If you’ve just moved into a new house, chances are you’re sitting on a massive amount of potential. There’s nothing more satisfying than making a house into a home, and there are hundreds of ways that you could give your new place a facelift.

From rejuvenating tired walls to genuinely making your mark on the place, improving your house takes very little time and can be done casually throughout a few weekends. To get you started, here are five great ways to turn your home into something beautiful:

Repaint the walls

First thing’s first – a new coat of paint on the walls will make a world of difference. If you’ve just moved in, it’s likely that the walls have not been freshly painted and are still marked from an excellent few years’ wear and tear as a result of the previous occupant. Painting them will not only have the place looking fresh and sparkling, but it will also substantially alter the mood. A classic off-white color such as ivory or magnolia is a great way to go – stylish, understated, and modern.

Take up the carpet

Carpets can make a house seem quite oppressive and stuffy. Taking them up to reveal the bare wood can be a great move. Once treated and varnished, your new wood floor will make the place a lot more airy, modern, and almost unrecognizable.

Choose some new furniture

Getting rid of some old pieces and replacing them with a few well-placed items can also help you achieve your desired look at a meager price. Anything from ultra-modern to homely and snug can be made with a few new tables, chairs, desks, and lamps. You can browse hundreds of companies and items online, most of which will deliver them straight to your door.

Give the kitchen some attention

Making sure your kitchen is in good shape is a great idea. It’s often the most used room in the house, particularly when it comes to hardwearing activities such as cooking and making sure it’s a shining example of cleanliness that will make you want to spend more time.

Invest in some technology

A widescreen television or a new computer could put the finishing touches on your new home, but you need to protect these investments. All these items could be insured under your house contents, and you can Visit the Co-operative Insurance for more information about insurance for your house.

Ask yourself why you become a landlord. There are a few reasons that you would want to, but I would put large amounts of money on you not answering one of the following:

1) To do lots and lots of paperwork

2) To find friendly tenants to hang out with

3) To destroy your property slowly over time

4) To enjoy being in the front lines of the fluctuating property market

That first one, in particular, is never going to be anyone’s reason to do anything, except maybe a professional secretary or personal assistant. Even then, they probably didn’t get into that gig specifically for that factor.

It’s much more likely that you became a landlord to either play the property market as an investor or had a spare property kicking around that you didn’t want to sell. For this reason, you do not want to find yourself bogged down in paperwork and general administration.

Even if you only rent out one property, there will be moments where keeping your tenants happy and the venture ticking over becomes a demanding job. Staying on top of paperwork is one thing with essential aspects like your landlord-insurance or your tenancy agreements often becoming overwhelming. Once you start expanding with multiple properties, the workload in terms of satisfying tenant demands, understandably, also begins to scale rapidly.

Delegation for fun and profit

If you are renting out multiple properties, you have stopped becoming a casual landlord and are moving closer to a more traditional business model. Just like any conventional business model, delegating more routine yet time-consuming tasks is a must.

If you offload all of the grunt work that you find yourself increasingly engaged in someone, then you are going to find whatever you pay them to do. 

Losing the tedious admin work leaves you with the broad strokes research of looking for new properties to buy, deciding which features you might consider selling, or even investigating other investment ventures entirely. If you are a landlord of multiple properties, it is often a safe bet to say that your talents are not best used by time-consuming administration.

Sense checking

It is essential to ensure that your operation can support administrative staff before putting out an ad for an assistant. It might be that a more cost-effective route would be to investigate going through a lettings agent if you don’t mind surrendering some of the control and paying a regular fee to them.

You want to be making money from your investment and not wasting your life chasing around fiddly paperwork issues when you could be looking into new ways to make money.

YOUR Insurance specializes in providing landlord-insurance-for-landlords of single and multiple properties.

We are all aware that accidents can happen at any time, but how does this situation affect landlords? As someone responsible for the safety and general upkeep of a building where others live, it is your responsibility to ensure that no unnecessary dangers are present – and this means any accidents that occur in the property could be your fault.

While investing in liability insurance can help protect you from accident claims, you must take necessary action to protect your tenants. It means providing them with a safe place to live and communicating with them regularly.

You also need to know a few facts surrounding accident claims and landlords. If you have liability insurance, any compensation will usually be taken from this policy – so you won’t necessarily be out of pocket.

 Accident claims solicitors

Accident claims solicitors are there to help make everything easier for the claimant. Some accident claims solicitors specialize in certain areas of accident claims. It may be medical claims or criminal injury claims and may affect how they handle any cases against you.

While people were often worried about filing an accident claim due to concerns over cost, this is now largely removed.

Many solicitors now operate on a ‘no win no fee’ policy. If they win their case against you, their fees are usually covered by your insurance, so the claimant pays nothing.

