1. Please introduce yourself. Say a bit about yourself and your company

I’m Tom Entwistle, editor and founding director of LandlordZONE.co.uk. Born and raised in a Lancashire farming family, with agricultural and property interests stretching back several generations. I’m married with one son who is also in the property industry – he’s a chartered surveyor working in London. LandlordZONE was started in 1999 as a web site portal / on-line resource aimed at landlords and letting agents. One of the early Internet pioneer sites in property, it is now established as a leading UK property industry resource.

2. How did you first become involved in property?

My earliest recollection of property was my mother doing weekly rent collections, sometimes accompanied by us children, tramping the streets around a portfolio of terraced properties acquired by my maternal grandfather, who made his living as a cattle dealer in the 1920s, 1930s.

3. What do you think is your greatest achievement so far?

My career has spanned engineering, management and education, whilst developing and managing my own properties as a side-line since my 20s. I was a lecturer in management and marketing for many years and hold a post graduate Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing, a Masters Degree in Management Sciences from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) (now Manchester Business School) and I was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA) some years ago – these I see as my proudest achievements, though perhaps the most satisfying was developing commercial buildings into tenantable income producing space.

4. Do you or your company have any exciting plans for the future?

I’m now very much committed to publishing, particularly on-line publishing and the development of the LandlordZONE site. We have recently engaged some new web developers to take LandlordZONE to a new level and we are very excited about that project. I would like to do more property investing and developing in partnership with my son, time permitting.

5. What do you think are the greatest problems facing the private rented sector today?

The sector has been hampered recently with some (not all) ill thought through and overbearing regulation, brought in (rushed in), in my opinion, by ministers with little knowledge of the social and economic imperatives of running rentals businesses. There have been moves by government to encourage corporate investment in housing which, along with planning restrictions on HMO student housing, could pose a threat, though given the scale of things I think a small one.

6. What do you think are the greatest opportunities?

The private rented sector has undergone something of a renaissance in the UK over recently years, with lots of opportunities for the private landlord big and small to get involved. I don’t see that changing as all the demographic and economic factors favour a growth in renting. The outgoing government was obsessed with state control and regulatory bureaucracy which hampers the industry, but time will tell if things change under a new regime – the signs are good. Given the projected population growth figures for the UK population the future looks bright for the PRS.

7. We have a new government – what would you like to see in the new manifesto as regards the private rented sector?

A housing minister with a better understanding of the business imperatives of the industry, who is prepared to reduce some, not all, of the red-tape which has grown up. In my experience of business in general over many years, and business systems in particular, the more complicated you make rules, regulations and paperwork, the less chance they stand of being effective – it is time wasting and in the end, people just ignore it. I think the last government never learned that lesson.

8. Do you use social media (blogs, twitter, LinkedIn etc)? What place do you think it has in the future of the property industry?

Yes, we use all of these media, perhaps not as intensely as some, but we have many pressures on our time at LandlordZONE. LandlordZONE is by its nature a community site so these, along with our very busy Q&A Forums, are central to our existence.

9. What is the most important lesson you have learned during your time in property?

Treat others as you would want to be treated yourself – with respect and courtesy. Tenants are your customers and most are decent people who pay their rent on time and look after your property – it’s a great business to be in and landlords are a very privileged bunch. Know and follow the law to the letter – generally as a landlord you will be supported by the authorities if you do. Plan for the worst but expect the best. You cannot trust everyone, so do your tenant selection very carefully.

10. What advice would you have to someone thinking of entering the property industry today?

Don’t follow the instant millionaire dream – it often ends in disaster. Work hard, save hard and put your resources into long-term solid investments. That way your wealth will build gradually and safely.

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Thanks Tom, that was fascinating.  Note that as well as the portal at www.landlordzone.co.uk,. Tom also offers a tenant check service at Tenant Verify.

To get the blog on your phone you just put in the url www.landlordlawblog.co.uk and you will find it.  It will look like the picture.  You can also get it at http://mippin.com/landlordlawblog

Have you read our blog on your phone?  Let me know what you think.

I have gradually found myself using the toolbar.  But I found I wanted more.  I wanted links to the courts, to BAILII, to the Statute Law database, to all the sites I use professionally.  I have all these links of course in bookmarks.  However where they are varies, depending on whether I am using the PC or the Macbook, and whether I am using Safari, Firefox of IE.  “It would be nice” I thought to myself, “to have a toolbar which I could have on all of these where the position of the links can be the same”.  ” And “, I thought, “perhaps it might also be useful to other practitioenrs”.

After contacting Conduit.com who provide the free online software, and having been assured that it is all right for me to have two toolbars, I put it together this evening. It has a number of different sections, as follows:

Landlord Law Links.  After all it is *my* toolbar, and I do need to have easy access to the various parts of my site.

Law.  This has links to the statute law database and my Landlord Law legislation links section.

Cases.  This has links to several sites, BAILII of course, Lawindexpro, Nearly Legal (as it is more of less a case reporting service now), Arden Chambers eflashes, House of Lords, Supreme Court

Courts. The HM Court Service site, the Residential Property Tribunal, and the Supreme Court (again)

Gov’t.  This has just the CPR and the Communities and Local Government housing section, at present.

Web. Useful web-sites such as Delia Venables links pages, Infolaw, Garden Law.

Blogs.  This one, Nearly Legal (again), Pain Smith, and a few others.  I have limited the list to blogs dealing mostly with housing rather than pure property law, althugh I have included my Solicitors blog at the end (well after all it is my toolbar …)

Press.  Just the Times Law section and Inside Housing at the moment, but I expect I will add to this soon.

