Landlord Law is mostly a ‘one to many’ information service (which is why the pricing is moderate) but I do offer some ‘one to one’ advice services.  To date these have been:

• telephone advice (£60), and
• a fixed fee written advice service (£95)

However there is now a new option – an online consultation.

What the consultation service can be used for:

Discussions about a problem with a tenant – particuarly if there are several people who will want to be involved in the discussion

Discussions about a particular problem situation you or your team have, which you would like to discuss and throw ideas around and get some legal feedback

Discussions about a new service you are thinking of setting up where you would like some advice about the legal aspects.  Particularly if you would like others in your team to be involved in the discussions.

And so on.

How it works

• First you have to place an order and pay the fee
• You will then be sent a link to an online form to complete with the details of your discussion topic.  You will also need to send me any relevant documents
• We will then agree a suitable time for the consultation
• I will do some research into your situation before the consultation
• At the relevant time, you log into the online discussion room using the login details provided, for the consultation
• The system can be used for both Windows PCs and Macs

As with my other ‘one to one’ services, this is only available to Landlord Law members.  The fee for a 45 minute consultation service at present is £198 which is £165 plus VAT.  If you are interested you will find more information (and technical specifications) here.

Things to watch out for with company lets

Firstly, lets to companies are not assured shorthold tenancies (ASTs).
The reason for this is that the act which set up the protective code which governs ASTs, the Housing Act 1988, specifically states that its provisions apply only to ‘individuals’ i.e. not to artificial beings such as companies.

Companies are businesses (so the argument goes) and do not need the protection that the act gives.

What this means is that ‘company lets’ (as they are called) are governed by the underlying ‘common law‘, the legal rules which regulated tenancies before the Rent Act and Housing Acts came along to change them.

The main practical effect of this is that:

• you should not use the standard AST agreements found in shops and on the internet, but a tenancy agreement designed for company lets (we provide one at Landlord Law)
• You don’t use section 8 or 21 possession notices. The correct form of notice is an old style Notice to Quit
• The procedure and paperwork for evicting tenants is different

Then you need to consider why these people want to rent via a company let.
There are a number of reasons. For example:

• It may be tax related.
• It may be so that they can provide accommodation for a number of staff and directors on a short term basis.
• Or it could be to provide accommodation for an employee or director who would not pass normal referencing.

You should therefore be careful with company lets. Although they can be lucrative, bear in mind that you do not really have any control over who the company places in the property once let (technically you can take steps to repossess for breach of contract but practically this is difficult to do during the fixed term, for anything other than rent arrears).

You therefore need to take steps to protect your position, before the property is let.

I would suggest :

• Doing a search against the company at Companies House. If your property is an expensive one, consider buying a more detailed report and (in particular) checking the last few years’ accounts
• Taking a guarantee from at least one director, preferably two
• Checking carefully the references of the guarantors and getting credit checks done
• Asking for details of the person(s) who will be living in the property and checking them also
• Either letting for no longer than six months at a time, or ensuring that (for longer lets, eg a year) the tenancy agreement has a break clause.

You should also take a tenant/damage deposit. The good news here is that as this is not an AST you do not need to protect it in a tenancy deposit scheme, as the tenancy deposit regulations only apply to ASTs.

If you are careful, as with all tenants, you should, hopefully, have a good letting experience.

About eleven years ago I had this crazy idea of running a subscription service – somewhere landlords and tenants could find out their legal rights and obligations at a modest cost.

I had a good feeling about it from the start, so borrowed an extra chunk off the house and commissioned Gill Bishop (then working for another company) to build it for me.

The Landlord Law site went live on 21 November 2001.  It was one of my better ideas.

The site has gone from strength to strength and now the subscriptions form the larger part of my income.  But it was by no means certain that this would happen at the start.  So thanks to my poor husband (afflicted with an entrepreneurial wife) for agreeing to let me do it, and putting up with it all since then.

Sometimes you just have to do it

You never know in business quite what is going to work and what is not.  But it is VERY exciting when it does work.  I am still thrilled when anyone signs up to Landlord Law, even after all these years.

Landlord Law has also given me freedom.  Freedom to do the work that I enjoy (writing and developing new ideas), freedom to say “no” to work I don’t want to do, and freedom from what many solicitors are finding is the tyranny of traditional practice.

Into the future

As you will have seen (if you read this blog regularly) I have changed the membership types around a bit, and am introducing new content.  I am also very excited about my new School for Landlord project which I am hoping to make live in December.

This is going to involve free instruction videos for novice landlords, but I will be doing a separate post about this soon.  In the meantime, I have a special offer for loyal blog readers who are not Landlord Law members (yet).

10th Anniversary Offer for blog readers

If you join Landlord Law as an annual +Plus member you can get a refund of £50 by emailing me (after you have joined) saying Landlord Law Blog 10th Anniversary offer.

