Ben cooks supper
Yesterday was our anniversary. Frazzy and I met 2 years ago. Being an obsessive cook I celebrated by knocking up a Thai Prawn curry with these huge monsters from our local Chinese supermarket and a chocolate Mousse from an Elizabeth David book I have hanging around.
Result? A lovely romantic, candle-lit moment.
Other result? Waking up this morning to Frazzy complaining about the state I had left the kitchen in…..caution….man in the kitchen.
Time to get out the tenancy agreements audiobook
Tessa sent me her new audio book package on the ins and outs of tenancy agreements and asked for my thought on it. So I loaded it up and set to, with the bleach and scourers and immediately became engrossed.
As regular readers will know Tessa pulls off that very rare trick for lawyers of explaining things that even non- lawyers like me can understand and this welcome addition to her section 21 e-book is in the same vein.
Frazzy dipped in and out and was making comments on Tessa’s points in ways that surprised me, as she has no knowledge of properties at all, apart from how messy I can make them, so that is testament to how clear Tessa communicates complex subjects.
About the audiobook
The kit comprises 3 separate audio sections, all accompanied by a file in written format where you will have a record of the script.
I like the idea of audio books for law because trying to read law can be quite frustrating if you haven’t got the training.
And you can listen in the car, or as in my case, up to your elbows in suds and still take it all in. I kept running back to my note pad scribbling bullet points of things, I am ashamed to say, after 21 years of working in housing advice and teaching it I should have known but didn’t.
For me the big strength of the audiobook is that for each legal point established she gives a practical, everyday example of what it means in real world situations. I have never heard anyone do that before. A gold star for that alone.
Also I was soaking up the knowledge, as well as the mess, I found I had very few moments where I wanted to stop and say “Ah but what if?……” This is because it is all so clearly explained and when those moments came up 10 seconds later my questions were answered anyway.
Useful for trainers and students as well as landlords
Now I know that the main market for this is going to be landlords, with a few tenants wanting to understand things too, but as I listened to it occurred to me very early on, what a great resource it would be for housing advice teams and law students, as a sort of Brodies or York notes version of housing law.
Stick it on your iPod and go jogging and by the time you get back from a decent run you’ll be an expert.
Beyond the essentials of landlord/tenant law as set down in statutes she also goes into more of the less well known nitty gritty stuff and I couldn’t find an area of setting up, managing and ending tenancies that isn’t covered in this kit, including all the difficult points that make people’s lives a misery when they get them wrong, such as tenants taking in lodgers, problems of joint tenancies, agency law, dealing with rent arrears, enforcing breaches of contracts or unfair terms in tenancy agreements.
Essential for letting agents
Tessa and I both strongly believe that accommodation agents should be licensed and regulated. It’s not going to happen but if I owned a letting agency I would make this audio kit mandatory for all my staff and test them on it regularly.
I think many landlord/tenant disputes would not even occur if the professionals in the field knew what they were supposed to.
Better than a course (and good for kitchens too) …
For years now I have taught a training course for Shelter teaching those new to housing advice the rules on how the world works, it runs for 4 days. I would scrap that course, save your money and buy this kit.
Even if housing law is not your thing, your kitchen will at least be sparkling….as is mine……..for now………..
Ben Reeve Lewis
Note – you can buy the Tenancy Agreements Audiobook >> here.
There is a special offer running with big discounts if you buy before 10.00 pm on Monday 12 September.