe and don’t end up being trapped in a place they didn’t really want.

We thought it might be a good idea to take that wishlist out from the drawer, and put it up on our website. Maybe one of our dear readers knows a suitable place that is available for rent. Perhaps they have some interesting information about the area or have just used an agent that was so good they’d like to recommend them. These are just a few ways in which we can help someone trying to find a needle in the haysack:D

So if you want to help – here is our London Renters Wishlist.

Please note that since there are a lot of incompetent letting agents operating in the market at the moment, we will be forwarding ARLA member agent offers only. List of London letting agents can be found HERE.

Renters who want to add their wish can just fill out the form below the list and press “Send”. All requests stay up for 4 weeks! We will not give your E-mail address to anyone – it is entirely up to you if you want to answer the E-mails we forward you. All suitable offers will be forwarded once a day. Advice and other offers will be sent in an E-mail once a week.

This is of course all for free!

Jump to London Renters Wishlist

Edit 28.07.2009: The wishlist has proved to be useless in this form. We’re currently working on some changes!

One step closer to the licensing of the letting agents…

Citizen Advice Bureau has just released an interesting report named – “Let Down”. According to the survey, private tenants are badly let down by a system that allows letting agents to operate completely unchecked, routinely ripping off tenants by imposing unjustified and excessive charges and providing a poor or non-existent service.

Key points from the report:

- The absence of any statutory regulation of letting agents means that using an agent can be a costly and risky business for tenants.

- An online survey of 1,330 tenants who visited the Citizens Advice website over a 3 month period, found that 73% were dissatisfied with the service provided by their letting agent.

- Common concerns included difficulties in contacting the agent, serious delays in getting repairs carried out, inadequacies in the protection of clients’ money and the frequency with which additional charges were made.

- A survey of 424 letting agents found that 94% imposed additional charges on tenants on top of the tenancy deposit and rent/rent in advance. There was huge variation in the size of these charges. The charge for checking references ranged from £10 to £275 and the charge for renewing a tenancy ranged from £12 to £200. In some cases additional charges for a tenancy amounted to over £600.

- Less than 1/3 of agents willingly provided full written details of their charges to CAB workers when asked.

- Sixty one per cent of the tenants in the survey said that paying these charges was a problem. Some had to borrow the money, others had difficulty paying other bills or went into debt.

- More than a quarter of the agents said they did not let to tenants in receipt of housing benefit – a figure which rose to 48% in the south east.

- This report calls for the statutory regulation of letting agents. In order to obtain a licence, agents should be required to demonstrate professional competence, have adequate client money protection arrangements and operate a system for handling complaints and redress.

- Regulations should also specify that no additional charges should be made to tenants for activities which are part of the routine letting and management process. The cost of this work should be included in the rent paid by the tenant and/or the management fee paid by the landlord.

- The regulator must take a pro-active approach to compliance and should have an appropriate range of regulatory tools to enforce this. The ultimate sanction should be the withdrawal of an agent’s licence to operate.

- The Departments of Work and Pensions (DWP) and Communities and Local Government (CLG) should consider how housing benefit reform can address the reluctance of letting agents and landlords to let to tenants in receipt of housing benefit.

Download Let Down (*pdf).

Estate agent Knight Frank’s website has been redesigned.

See if you like browsing the rentals in the grid view just as much as we do – jump to view all rentals in Greater London .

The photos are in much better size in the new version (image on the right; old version on the left).

We had the best walk around the area on Saturday, and here are some photos we took just for our YOU!

St. Luke’s & Christ Church garden. Between St Luke’s and Sydney Street.

Amazing view to the garden from the houses at Britten Street. Estate agent Aylesford has a 2-bed apartment overlooking the garden for 575 pw in their books. Click here to see the ad.

St. Luke’s Street.

Corner of Sumner Place and Fulham Road.

That small palace there is Anouschka’s favourite house in Chelsea.

Burnsall Street. The best looking facade decoration we’ve seen this Spring.

Astell Street.

Fulham Road.

Christian Liaigre, 68-70 Fulham Road.

To let by Hamptons International.

Unique wheels…

And doors.

Door knockers.

Smith Street just off King’s Road is actually already Kensington SW3.

Neighbourhood watch seems to be pretty good around here.

Do you have something like that in your area?

Letting agents Knight Frank and Susan Metcalfe seem to be active in the area.

Ormonde Gate.

The lucky residents on Franklins Row enjoy the view to the…

…cricket ground…

…tennis courts…

… and Royal Hospital Chelsea.

Hamptons International may be able to help you if you want to rent in the area. That’s the first time we hear about UKD Homes.

Click here to see the average asking prices in SW3 area.

We are excited to hear that SpareRoom.co.uk is planning to launch a new magazine! The ultimate guide to finding your ideal flat or house share in Greater London should be in most of the newsstands from 1st of May for £2.50.

If you want your ad in that number, that very first edition – you better hurry up and place your ad now. Bold photo ad costs only £24.95, other options are cheaper. 

Click here to find out more.

It’s official – the public love floor plans, writes Estate Agent Today. Rightmove has found that those property listings with plans have 35% more attention from buyers. The Academy survey report says that ca 85% of the house hunters consider floor plans important. Only 58,9% thought that local shops and such information is important, and only 51% voted for 360 virtual tours.  

We wrote about the importance of plans in the listings back in February this year.

Unlike photos or description, floor plans give renters hard facts which cannot be shown in a different light. WYSIWYG.

Demand to see the floor plan before viewing the property, and you’ll save yourself and the agent a lot of time!

Google has just released Street View for UK!

London renters can now get to know the street and surroundings of their new rental without leaving home. Just think of how much time you can save if you can have a look at the area before going to the viewing! You can check if the building is in good condition, or whether the noisy street is too close or far enough.

We’re off to explore!

If you want to try it out >> go to Google Maps >> write the address or find the place >> drag the yellow man (on zoom, in the upper left corner) to where you want to be.

BREAKING NEWS: All the listings in FindaProperty.com now have a link to Street View – just find the yellow man icon on the right hand side and click on it!