If you join as a six months +Plus member you will get £15 refunded.  Multi user members will have the setup fee (£90) waived. But only if you quote the offer words to me.

This offer will end on Friday 25 November at 10.30 pm.

As you may have seen from previous posts, I have been introducing new content types – the repossession kits and the videos, and there have been some changes in the membership types to reflect this.

The +Plus membership

Annual members  pay more upfront, and commit for a whole year.  Monthly members can cancel at any time.  So it is only fair that if new content types are introduced, they are kept for the annual members.

Therefore when I brought the repossession kits over, they were added using a content type which only the annual members could access.  Likewise when I started doing the videos.  Finally, I amended the membership type to allow access to both landlord and tenant content, making it ideal for advisors.

However this created some confusion.  Last year when the new site went live and the annual membership fee went up, I promised annual members at that time that they could keep their membership fee so long as they renewed promptly.  When I brought the new content over though, I decided that it would be unfair to give this to the ‘original’ members, as they pay so much less and this content was never part of the original site.

To make it clear that the new annual members get access to extra content, I have therefore renamed this +Plus membership.  +Plus members will also get long term access to the School for Landlords content when that kicks off in a few weeks time.

New six months +Plus

Quite a few people have mentioned however that £180 is too much for them to afford right now.  So I have therefore created a new six months +Plus membership for £96 which went live yesterday.

The six months +Plus get all the benefits of the annual +Plus members except that they don’t get the free telephone advice on joining.

Standard membership

Standard members, who pay by the month, get a more limited service.  First of all they need to chose whether to join as a landlord or a tenant member.  The tenant membership is £15 and the landlord service is £20.

The landlord membership is by far the most popular.  Landlord standard members mostly join to get the tenancy agreements and the general support from the information FAQ and articles, and the forum where they can ask me questions.

The ‘Original’ members get an annual form of standard membership (which is no longer available – so  don’t ask).  However for ‘new’ standard members I have introduced two changes.

Tenant standard members

Most tenants join up because they have a problem which they want a bit of help with.  They are not normally going to want more than one month.

However sometimes a tenant will want support for a bit longer, for example if their landlord is trying to evict them.  To make it a bit easier for them I have now set up a new three month membership for the price of two – £30.

Landlord standard members

I have been feeling a bit guilty about long term standard members.  Over time they pay quite a lot and it seems unfair to exclude them from the +plus content.  So I have now introduced a rule that once they have been a member for five months, they can apply to be upgraded.

However they have to ask for it.  It is not something that can be set up to work automatically – I will have to do it manually.  So I need them to tell me when they have reached that stage.  I wil then need to keep a sharp eye on the pay pal messages so I can switch it off again if their recurring payments are cancelled or skipped.

Multi User membership

This is the third type of membership, which I have set up for businesses.  I explained it all in this post, so will not say much here.  Other than that the multi users will all get a +Plus membership type.

*****

Its taken me a while to work all this out, but I now feel happy with the different membership types.  So I shouldn’t be dong any more changes for a while!

You will find a complete list of all the membership types and their entitlements in the new re-vamped services guide page.

For a long time I have wanted to set up a membership type especially for businesses where several members of staff need to use the service.  Finally I have done it!

If more than one person in a company needs to use Landlord Law, the company will usually baulk at paying two or more full price memberships.  Particularly as those memberships will ‘officially’ belong to the member and not to the business.

With multi user membership this is changed.

How it works

The lead company member.
There must be a lead company member at all times.  This will be our main contact with the company so should be someone in authority.  This member is charged full price, currently £180 (£150 plus VAT).

Standard company members.
The company can then buy additional memberships for its staff at a much lower price of £36 per person  £30 plus VAT).  If a member of staff leaves, his or her membership can be ended or transferred to another member of staff.

All members, the lead and the standard company members have full access rights to all parts of the site, including the document generator (for tenancy agreements and forms), the forum, the repossession kits, and all videos (including the forthcoming School for Landlords videos).

The company group area.
In addition each company will have its own private area where only company members (and Landlord Law administrators) can access.  This will contain a list of all the company members, with links so they can message each other, and the renewal date.

If required I can also add special pages where company members can add their own content and use the discussion area at the end of the page.

Set up and renewal fees.
As there is quite a bit of work involved in setting up a new multi user membership there is a set up fee of £90, and an annual renewal fee of £60 (to cover the extra administration work involved).

Membership is by application and the membership will be invoiced annually after the membership has been reviewed (and any adjustments for staff changes done).

Who its aimed at

Landlord has always had a significant membership among busineses.  These include:

• Letting agents
• Property companies
• Housing advisors
• University accommodation offices
• Large professional landlord companies
• Solicitors

As part of my anniversary offer, any companies who join up before 25 November 2011 won’t have to pay the setup fee. 

You can read more about the new multi user members and apply for membership >> here.