Are you managing your rented property within the law?

One of the top complaints we hear from landlords over and over again is the number of legal changes that are being introduced over a relatively short period of time.

Many of these changes are good changes, others are changes that landlords are less happy about.  However all the new laws must be complied with otherwise Local Authorities can use those new, stronger enforcement powers they have recently  been given.

But it is hard for landlords to keep up with it all.  After all, many landlords will be managing their rented property  as a second or part time occupation and will have other things to do in their busy lives.

Landlord Law can help – but Landlord Law is an information resource not a training course.

So I decided that maybe it was time I did a new online training course, to fill the gap.

The Landlord Law Training

Now we have had other training courses.  There is our annual conference and the ‘conference course’ plus from time to time, our workshops.

However not everyone can take the time out to travel to a days conference or workshop in another part of the country (wherever a live training event takes place it will be ‘in another part of the country’ for most landlords), and I have noticed that people tend to be less enthusiastic about the recorded events.

Maybe it was time, I thought, to do a new online course – and do it in a different way.

How people learn

It is a fact that different people learn in different ways

• Some people learn best by reading
• Some people learn best by listening to audios or podcasts
• Some prefer to learn by watching videos, and
• Others learn best when they have to do something physically – such as move things around on a screen
• Any maybe everyone will learn a bit easier if there is more variety to make the course more interesting

So what I needed was a way to incorporate all of these things into our training.

Enter Articulate 360.

A new type of course

Some of you may remember – when we did our ‘Easy Law for Landlords’ courses quite a few years ago, we had some little online interactive features where you could click around to find stuff out.

Sadly we were then unable to use that technology as it is based on ‘flash’ which will not work on iPhones or iPads.  However the company, Articulate, have now developed some new course creation software which I think is fantastic.

So I have taken out a subscription and am using it to create my new online training Course – Managing Your Rented Property within the Law.

So what does this new course contain?

The new course is going to be in five parts – dealing with

• General introductory stuff
• Things to do with the property condition
• Things to do with tenancy agreements
• Things to do with setting up a tenancy properly, and
• Ending tenancies

A lot of it is going to be written, but there will also be a lot of

• Videos (including  some specially recorded interviews with experts)
• Audio versions of the text
• Diagrams and other images
• Interactive ‘mini courses’ where you click around 
• ‘Scenarios’ where you interact (sort of) with cyber characters such as Larry the Council Officer, Christy the trainer and James the solicitor, 
• ‘Test yourself’ exercises and, if you want it,
• CPD

Plus, for those who need to print things out and hold them in their hands to read them, we are providing pdf versions of the course material to allow you to do this.

So hopefully, however you learn, you will find something which suits you.

The HMO 101

But – why not try it out and see what you think? 

To allow you to see the sort of course I am creating, I am giving away, for free,  a short course on HMOs. 

Partly because it is a nice concise area suitable for a short course.  And partly because it is a much misunderstood area of law where something like this is needed.