NFP (not for profit).  This has Shelter and the CAB at present.

Lawyers.  This has useful pracitioners sites, currently Gary Webbers’ UK Property site, Nic Madge’s site and Garden Court Chambers’ housing legal resources page.

Messages – see below.

As indicated above, this is a bit of a work in progress, and I hope to add to the toolbar as and when I find (or remember) other sites.

If you would like the toolbar for your own computer, you are welcome to download it.  >> You can do this here.  I have set the link to open in a new window.  The procedure for downloading the toolbar is explained >> in my earlier post, so I suggest you go there next and read how to do it.  It is very simple (make sure you use the download page linked from here though, its the one called the Housing Advisor Community Toolbar).

Note that I have added a message box to the end of the toolbar.  This is so, if I decide to add a link, I can put a message up for anyone using it, to tell them what I have done.  If this is you, you can reply to this, perhaps to suggest another site.  I think you can also just use it to send me a message, but we won’t find out really how it works until we use it.

I hope a few of you do decide to use it.  It could become a collaborative effort.  Although my word is final.  It is after all *my* toolbar!

However you now have something new to help you – the Landlord Law toolbar!

You may have seen toolbars for other sites and services (for example the Stumbleupon toolbar) – so it is only right that we have one for Landlord Law! This tool bar is aimed at landlords (if it proves popular I may do one for tenants later) and has links to the main content that landlords are likely to use most. This is as follows:

• The various pages relating to our tenancy agreements services, such as the Which Tenancy start page and the different download pages
• Pages relating to our eviction service, including the Rent Arrears Action Plan, the possession notices downloads page, the kits, and the page where you can instruct me to act as your solicitor in eviction work
• Links to the main landlords information sections, including some of the legal pages (e.g. legislation and cases)
• A link to the members discussion forum entry page
• A link to the Q&A page, and
• A link to this Blog
• I have also put a link to my twitter feed, but this does not always show up
• There is also the facility for me to add messages to the toolbar, and I may do the from time to time.

The toolbar, which is provided by a company called Conduit, will update automatically if I change or add anything, which is nice and means that you do not have to keep re-installing it. There is an option to re-instal via the drop down list next to the Landlord Law logo on the left, but just ignore it, it is not necessary (unless the toolbar is not displaying properly perhaps).

You can also add a load of other services to the toolbar, if you want, via the + sign at the far right. I have added the weather button for you, which you can personalise by putting in your location, but there are other things you can add yourself.

I should mention however, that as Conduit is an American company, many of the add ons are really only relevant for Americans (for example the Amazon gadget is for the amazon.com site rather than the British amazon.co.uk). Unless of course, you are a British ex pat landlord living in America (of which we have a few)!

You can also tweak various other things via the menu by the Landlord Law logo, but if you want to use the toolbar to navaigate the Landlord Law site, I suggest you leave it as it is.

So how do you get hold of the toolbar? Well follow this link (I have set it to open in a new window or tab so you will still be able to read this page), and click the big green download button.

What happens next will depend on what internet browser you are using. However whatever dialogue page comes up, click ‘run’ or ‘yes’ or ‘next’ or whatever is necessary to move the process on. It is easiest to do in Firefox. If you are using Safari on a Mac you will at some stage have to give your password.

I would suggest that you consider carefully and uncheck some of the boxes that you will be asked to approve at some stage during installation, particularly the one which asks if you want the Landlord Law search page to be your search home page – this is not asked of you because of anything I have done, and personally I prefer the normal google search page.

You may have to re-start your browser before the toolbar will display. I also found that it kept disappearing in Safari which panicked me a bit, although it settled down after I had re-started the computer.

The appearance of the toolbar will also vary depending on what browser you are using. I rather like the way it is displayed in Safari on my Macbook (see the picture above), as the buttons show up more. However the twitter link does not show on the Safari toolbar, whereas it does on the others (although I have only checked it in Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari). Note that you have to instal it separately for each browser type, so if you use both IE and Firefox you can just have it on one of them.

If after you have downloaded it you decide that you do not like it, you can uninstall it via the Toolbar Options item in the drop down menu on the left. Although you can also set it not to display in IE and Firefox via the tool bar item on the View menu, and then get it to display again when you use Landlord Law next.

So please try the toolbar, and let me know how you get on. I think you will find it very helpful.

I have just listened to an interesting webcast of an interview of Richard Susskind here. Susskind is promoting his new book, The End of Lawyers?: Rethinking the nature of legal services, having written several groundbreaking books on the use of IT and technology in the internet in the past.

Susskind covers quite a wide range of legal IT related topics in the interview, but it is some of the comments at the end which are most worrying (for lawyers). Both he and his interviewer make the point that lawyers are not (on the whole) natural innovators and tend to be resistant to new developments, particularly if they are making a good income as they are.

However he believes (and I have to say that I agree with him) that technology and the internet will have huge implications for the profession, and it is worrying that the Law Society and the government are planning new rules and regulations for the future of the profession, without really taking these properly into account.

For example one thing he mentioned was shared knowledge on forums and how this may develop in the future. In fact however this is happening right now, as there are a number of consumer forums where people exchange information about legal matters, for example this forum here on tenancy deposits. Shared knowledge of this kind could well reduce the need to use qualified lawyers in the future.

The conclusion, more or less, was that there will always be a place for some lawyers and the subject is an interesting discipline in itself, but that the profession has probably passed its high point and things will never be the same again. He also made the point that new lawyers are entering an uncertain profession and many law students should be prepared to use their law degree for something other than practising as a lawyer.