Landlord Property Audit Kit

If you are a landlord, then every now and again, it is a good idea to carry out a thorough review, or audit of your property and what is happening there.  To make sure that all is well and that you have not forgotten or missed anything.

For example:

Are you at risk of fines/rent repayment orders?

You need to check that you are not at risk of any fine or penalty.  For example, if your Local Authority has set up a new additional or selective licensing scheme and you do not have a license, you are at risk of being fined AND your tenants applying for a Rent Repayment Order.  Which could be extremely expensive for you.

Remember, selective licensing schemes apply to ALL rented properties, not just HMOs. So please do not skip the license section, thinking it does not apply to you.

What about your arrangements?

Then, are your arrangements satisfactory?  For example, the way you keep your records, the documents you use, and the services you use.

What are your long term plans?

This is also a good time to consider what your long-term plans are.  Do you want to continue with these tenants or not?  Or do you want to continue renting this property at all?  Maybe you are considering selling?

Having carried out a thorough audit, you will be in a better position to either move forward as a landlord over the next year or to wind down your landlord business and sell up.

The audit record will also be very useful as a reminder of the state of play with your various properties and will be of great help if someone suddenly has to take over the management, for example, if something happens to you.

Members and non members

This Audit kit is provided free of charge to all Landlord Law members.  However, it is also available for sale.

If you have purchased this kit as a stand-alone product, and are not a Landlord Law member, note that most of the links in the ‘Landlord Law content’ boxes on most pages will not work for you.  They are not essential, though, for completing the audit.

If you are a Landlord Law member, then the links in these boxes will take you to pages where you can learn more about the page topic.  You will also find further relevant content via our Checklists and the AZ page.

When should you do your audit?

It is up to you.  I suggest you do your first audit immediately if you have just joined Landlord Law or bought this kit.

After that, you may want to do an annual review, ideally at the same time of year.  You may also want to carry out an additional audit between tenants.

But make sure you do them!  The annual audit should be an essential part of your business.

About the kit

This kit consists of four modules consisting of several sections examining different issues, and accompanying checklists (available in word and pdf formats).

You can navigate to any part of the kit via the Index menu on your right (or below you are viewing on mobile), and you can click to the previous and next parts via the links at the bottom of the page. The main menu above will take you to the different modules.

Although the kit can be viewed on your smartphone, your best experience will be with a desktop computer, laptop or iPad.

User feedback

After we launched the ‘beta’ version of this kit, we asked beta users to give feedback via our feedback form. Much valuable feedback was received and we thank everyone who did this.

Some of the feedback has been incorporated into the text.  Other comments have been added in a separate ‘user feedback’ section where you will find them in coloured boxes.

By the way there is no significance in the colour of the box – we just rotate the colours so they look more attractive on the page!

If you would like to give feedback, we always welcome this, and you will find a feedback form linked from the end of the kit in section 4:5. Then maybe your feedback will appear in a little box on one of the kit pages!

Doing your Audit

You will need

• This online guide, and
• The audit checklists – these are designed to be printed out and completed by hand.

You should ideally work through the kit section by section.

Each section of the kit covers a specific topic and explains why it is important, sometimes with video help. So read them carefully.

There is also a box on most pages with links to further information on Landlord Law.

Then, towards the bottom of the page, you will find a section with a dotted border headed ‘Your Audit Check’.  This sets out what you need to do for this part of the audit.

Once you have done this, complete the relevant part of your checklist, ticking off the things you have done and making notes of the things you need to do.  You may need extra paper for notes.  Then move on to the next section.

We have two checklists –

• One for your landlord business as a whole, and
• One for each of your properties

However, if you only have one property, you should be able to manage just using the main form.

The property checklists have a watermark saying ‘individual property’ diagonally across the page.  I put this in as when developing the kit, I kept getting the forms muddled up.  I left it in as I thought it might help you too.

However, if you find it annoying, you can always remove it in the Word version.  Ask me if you don’t know how to do this.