A website has had to amend its advice to landlords about ‘rent to rent’ after a lawyer condemned it as being completely wrong.
Mark Alexander wrote an article on his property 118 site about ‘rent to rent’ and the use of a Deed of Assurance, available to purchase on his site.
He has now inserted a warning in red to say that the document requires modification and urging readers to seek legal advice “until such time as we are able to make a template document available”.
At the bottom of the article, he says the amended document will be available for £97 and invites readers to register their interest.
The changes were apparently made after housing law specialist Giles Peaker, of Anthony Gold, commented.
Not mincing his words, Peaker said: “What is it about sub-letting and in particular the current vogue for ‘rent to rent’ that makes people so determinedly stupid.”
He said that property 118 had come up “with a completely wrong ‘solution’ to making ‘rent to rent’ work and try to flog documents off the back of the solution”.
Peaker points out that a ‘rent for rent’ tenancy cannot be an AST.
Peaker includes some interesting posts, including one from Alexander wondering why Peaker is “so aggressive”, and a reply from Peaker saying that Alexander should have been grateful for the free legal advice.
Far from gratitude, Alexander goes on to accuse Peaker of vitriol.
However, we don’t think there’s any doubt as to who comes off worse in some very hostile, not to mention thoroughly entertaining, exchanges – the serious point being that anyone considering a ‘rent to rent’ offering should get it right.
https://www.property118.com/rent-to-rent-problem-solution/90203/
Comments (10)
And let’s be honest; the accusations of vitriol and aggression are not misplaced. Giles revels in his Twitter exposes and brags about his spats constantly. It’s not what most people expect of a professional solicitor, I think. He really should have just picked up the phone. As it is I think he’s trying really hard to be a Twitter celebrity.
Took a quick look at the site, I dont see the need for negativity with this individual and his site.
He runs an informative website and shock horror sells products through it!. If thats what it is I’ll forgive a mistake just as I would want someone to do for me.
He is coming from the angle of the property owner looking at Rent to Rent, in certain circumstances, as a viable alternative to his standard AST lets. Have a read…..
Who the heck is hitting the dislike button on this comment, educate yourselves for goodness sake. Typical old moaners on this site who on the whole appear clueless on many subjects. Mark Alexander works harder for Landlords than anyone. Well not long now before the Government has completely skewed the market to enable only Institutional investors into the rental market, so there won’t be a lot left to confuse yourselves about.
To find out who is hitting the dislike button search Google for “influence anti-landlord media”
I can only assume three of them are on holiday.
Who’s property 118?
Really!!!! You should educate yourself:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/mortgages/landlords-win-legal-battle-over-lenders-unfair-mortgage-rate-ris/
I didnt know this. I too have a btl with this lender yet they havent tried to increase my unfixed half percent over base rate deal… if they had, I would be very pleased to know of him.
If you have any mortgages with Skipton or Bank of Ireland you may have been overcharged on those too, and if so we may also be able to help you with that.
Yesterday in The Telegraph …
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/personal-banking/mortgages/buy-to-let-investors-to-sue-over-skipton-and-bank-of-ireland-mor/
Rosalind Renshaw is aware and will hopefully write about this too in due course.
Thank you for the link, much appreciated.
We have now engaged our legal team to make the necessary amendments and additions to the documentation. Expressions of interest to purchase the documentation once it is available and signed off by lawyers is going well.
Thankfully we hadn’t actually sold any at all before Giles decided to launch his attack without even alerting us to it, but it certainly looks like we will now.
The only reason we are a bit miffed with Giles is that he sought to publicly humiliate us for a genuine mistake on our part. If he had approached us in a professional manner we would have made the same changes and most likely given him the work to make the necessary amendments. Such is life, no real harm done!
It’s true that we all make mistakes but it is equally true that there is no such thing as bad publicity, especially as proven in this case.
The whole “rent to rent” model just smacks of opportunism promoted by opportunists. Mark Alexander comes over as having issued very flawed advice and then going on to attack people who pointed out the very flawed advice. Not very nice.