Staying safe

While there is little you can do to prevent an accident claim against you once it has been filed, you must continue to provide a safe environment for your tenants – regardless of whether they are claiming damages.

All properties you own should be inspected regularly, and you should keep a detailed inventory of any damages already present on the property. Any damages caused by your tenants can be billed to them, but any structural issues or other problems are your responsibility to sort.

When you have a group of tenants move out, it’s time to take a deep breath and go in to assess the damage. There’s a good chance that you haven’t seen your property for anywhere between a few months and a few years, so it can be a daunting thing to inspect what other people have done to your property.

Having had the occasional glimpse into other people’s lives through various house parties and seeing what people tend to do to their rented accommodation, it’s fair to say that sometimes there’s no guarantee that the walls will still be there. Even if you don’t have any landlord-insurance, you can at least take solace in the fact that there is an excellent juicy security deposit that you can dip into if needs be, but what exactly can you take out of that?

 Damage:

If the property is damaged, you can take money out of the deposit to cover this. What you can’t however, make money for is normal wear and tear, which is a frustratingly ill-defined term.

What will classify as reasonable to take out of a deposit is best established by putting yourself in the tenants’ shoes. Slightly scuffed carpets or faded curtains might not be a good thing to complain about, but a gaping hole in the ceiling, on the other hand, might be.

 Missing items:

If there’s anything on your inventory that has mysteriously disappeared, this is one to flag up.

Sometimes there might be a good reason for it. I once had to throw away a wardrobe that came with my flat because it was missing a door, making it structurally unsound, and the inside was a blotchy blue/green colour with mould. It was also soggy. Even in this case, however, the landlord got a phone call not necessarily to ask for permission, but to explain that I was saving him the bother of calling out a hazmat team, so it certainly wasn’t a surprise when it came time for us to leave the property.

 Cleaning:

There are two times that you can take cleaning fees out of the deposit. The first is if you have already agreed to seek professional cleaning fees from the deposit at the beginning of the tenancy, which is not uncommon. The second is if the property is genuinely filthy and been left in no fit state. It is not the same as “well it could use a bit of a vacuum” but covers a real sense of grime and squalor.

 Unpaid rent:

Any due rent can be taken out of the deposit. Although they really shouldn’t, some tenants assume that the deposit is there to cover their last month.

 Advertising and agency fees:

If tenants have broken specific clauses of the tenancy agreement or haven’t exited it properly, you might be able to cover agency and advertising costs for putting the property back on the market. However, it is not the norm, and it’s worth taking advice before you launch into this. It is typically only if the tenants have messed you around that you can do this.

 Some things to bear in mind:

To make your life a little bit easier, take the following three things in mind. 

1) Don’t look for things to take out of the deposit, and don’t try and pull a fast one if the damage isn’t all that bad. If you’re not careful, you could find yourself taken to a small claims court, and as you are probably aware, the law sides very slowly on the side of the tenants. If you feel that there is a little bit of damage that isn’t entirely fair for you to put up with, it can sometimes be worth cutting your losses and taking the hit financially.

2) You can only claim for actual financial loss. You can’t impose a punitive fine on your former tenants if they have done something that you told them they couldn’t, like having noisy neighbour-aggravating parties or keeping a dog. If that dog caused damage, on the other hand, that’s a different matter.

3) Legally, you must return the deposit to the tenants within 14 days of them asking for it, so you shouldn’t hang around when deciding what to take out of it.           

Summary

Renting out your property is a daunting process. It is on the other side of the rent equation, and everyone has stories of terrible tenants, shifty letting agents and greedy landlords. The best thing you can do is make sure you are not the latter, but make sure you are not taken advantage of by the former two.

 Written by David Hing, YOUR Insurance blog editor. YOUR Insurance specializes in public liability insurance for small businesses as well as landlord-insurance.

Trying to find the right plumber insurance at the right price can be a wrench for the wallet.

Plumbing is one of those jobs that can lead to a massive claim for compensation if a pipe springs even the smallest leak.

And if the job is on commercial premises and is proved to have caused a shutdown or loss of business, the bill can be sky-high.

Choosing the right plumber insurance means stepping back and looking at the business, and the sort of work generally carried out.

Many plumbers like residential work, while others specialize in more significant commercial projects.
Work out where your revenue comes from and target the risks associated with that work for plumber insurance cover.

Don’t forget the insurer will want to know you are adequately qualified for the work the business carries out – especially if hazards like oil or gas are involved.

Now’s the time to start looking at quotes and the cover offered by different insurers – but forget the price, for now, it’s the quality of protection, not the cost that’s important to a business.

