Welcome to this issue of Residential Property Investor and if you are new to us, reading the magazine for the very first time, I do hope you will find the content helpful and relevant.

This particular issue has the largest print run so far, partly because of our growing membership (see the annual report on pages 12 and 13) and partly because we need to meet demand for the magazine when the RLA exhibits at both the Homebuyer and Invest in Property shows.

First-time readers may well also be new landlords – or merely contemplating the sector – in which case, our new series, ‘Beginners Start Here’ (page 34), is aimed at you. I am often aware that the buy-to-let sector has attracted a lot of gobbledygook when plain English would be far more helpful. In the next issue of RPI, for example, we’ll be looking at that particularly mystifying term ‘yield’ and explaining it.

Whether you are a new or seasoned landlord, it’s likely that you will be weighing up the pros and cons of investing abroad, which gives us the excuse to explain another mystifying term – ‘leaseback’ (page 19).

Firmly on home territory, landlords in England and Wales face a testing time, with licensing of Houses in Multiple Occupation and the new inspection regime coming in this April, and Tenancy Deposit Schemes in October. Unfortunately, at going to press, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister has still not managed to come up with a website address for us to refer readers, any more than it has yet managed to come up with a timeline for another huge change on the horizon – Home Information Packs, just 15 months away. None of these changes is impossible (or so we hope), but everyone needs to prepare. We will bring you as much information as we can, as soon as we have it, together with the advice that makes membership of the RLA so invaluable.