The first Reside eNewsletter, packed with the latest lettings news locally and nationally, was yesterday sent out to Reside landlords, colleagues and contacts. The first edition included stories on Reside’s sponsorship of a local Prince’s Trust event, the estimated rise in home rentals over the coming years, and much more.
To view our first eNewsletter, please click here.
To subscribe to future eNewsletters, please click here.
Reside are delighted to be one of five principal sponsors of The Prince’s Trust’s inaugural Evening of Art event at The Assembly Rooms, in Bath. The event, held on Wednesday 7th December 2011, aims to raise a minimum of £50,000 by auctioning thirty outstanding pieces of art which have been generously donated by a host of prominent artists.
Artists contributing to the event include Sir Peter Blake, Ben Dearnley, Quentin Blake, HRH The Prince of Wales and many, many more. All money raised will go towards helping disadvantaged young people in the South West move into work, education or training.
For more details and information on how to bid on any of the items during or ahead of the event, please download the Evening of Art Auction Catalogue at the foot of this article, or click here to visit the Prince’s Trust website.
Also amongst the many works of art available for auction will be two watercolours by Nick Park, featuring these familiar faces:
Please click on the thumbnail below to view the events Auction Catalogue which shows all of the pieces of art available on the evening;
Yesterday’s London Evening Standard had a great article about more and more city professionals making Bath their family home. Reside’s Tenants Alastair & Marianne Hogg were featured in the article along with Charlie Taylor of Knight Frank’s Bath office.
Whilst the article itself primarily focuses on more Londoners purchasing in Bath, the small interview with our Tenants shows that many people choose to rent first in order to familiarise themselves with the area, with local schools and where they may wish to eventually buy. This is something that is happening more and more often, creating a greater demand in Bath for larger and higher end rental properties.
With London Paddington just an hour and 20 minutes from Bath Spa Station, more and more families are moving away from the city and into Bath. If you have a larger family home that you perhaps thought wouldn’t generate any interest on the rental market, now is a great time to take advantage of this current trend.
Local adventurer David Hempleman-Adams is currently sat in a small basket with his co-pilot, Simon Carey, travelling at a rate of 30 knots above Rome. Team GBR3 are 1 of only 6 teams left flying in the 2010 Gordon Bennett Balloon Race. You can track their progress by clicking here.
As one of David Hempleman-Adams sponsors, Reside were invited to the launch of the race from a small farm located to the North West of Bristol. It was a beautiful Saturday evening but the winds were just a little too strong and ended up delaying the start of the race by 7 hours. Having won the race 2 years ago, but beaten last year by the French, David made it very clear in his pre-start speech that he wanted to convincingly win this time around!
Good luck David and Simon, we will be following you all the way and wishing you the very best. We can’t wait to hear of your travels once you get back, winners of the Gordon Bennett 2010 Race!
For more photos of David, the Balloon and the start of the race, visit Reside’s Facebook Page;
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bath-United-Kingdom/Reside-Bath/325940467419.
Demand for residential rental properties is increasing rapidly through much of the UK, particularly in prominent cities in The South such as London, Oxford and Bath.
The Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) recently published their Review and Index for Residential Investment for the first quarter of 2010 (ARLA Review and Index Q1 2010). ARLA carried out research among 531 of its members’ offices plus 382 individual landlords. The results show that during Q1 2010, two thirds (59%) of ARLA member agents reported more tenants than properties available. This is a 50% rise on the last quarter (41%) and in Q3 2009 the figure was just 24%. In the last year, supply has dropped by approximately 60%.
Tenant demand has never been higher in Bath which is clearly shown by the rents we have recently achieved and the short length of time that properties are on the market. In April alone Reside let a number of properties before we began to market them; The Old Vicarage, Winifreds Dale and Walcot Parade were all let before they came to the market, all at very good rents. A house on Great Pulteney Street was let after only 4 hours on the rental market at £3000 pcm and just today a one bedroom apartment on Great Pulteney Street achieved a rent of £925 pcm after only 3 days on the market.
Countrywide’s lettings division recently surveyed its network of 204 UK branches and found that there is now an average of 4.9 tenants for every available property, and rents have increase by 2.5%.
From five bedroom houses to one bedroom apartments, rental properties are in very high demand. If you are a landlord or are considering renting out your property, there couldn’t be a better time to take advantage of Resides superior service!
Tuesday the 6th of April 2010 saw the controversial Statutory Instrument 653 come into effect. The new law will see landlords required to gain planning permission if they want to let out their House in Multiple Occupancy (HMO) to three or more unrelated individuals. The Town and Country Planning Act has created a new planning class for HMOs, designated C4, that now requires landlords to apply for permission to change the use to open a new letting property that is altered from a family home to a shared house.
The legislation is not retrospective and will not affect properties with an existing use. HMOs that already house three or more tenants, will not have to apply for retrospective permission because they already have ‘established’ use from the date new legislation is enforced.
The aim of the legislation is to prevent so-called ‘studentification’ whereby rows of terrace houses in university towns and cities are rented out to students. The Government believes this is a problem, although its own advisers in the Rugg Report said it was not.
Landlord groups have been fighting to prevent the change happening, and David Cameron has tabled an Early Day Motion to get it rescinded. Robert Jordan, former ARLA president, said many agents remain unaware of the changes. He, like the landlord groups, believes that the supply of shared rental accommodation will become restricted, with landlords unwilling to pay the cost of obtaining planning permission with the possibility that they might also have to pay to have their HMOs licensed.
Reside Remote is a bespoke online service allowing our Landlords access to their own property portal from anywhere in the world, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Developed by Reside and completely integrated into our own website and database, Reside Remote allows a Landlord to login and view Tenancy Details including Tenant’s names, rental amounts, deposit amounts, due dates and more. A Rent Statement page displays all statements with a date and in chronological order. The rent statements can be viewed within Reside Remote or downloaded in .pdf format.
A Property Maintenance page displays all invoices for the property, all dated, named and described in detail. Just like the rent statements, all invoices can either be viewed online or downloaded in .pdf format. In addition to the property invoices, Landlords can view a Property Log fed direct from our own property notes in an effort to provide more detailed information about individual maintenance issues. With all invoices visible to Landlords at any time, we aim to be as transparent as possible.
The final page within Reside Remote is the Your Details page, displaying the details we currently hold for the particular Landlord logged in. Details include an address, telephone numbers and an email address. These can be checked and changed if required.
If you are one of Reside’s existing Landlords and would like to take advantage of our Reside Remote service please do not hesitate in contacting Ben at ben@localhost for a username and password. There is no extra charge for this service.
If you already have your username and password, please login at https://residebath.co.uk//remote/login.php and enjoy!
We hope that anyone who uses the service finds it a very helpful and useful tool in the management of your property. We always welcome feedback and any suggestions to improve the Reside Remote service. This only version 1.1. after all!