Most plumber insurance will include:

Public liability cover is optional but not necessary. If a plumber is blamed for the damage, accident, or injury arising from poor artistry, the compensation, and related legal costs can be enormous.

Employer liability looks after the same risks for anyone on the payroll – and is a legal requirement for a business with employees.

Other add-ons depend on the size of the business and how it is run.

Standard home insurance does not cover a plumber with an office and storage at home. Insurers will reject any claim if the business does not have a dedicated cover.

Consider tool cover to safeguard specialist and expensive equipment against loss, damage, or theft on or off-site – but not when stored at home or business premises or left in a van overnight.

Plumbers should also bundle in goods in transit cover to business insurance packages to protect materials and equipment carried for customers or main contractors.

Other options may apply, especially if you run a large business from commercial premises or a yard.
You should have a shortlist of suitable policies, so look at the price and go for the one offering the best value for money cover.

As a landlord, you could have several different properties to your name. That means it’s vital to stay organized so you can keep on top of payments, insurance obligations, and compliance issues across your portfolio. But, sometimes staying on track can be easier said than done—a basic spreadsheet won’t always be enough, particularly if you’re starting to expand. That’s why property management software for landlords should still be considered.

What does this software do?

This type of software has been specifically designed to make property management more comfortable to handle, taking the hassle out of managing your portfolio with everything you need in one central location. With so many features, you’ll have the power to transform your business for the better—not only will you be able to keep track of tenants and property maintenance issues, but the more sophisticated packages will even help with tax calculations and financial forecasting, streamlining processes no end.

Choosing the software that’s right for you

Luckily there are plenty of different options available to suit individual preferences. The package that’s right for you will depend on a whole range of various factors, from your budget to the number of properties you own. Here are just a few options to give you an idea:

• Property Book Work, free. Landlords created this web-based package for landlords, specially developed to offer a simple double-entry system. It’s free if you’ve got one property, but to manage a broader portfolio expect to pay for the privilege.
• Property Hawk Landlord, free. Another web-based version generates a lot of useful forms such as tenancy agreements and keeps track of all pertinent information.
• Property Portfolio, £49.97/month, or a one-off payment of £397 (both excluding vat). It comes with a fantastic range of features, including access to a legal document center and the option to calculate income tax using HMRC guidelines.
• Landlord Manager for Sage Instant, £595 plus vat. Ideal for professional landlords with up to 50 properties, this package offers a full accounting solution that can track finances, tenants, and even legal obligations (safety inspections, insurance renewals, etc.).

You’ll find options that cover the entire spectrum, from free software packages to the paid-for versions, but while you might resent paying for such software, remember that you tend to get what you pay for. Freebies might be a great way to test the water. Still, they won’t usually offer the level of functionality you need if your business is growing, so it’s worth viewing it as an investment in your business and one that can provide high returns in the long run.

Stay in control

It’s all about doing your research with a lot of it being trial and error. Whether you’re after something basic or more sophisticated, you’ll find the right property management software to transform your business prospects. It can be ideal if you’re juggling some different properties. You’ll have an instant overview of your finances and performance as a whole, with the right options keeping you in control and leaving you free to grow your portfolio, maximize your revenue and take your business forwards.

If you need access to some extra cash, perhaps for a new car, a holiday, or to consolidate existing debts, chances are you’ve considered taking out a loan. But which type would be right for you? Here’s a quick overview of the options available so you can make an informed decision.

Secured loan

A secured loan is offered when the borrower can provide some form of security or collateral against the amount they’re borrowing. They might secure the loan against a home or a car, for example, giving the lender a guarantee that should the loan not be repaid, they can recover the loss through the repossession of the secured item. That means secured loans can generally allow for lower interest rates and higher borrowing limits. As long as you’ve got suitable collateral, they’re usually more comfortable to come by too.

Unsecured loan

An unsecured loan doesn’t require any form of security, meaning you won’t risk losing your car or home should you fail to make repayments, with loans instead of being decided based on your credit history and income. The lack of guarantee means these loans will typically command a higher interest rate than their secured counterparts.

Payday loan

It is a particular type of unsecured loan, and payday loans are quickly occupying a core section of the market. These are typically short-term, low-capital, and high-interest loans that are intended to be repaid over a month (until “payday”). Providers usually offer a flat fee for the service.

Payday controversy

As you might expect, payday loans are hugely controversial. The often extortionate interest rates (some APRs are more than 4,000%) and the fact they can be rolled over from month to month has attracted criticism from the Office of Fair Trading, consumer groups and the loan industry as a whole, with these companies offering loans to people who can’t afford to repay them.

What about regulations?

