Landlord Law II

Many of you will be aware that my web designer and I are in the process of developing a new Landlord Law site.

The current site was originally developed by my web designer Gill Bishop in 2001, and although it has served me very well, it is getting a bit old and clunky.  We have been talking about a new site for a couple of years now.  Earlier this year I decided that the time had come to do it, and asked Gill to go ahead.

Gill advised that the new site should be built using the open source software Drupal, as this is a very stable platform suitable for a large site with many users (it’s the software used apparently for the White House website).  So this is what we are doing. The basic site is now there and Gill and I are both working on it.  It is taking us quite a bit longer than we originally thought.

Gill has done a stunning new theme for the site, which I am really pleased with.  However the theme is the least of it.  She has to create various types of membership (and get them to work), lots of new templates for the different type of content (Q and A, FAQ, tips etc), and the new purchasing system, not to mention a mailing system and forums and the new tenancy agreements service.  To name but a few.

I have the massive task of reviewing and then copying over ALL the Landlord Law content.  We have taken the decision to split the site in half, so members are going to be either landlord members or tenant members.  This is good, in that it will allow me to focus more on the different needs of those groups.

However it also means that for much of the content, for example the articles, which were generally written with both landlords and tenants in mind, I now have to do two, a landlords’ version and a tenants’ version.  This is taking some time.

While doing this of course I am also having to learn Drupal on the hoof.  It’s a steep learning curve and it was a bit hard at first.  However I am getting the hang of it, with help from Gill, the Drupal  guidance, and a couple of books I bought from Packt.

Drupal is a fantastic system.  We are using something called taxonomy, by which all content is tagged with a term.  I can then, using a thing called ‘views’, create a page, which will show all of a certain type of content, with a certain term.

So for example I have had to do views for all the different types of FAQ – so there is a page for the landlords tenancy agreements FAQ, a page for the landlords tenancy deposits FAQ, etc, all linked from a page which has links to the links pages for all the landlords FAQ (if you follow me).  And the same for the tenants FAQ.  These all have to be done individually and it took me a couple of days to get it right (although we have a clone function which helps a lot).

I am hoping to be able to do something similar for the Q and A, which I know will please many of you, as you have often asked for a better way to search these.

There’s still a vast amount to do.  Probably about one half to two thirds of the content is still to be moved over, plus there is some new content I want to do.

There is also the presentation of the information on the page.  I want to have at least one picture on most pages, plus there are things called blocks which we can use to put information in the margins.  This is all replicating a lot of what we have on the current site, but it all has to be done in a different way.

Last night I started putting links into the ‘library’, which will be a resource of links to relevant web-sites.  Things I have not really got around to doing much about yet are the new suppliers area, the forums, the trails, and the new instruction procedure for ‘one to one’ case work.

Not to mention the new software we are going to be using for our tenancy agreements!

So it will be a while longer before we can launch.  We are coming along, but I suspect it will be a couple of months more yet.  But it will be a pretty nice system when it is done.

If you have any suggestions for content, do leave a comment and let me know.

Announcing a new Landlord Law service : www.tenancydepositclaim.com.

About the tenancy deposits scheme

Since April 2007 landlords have been required to protect tenants deposits (for ASTs) in one of the three government authorised tenancy deposit schemes. This has largely infuriated landlords but there are a number of good reasons for it:

• The deposit money belongs to the tenant and not to the landlord
• Many landlords (not all but a substantial minority) were failing to return all or part of the deposit without proper justification
• When this happened, the only thing tenants could do was bring a County Court claim, but many people find the courts scary and intimidating
• The unjustified retention of their deposit was causing hardship, particularly when it was needed for a new tenancy

However under the new schemes the deposit money is protected, so that even if the landlord or agent holding the money becomes insolvent, the tenant will still get it back.  The schemes also come with a free arbitration service so that disputes regarding deductions from the deposit money can be independently assessed.

The problem now with tenancy deposits

Unfortunately it seems that many landlords are still not protecting deposits, despite that fact that they are usually aware the rules exist.

This is not only unfair on their tenants, it is also unfair on all the other landlords who are protecting deposits properly.

The tenancy deposit legislation may not be perfect, but it is the law. Landlords should not be allowed to pick and choose which regulations they will comply with. Often the landlords who fail to comply with the tenancy deposit legislation are also failing to comply with other legislation, and are generally the type of landlord which gives the whole landlording profession a bad name.

More practically, a landlords failure to protect the deposit means that if they then fail to return it unjustifiably (and often they do), their tenants don’t have access to the free arbitration service, and feel helpless to prevent their money being wrongly withheld. This is the very problem which the tenancy deposit legislation was set up to prevent.

Tenancy deposit scheme penalties

There are penalties included in the tenancy deposit legislation intended to deter landlords from flouting the legislation.

One of these is a penalty payment of three times the deposit sum, which a Judge will award if a claim is made to the County Court. However most tenants have no idea how to do this, cannot afford solicitors, and are scared of bringing a court claim without legal help.

The Landlord Law scheme

In order to help tenants in this situation, I am now able to offer the Landlord Law no win no fee tenancy deposit claim scheme. This operates as follows:

It is only available to tenants who have vacated the property.
In recent cases claims have failed where the landlord has protected the deposit before the tenants have issued proceedings. However this defence is not available where tenants are no longer living in the property.

