RLA : RPI : In brief

News from the Residential Property Investor, the bi-monthly magazine for RLA members

other artilces from the June / July 2000 issue

In brief - June / July 2000

A verdict of unlawful killing was recorded at the inquest of Mohammed Raja last month. The Brighton landlord, who had more than 100 convictions for breaching housing regulations to his name, died in his Surrey home last July after being stabbed five times in the stomach and shot in the head. Nobody has been arrested for the crime. Meanwhile Michael Holleran has been jailed for life after admitting killing his landlord Norman Stephenson with a single blow with a sledgehammer. The two, who shared a house in Harrow Weald, had argued about leaving the lavatory seat open.

House prices are unlikely to take a dive in the way they did following the price boom of the 1980s. This is the conclusion of the Council of Mortgage Lenders after studying trends in the number of transactions which reached 2.1m in the 1980s before plummeting to just over 1m. In contrast the current level of house sales, at 1.5 per annum, is close to the long term trend and 'will remain fairly stable'. 'The housing market is not unsustainable in the way it was a decade ago', commented CML director general Michael Coogan.

HMO landlords in Scotland will from October have to obtain licences from their local authorities which in turn have a duty to inspect and monitor such property. Aimed primarily at student accommodation, the new law introduced fines of up to £5,000 for those landlords who fail to comply.

other artilces from the June / July 2000 issue