The credit industry is subject to strict regulations. The Consumer Credit Act 1974 sets out guidelines that all lenders need to adhere to, and to trade legally; they need to be fully licensed by the OFT. But, the rise of payday loans has put these regulations under the spotlight, with many companies not sticking to the rules. This particular sector is poorly regulated. There’s clear evidence of irresponsible lending and breaches of the law across the board, and that’s meant a lot of firms have been given strict ultimatums to reform or lose their license.

But, that shouldn’t put you off pursuing a loan elsewhere. Secured loans are still a highly viable option, and even individual unsecured loans, if sourced carefully, can be ideal, and as long as common sense prevails, you can take out a loan for the cash injection you need.

The conditions and circumstances of the rental market change, so even the most big-hearted landlords will want to increase the rent of their properties over time. You may also need to keep up with interest rates on mortgage payments, cover the landlord’s insurance costs, or cope with the escalating costs of living or own a property that requires a high level of maintenance. Perhaps maintenance costs have risen, and you’ve decided to bite the bullet and raise the rent. There are many reasons, but the question is, what’s the best way to go about it?

Before you do anything, ask yourself if you’d rather keep a good tenant and save yourself the hassle and expense of marketing your property, or if you’d rather be able to raise your rent yearly in line with inflation. If you decide on the latter, you’ll need to wait until the end of the fixed-term agreement that your tenant signed. Typically this lasts for six months or a year. It would help if you were careful about signing a contract that is longer than this, or you may find yourself unable to raise the rent for some time, consequently leaving you out of pocket. When it’s time for the tenant to sign a new contract, you can inform them of the rent increase and ask them if they’d like to continue with the tenancy.

Remember that your tenant has rights too, and they’re likely to dispute the raise if they feel that it’s excessive, so don’t go overboard. If you can’t agree with you, the tenant can contact the Recognised Tenant’s Association’s (RTA) Dispute Resolution Service for help.

If you still can’t resolve the dispute, then you can both apply to the small claims tribunal for a decision. It may end up costing more than the rent increase will bring you, so tread carefully and be willing to compromise. Approach your tenant with tact and respect, especially if they’ve been reliable and trouble-free; a good tenant can be hard to find, and you don’t want to end up regretting your decision.

It was letting out a property can be lucrative, with rental values outstripping sale returns in many areas. But there’s a fine art to getting the letting game right, and there’s often a lot of work that needs to be done before your house is at its best.

Here are the changes and decisions you may need to make before renting out your home – and a few ways to help maximize your returns.

Is it furnished or unfurnished?

It will depend primarily on the kind of people you expect to be living there. People moving in for short periods will generally want a furnished property, so if you’re looking for tenants to stay for six months, then it’s probably best to keep good-quality furniture on-site. If you’re hoping for longer tenancies, perhaps with professional people or families, furniture is less critical.

If you decide to supply furniture, it must be compliant with health and safety regulations.

Price competitively and advertise well

If you have a four-bedroom house, is that how you’ll market it? Or will you list it as a three-bedroom house with a study or nursery? It again depends a lot on who you expect will want to move to your area. If it’s the right student part of the country, ‘more bedrooms’ is generally better. But if the area is very family-friendly, then a playroom might be more suitable.

Check the building

Get a surveyor to make sure your structure is sound. Large cracks are a giveaway, but subsidence could occur almost unnoticed. It would help if you didn’t rent out a building that suffers from damp or one that is in a state of serious disrepair.

Finish any work that’s in progress. Unfinished projects look shabby, and nobody believes a landlord when they say “it’ll be sorted by the time you move in” – the whole house needs to be sorted well in advance of viewings. Ensure everything works, including all the taps and all the light bulbs.

Smells can be very off-putting. Cigarette smoke leaves an unpleasant, stale odor that can reduce your home’s value as a rental property. Even a lot of smokers won’t tolerate the smell.

Adapt your home

Clean and tidy everywhere. Wash the furniture covers and arrange it into a neutral, welcoming format – just because your kids like to push two armchairs together and make a fort doesn’t mean your new tenants will.

De-personalize your rooms and make it easy for prospective tenants to imagine themselves living there. It is particularly crucial if you’re living in the house while viewings are taking place – too many photos of you and your kids can be overbearing.

Screen potential tenants

You could check to see whether your prospective tenants have any CCJs against them using this website. It will cost you a few quid to access the records, but that’s a small investment to ensure that they don’t have a track history of non-payment.

Tell your bank and insurance company

Consider whether you need to get insured. Your ordinary home insurance provider won’t usually cover you if you start taking in paying tenants, and you’ll probably want a specialist landlord’s insurance policy anyway. You may also need to notify your mortgage lenders.

Renting out your property can be very rewarding – that’s why there are around 1.9 million private landlords in the UK. But it’s not without its risks, so seek specialist financial or legal help if you’re unsure about anything.