We had landlords say, ‘You need to be registered for VAT, it makes your company look bigger and more professional’.

The current threshold in the UK for registering for VAT is £90,000 turnover per annum. Turnover is the total amount of money a business takes before expenses are taken out.

Let’s say the average house rental in our area  is £1500 per month, and we charge 10% commission on managing those properties, that’s £150 turnover we get per month per house (£1800 per annum). So we need to manage 50 houses in a year before we get to the threshold.

We can register for VAT before £90,000 but all it means is our Landlords will pay £180 per month (£150 + 20% VAT) instead of £150.  The extra £30 will go straight to the government as a tax. That is £360 per year per house our Landlords will save by switching to us.

There is no additional benefit to the landlord in paying VAT, in fact by us not being VAT registered, it means we are a small independent Letting Agency with our Landlords best interests at heart.

For further details on VAT please visit https://www.gov.uk/how-vat-works

Labour have just set aside £1bn in Government Grants that Letting Agents can use to help their landlords.

How it works: 

If you as a landlord have  a tenant in rent arrears.

or If you  as landlord has a tenant who can't afford the rent

Please get in touch with us apply for funding to cover the arrears or shortfall.

We had a really nice lady and her 3 year old son wanting to rent a house.  Their reason for moving was she would like a bigger house. They were moving from a 2 bedroom semi-detached house and wanted a 3 bedroom house.

She had completed her application form really well, and all her finances were checking out.  We did a few sums with the figures she gave us, and yes she could afford the larger house, but we had worked out that the house would cost approximately £500 more per month than her current house.

The lady hadn’t taken into consideration that her housing benefit she received would actually go down moving from a 2 bedroom house to a 3 bedroom one.  Housing benefit is calculated on how many bedrooms is needed, and as it was just her and her son, the benefit office would see a 3rd bedroom as excessive and would reduce the payment.

She decided not to rent the house in the end.

Doing your sums is so important, the last thing we want our tenants to feel is over stretched, and to have to go through the stress of moving again just a few months later. 

Unfortunately cash deposits are a thing of the past.  Due to anti-money laundering laws we need to verify the source of funds. This is very hard to do with cash.  Someone not so long ago offered us a £5000 deposit for a property, apparently obtaining it from their landscape gardening business. 

No matter how attractive is it (Mr Bond) having a suitcase full of cash, there is no way of verifying the source, and so the application stopped there.