Saturday 11th February

The best free weekly property & lifestyle magazine in Sussex

Issue: 563
07 February 12 - 13 February 12

Latest Homes issue 563 cover

» The Landlady

The Landlady has a lucky escape

As a fairly proficient landlady, I am often rather alarmed when I hear about tenants living in squalid and potentially dangerous properties, who are too afraid to challenge their respective landlords about their living conditions. In some cases, the local council have to get involved and force the landlord into rectifying these issues. Perhaps many tenants do not realise that the law is very much on their side and they should not have to tolerate what amounts to bullying behaviour from their landlords. As a person who seems to traditionally end up running the freeholds of various properties, I know only too well how disinterested many landlords are in their rental portfolios, as long as the money keeps rolling in. For example, I am organising the painting of the Communal Hallway in Hastings at the moment and have had no response from fellow lessees regarding what colour I should paint below the dado… Read the rest of this article »

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The Landlady finds a damp outlook

It is quite unbelievable that it should happen again, but Katy and I are experiencing problems with our tenants in Hastings. They have not paid their rent for two months and when challenged by the letting agent claimed that the front wall in the living room is damp. I am fully aware of this problem, have spent the earlier part of this year organising the rectification of it and have had to let the wall dry out before it can be re-plastered. The tenants are au fait with all this, yet are using it as a flimsy excuse not to pay their rent. I am going over to Hastings today to show the decorators what they have to do and am not looking forward to having a contretemps with the tenants. They are claiming housing benefit for the property and, rather than paying the money directly to the letting agent, the council are paying it directly to the tenant. At least with our old difficult tenant, the council were paying us rent during the whole time our tenant was systematically deconstructing our flat… Read the rest of this article »

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The Landlady forgives her sluggish lodgers

My two student lodgers are not good at getting up in the morning, so it’s just as well that they generally don’t have to. One of them wanders around at 11am with his shirt off – bring on the freezing temperatures I say – while the other moans and groans if he has to rise before 10.30am and lumbers around the kitchen muttering that anything before 11am should be banned. Meanwhile in a parallel universe, I’ve already served Madame Small Daughter her chosen breakfast, done all my internet banking and emailing, escorted Madame Small Daughter to school, been for a run, been to the gym and caught the end of Homes Under The Hammer. At 11am, I am generally confronted on a daily basis in the kitchen by my lingering lodgers, often peppered with a sprinkling of The Big Son, who works nights and therefore keeps very strange hours indeed. Read the rest of this article »

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The Landlady finds she has some extra tenants

It is half term and I’ve spent most of the week trying to keep The Small Daughter at least ten metres away from the Wii. On that note, it really gets me that although ‘metres’ comes up on the spellcheck, Wii doesn’t… Bah! modern life really gets on my t*** sometimes. I have also spent some of the week trying to arrange the scattering of my mother’s ashes in her chosen location, which is proving rather more tricky than I had ever imagined. My mother was a formidable woman when alive and is proving to be still fairly difficult from her urn. On her death bed, she dictated that she absolutely must be scattered at the local girl guide and boy scout Headquarters. Read the rest of this article »

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The Landlady samples the delights of Berlin

I’ve just been on yet another train to Stoke on Trent. From the beginning of the journey, there was a man and a woman sitting opposite me who had clearly just been to a business meeting as they spent almost their entire journey discussing ‘business’. Although they spent a good 45 minutes discussing ‘business’, I had no clue what type of actual business they were in, apart from there seemed to be a lot of ‘apps’ and ‘hacks’ in their workplace. I have been out of the upper echelons of the job market for so long now that I struggle to understand what people actually do – apart from the fact that it all sounds really boring and I’m glad that I’ll never have to do it. Read the rest of this article »

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The Landlady battles with grandfather clocks

My life has changed significantly since the death of my mother. I have joined a gym, I have started to learn Arabic and I have started to watch Downton Abbey. The latter is the most shocking thing of all. Read the rest of this article »

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The Landlady wilts in the heat

I am currently in the midlands on the Sunday following my mother’s funeral, which took place on the hottest day of the unseasonal heat-wave we experienced at the beginning of October. Read the rest of this article »

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The Landlady has to deal with a ‘creepy’ tenant

The fact that I’ve been spending a great deal of time in the midlands lately during the illness and subsequent death of my mother means that I haven’t really had my eye on the ball as far as Landlady Towers is concerned. And the ball is very much one requiring a hawk-eye at times, as recent events have proved. Read the rest of this article »

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The Landlady has lots to do and plenty of food

My mum passed away peacefully last Sunday, although we are still not sure what was actually wrong with her. The Big Daughter and I saw her a few days before she died and, in spite of being critically ill and barely able to speak, she still managed to say that she thought The Big Daughter should stop using hair straighteners as her hair didn’t suit her. I am grateful for her criticism, as I know that she was of sound mind to the last… Read the rest of this article »

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The Landlady isn’t ready for the grandfather clock

My mother is seriously ill in hospital. A fortnight ago, the kids and I rushed up north to see her for one last time as the doctors thought she wouldn’t last the weekend. The doctors are clearly not familiar with the tour de force which is my mother. As my cousin Helen very aptly put it, “in the aftermath of nuclear war, there would be cockroaches, rats and auntie Kath”, meaning that she is a tough old bird. I have, therefore, since that not-so-final weekend, been up and down several times, fitting in as much as I can with work shifts, foreign students and hospital visiting times. Read the rest of this article »

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