Unfortunately, it is not the fault of unscrupulous landlords, because they are being ripped off left right and center, by nearly every trades person, the tenants, including some gas safe registered installers, that is a fact, it starts from the minute you buy a house as an investment, one is probably better off investing their life savings into other things like Gold bullion!
Stocks and shares I would never trust with a barge pole, the rich fat bankers, evil politicians who manipulate the economy, make silly laws such as making it illegal for any competent person to carry out their own gas appliance service, leaves us at the mercy of you guys, gas safe engineers who knows our handicap, the law is on your side and not on our side, and you could easily exploit this law to its max if you wanted to, because let us face it, many of you can fix a problem on a control board, but you won't because it is easier for you to get hold of a new board at our expense, rather than spend may be an hour or two to diagnose a faulty board and repair it where it can be repaired easily, but you guys will just replace it because it doesn't cost you anything, it is us who have to pay an arm and leg for a new board, a simple fault that could otherwise be fixed by a good decent honest engineer are as rare as 15 year old virgins, I have been through this all rip off society.
The tenants aren't blameless either, they can choose to stop paying us rent whenever they want, and we can't do sod all, we might politely ask them if they are having any issues, but they won't even answer their phones, this leaves us no choice but to hire a lawyer at our cost, when they are behind rent by several months, you then have to give them a written notice of at least 2 months to leave, when they don't leave you then have to take a Court order, this means by the time the hearing takes place and a court order is issued, you have lost 6 months rental payment, and then tenants don't respect Court Orders either, so you then need the Court to order Bailiffs at our cost! suffer even more losses!
And then when the tenants leave, you are left with a heavy repair bill to rectify the damage to the property, refurbish the place at our expense for the next new tenants, that we all hope are going to be decent!
Give them a nice clean house, with all appliances fully working, steam clean carpets, and when they leave it is nearly always left in a mess. All this costs us money, the money that does not grow on trees!
Now the new law requiring many landlords to register for compulsory licensing and is not free! The local council now wants 500 quid to license all private landlords, we have to register before the start of the new year or we would be breaking the law,
our blood is being leached off all the time! not forgetting the lavish 10% commission the agents take each month plus VAT at 20% and then if a washing machine goes wrong, they don't just send someone to repair it, they just order a new one!
Every decent effort we make to survive goes against us. Hence why we have to often act just as ruthless as the rest of the rip off Britain!
Wait until you become a landlord, and if you were not a registered gas safe engineer, it will be extremely rare that you might get a good decent tenant.
Don't forget many short stay tenants who stay may be 6 months, or a year at the most, each time they leave, you need to pay the agents new setting up charges! no one sees this! [/b]