It is only available where the landlord still owns the property.
The reason for this is that if the landlord fails to pay the award, a claim can be made to enforce the award against the property (so that both the sum awarded to the tenants and the solicitors costs will eventually be paid). This means, unfortunately, that our service will not be available where the landlords property has been repossessed by the mortgage company.

The service will be provided on a no win no fee basis.
So if your case is suitable, you will not have to make any up front payments, and will only have to pay solicitors costs if you win the claim.

For more information visit >> www.tenancydepositclaim.com.

You will also find a link to an application form.

Are your tenants giving you a headache?

If your tenants are running up arrears of rent and you don’t know what to do about it – here is the answer.  My new FREE >>  seven day email course!

The Rent Arrears Seven Day Course from Landlord Law (and its free!)

The course is a series of seven emails sent to you every day over seven days.  Each one looks at a different aspect, for example preparing a rent schedule, the different notices you can serve an when they are appropriate, going to court, what defences your tenant might have to a claim for possession based on rent arrears etc.

Bonus material

The course also comes with extra materials – documents from and links to some ‘members only’ pages on Landlord Law.  For example the documents include a letter and checklist, my self calculating rent arrears schedule, and several members only articles and links to members only FAQ pages on Landlord Law.

Most of the course content is stuff which is already up on the Landlord Law site, however even though members will have access to most of it already, if you are a member you may still find it helpful to have the content emailed to you rather than have to go and find it.

Deadline for signing up

I am only making this course available however for a limited period of time.  If you want to sign up, you will have to do this by 20 July 2010 as I will then be taking the course offline.

Make life easier for yourself

Rent arrears are a real problem, but if tackled the right way, you can limit the damage. This free short course will give you the confidence to deal with them and keep things under control.

You can >> read more and sign up here.

Today I have added another page to the Landlord Law Blog. This is the services page (which you can see on the orange navigation bar above), and it outlines some of the ‘one to one’ services which I offer to the public on residential landlord and tenant law.

However as much of my time is spent writing and running the Landlord Law web-site, I am unable to provide anything other than a limited ‘one to one’ service. The Landlord Law service is basically there to help you to do things yourself, by using the online content and a with a bit of extra help from me via the members forum when you need it.

However not everyone wants to do this. And also, with the best will in the world, there are times when, even if you enjoy doing your own legal work, you really cannot do it yourself, and need the help of an experienced solicitor. It is only right that Landlord Law should help you with this also.

For a long time I had a solicitors directory on Landlord Law, which had details of solicitors who contacted me saying that they offered a property law service. However I had to take these firms on trust, as I had no way of checking whether they really did offer a decent property service. Also I have to earn a living, and I could see that it was going to be some time before the directory built up to the level where I could make a charge for it. So this was a bit of a problem.

That problem has now been solved by a new partnership I have entered into with Contact Law. I discovered Contact Law, and Contact Law discovered me, as a result of some writing I was asked to do for a legal journal, the Internet Newsletter. (You can read the article I wrote, if you are interested, as I have also published it here). Being impressed with Landlord Law they asked if I would like to work with them.

Contact Law are a referral company. There is a lot of bad press in the legal sphere about referral companies, but this is mostly relating to personal injury referrals. (Many personal injury clients who get in touch with those companies who advertise on the telly would be shocked if they knew that their case was being sold on to solicitors, often for quite large sums of money). However Contact Law is not a part of that.

Basically they are for way for solicitors to outsource their marketing. Contact law, through their web-site, and their partners (such as me), are easily found by members of the public looking for a solicitor. When a potential client contacts them (either by completing one of the online forms or ringing them up), they talk to them and find out what kind of a problem they have.  They then refer them on to a suitable solicitor from their database (of which there are over 4,000).

It is part of the solicitors contract with Contact Law that they get in touch with the client within a specific time. After that it is up to them. However if they end up acting for the client, they then pay Contact Law 15% of their fees as payment for the referral (and as a Contact Law partner, I would get a percentage of this for all clients referred via my web-sites).

All of the solicitors on the Contact Law database are carefully checked and monitored by Contact Law, not only when they apply to join, but also by getting feedback from customers, at various stages of a case. So if you use a Contact Law solicitor you can be reasonably sure that they are a quality firm (otherwise clients would give bad feedback and Contact Law would stop referring work to them).

I am delighted therefore to be able to offer this new service, both on the Landlord Law site and also on the new services page of this blog. This will allow you to find a solicitor for the work you need (not always an easy thing to do if you know nothing about solicitors) and I will hopefully get a bit more income. This will allow me to invest more in Landlord Law (which is sometimes a bit of a struggle as I have to finance all these things myself) and ultimately provide a better service for you.

If you use the new service, do let me know how you get on.

When I went down to London recently and met with J of Nearly Legal, he took me to task for not having re-instated my blog roll. Quite right too.

However as the home page is looking a bit crowded I have decided to give a whole page for resources, which you can now see via the link in the orange navigation bar above.

The main part of the page looks at various free (and one members only) resources on the Landlord Law site, with links to the relevant section from the heading.

I have also done a new blogroll, or rather several blogrolls, covering different types of service. There are then RSS feeds showing the most recent Nearly Legal and PainSmith blog posts. Finally there is a contact form for you to use if you have any suggestions for other content (although note that all sites are included here at my discretion).

I hope the new resources page will be useful to you.  Let me know if you have any comments.