"Occasionally Landlords comment:" If only Landlords could work together sharing common ideas and concerns! Below is help for all landlords"
Landlords can and must still remain competitive albeit complimented by co-operation.
This page is a work in progress to encourage other student landlords in particular, to communicate with each other.
If you have an empty room available whilst I have a prospective tenant available; I want to tell you!
Sharing ideas might mean revealing valuable secrets and possibly losing a competitive edge.
But we also receive ideas and modifications to ideas shared.
As a 2-way relationship all benefit.
Landlords may feel free to utilise the information provided on this web site but do not copy anything without written permission.
If you are a Canterbury Landlord willing to trade ideas or just meet up for coffee to explore possibilities, feel free to contact me Bob Leydon at Leydon Lettings. 01227 713913
Leydon Lettings aims HAS IN MARCH 2012 CREATED a Canterbury Student Landlords Forum or simply a Canterbury Landlords Forum. http://canterburylandlordsforum.co.uk/
If you as a landlord or estate agent or any property related business ARE LIKE-MINDED JUST CLICK AND LOG-IN - "feedback fuels forward thrust; i.e. feedback & fly forward" ©Bob Leydon 11 January 2009.
As an example the following links:
GLOSSARY of Letting Terms, Fault Finding and Door Locks, Tenant Test, Pets share common landlord experiences and frustrations:
What sort of ideas do landlords share? Anything to do with: housing, lettings, estate agents & student accommodation. We also enjoy social interaction as we become friends!
Leydon lettings initiated exchange days between landlords.
We invited other landlords to our office and revealed how we do things at Leydon lettings. Ditto coffee shops, restaurants anywhere conducive to communication.
In exchange other landlords reciprocated and they showed us their ideas.
Two landlords arrive at the table with one idea and both leave with at least two!
Leydon lettings link to a number of other Canterbury landlord web sites and they reciprocate by linking to Leydon Lettings web site. These include:
http://www.leydonlettings.co.uk/
http://81.137.71.252/wordpress/
http://www.canterburystudentlets.com
http://studentletscanterbury.com/
http://www.stla.co.uk/Links/Links.html
http://canterburylandlordsforum.co.uk/
Where links are not reciprocated or are not continued, Leydon Lettings remove any non-reciprocated links as these demote our site.
We bounce ideas on how we can all improve student lettings in Canterbury. It is really very simple but does involve a fair amount of trust.
Most estate agents have secrets which in the wrong hands would be non-beneficial.
Landlords are no different and will want to be certain that secrets shared in confidence will not be divulged to other landlords outside the circle of trusted property letting gurus.
Leydon Lettings aims HAS IN MARCH 2012 CREATED an online Canterbury Student Landlords Forum or simply a Canterbury Landlords Forum. http://canterburylandlordsforum.co.uk/
- Good news – each forum is compartmentalised:
- Landlords, Agents, residents, students, government / associations etc.
- None of these forums can see the other’s forum-comments.
- This enables all to communicate secrets without fear of betrayal
- The fact the site is clearly bias towards landlords may
inadvertently deter non-landlords / agents e.g. residents. - This said, the person who first asked for “a voice” was
ironically not a landlord but the vice president of a resident association. Thanks to you R.N. - The association saw my personal blog and asked for a
contra-viewpoint slot. - Committed to improving resident / landlord relations I
was delighted to agree. - Of course there is a conflict of interest, but only because there is a case to answer!
- We must keep uppermost in mind that if we do not self
regulate the authorities will regulate us: with art 4 directions and expensive “Additional Licensing”. - Communication is key to developing understanding and
overcoming problems.
- I have always wanted a landlords forum in Canterbury.
- With this in mind I bought the domain name www.canterburylandlordsassociation.co.uk some years ago and only now launched the site with a different name: www.canterburylandlordsforum.co.uk.
- I am minded to quickly change it to another domain name I bought more recently: www.canterburystudentlandlordsforum.co.uk. I will probably direct all domain names to the same landlord forum.
- The benefit of creating a joint forum allows potential crosspollination of specific topics in a controlled environment.
- Mutual interest topics can, with author permission, be
published for all to read.
- Mutual interest topics can, with author permission, be
- To kick off the forum I plagiarised my own website to put some content on the forum site with the ultimate goal of the landlords forum becoming self populating.
- Initially, to enable the forum, I published secrets I
would rather keep. - Presently there are approaching 100 landlord / agent
members representing thousands of Canterbury properties with four to five times this number of students. - This equates to over 10,000 students i.e. we cannot be
ignored. - Organised Canterbury residents associations have been
established for many years and during this time have combined and lobbied their view exclusively and sucessfully. - Meanwhile, we as a band of disparate disunited landlords
focused on our suspicious of each other, rather than the issues we jointly face, have become irrelevant!
- Initially, to enable the forum, I published secrets I
- Anyone can sign up with a pseudonym and remain anonymous – only the moderator has access to all forums and to remain credible, cannot betray forum members’ trust.
- Anyone posing for the purpose of spying can be identified and barred by the moderator.
- Attempts to access other forums will receive the message “access denied”.
- Uncontrolled site use could render the forum a liability, if not well moderated.
- As moderator I am completely trustworthy and will not knowingly permit two opposing members to contact.
- As an ICO member, I will also be careful to follow data protection rules and not divulge the list of forum(s) members, nor their identities.
- On the positive side, we are working with residents associations to mitigate the adverse aspects of letting. To this end the proposed clean up days might demonstrate our sincerity.
- GRIN - gardens, rubbish, insomnia and nuisance is an acronym coined to highlight the most common residents complaints. Responsible landlords will try to ameliorate such problems.
- The site has been described as a landlords “handbook” – true, but much more than that being interactive.
- Whilst there will be teething troubles in establishing the forum, we need to set aside our personal views in favour of the common ground we share.
- We are all landlords, but we are all also in
competition! - We are likely to be subject to:
- suspicion,
- power struggles,
- resentment,
- opposition from within and
- from without.
- Together we must rise above the negative and focus on the ultimate goals of self-regulation and sharing beneficial ideas
- We are all landlords, but we are all also in
- With over 50 properties of my own I have little to prove; but much to protect from government intervention.