Bonj you sound quite nieve to the whole landlord thing all the stuff you have said is quite readily available information found on the internet.

Renton as the owener of the property you are entitled to go and do an inspection yourself, even if the letting agent may try and suggest otherwise.

But inspection is part of the job that you pay the agent to do – there’s absolutely no point you doing it if you’re paying an agent to do it.
It’s like paying someone to do some building work for you and then barging the bricklayer out of the way and saying “I want to do that!”
If you want to do inspections yourself, don’t also pay an agent to do it. But it comes back to the point about removing your emotional involvement in it.

When you move back in, you are invariably going to do (or get done) a certain amount of work in cleaning, possibly decorating, general freshening up, refurnishing, etc. – to get rid of traces of the old tenants and make it your home again. This is the point at which you should start to think of it as *your* home, rather than merely an investment.

However, you are probably going to have to do this regardless of how the tenants treat it, whether or not they smoke in it, etc. so in my eyes there’s little point trying to pre-emptively mitigate this.

Just wait till they move out and THEN begin the process of converting it back into *your* home.

Is it not costly/a PITA for you to keep going up there and micromanaging? For me it’s an hour’s drive away, and it takes time, and time is money. I’d be better off spending that time at work earning more doing the job I’m actually professional at, and paying a guy who’s expertise it is to maintain properties. If you live in the same town as your rented property, and/or you don’t trust your agent, then YMMV. However if you don’t like/trust your agent, you should get another one.

thanks for the reply bonj,

we let the house out fully managed through letting/estate agent, cost me 10% plus vat per month.

I was considering not using them after the first year as i feel its quite expensive for what they do?

however your post has slightly swayed my now into rethinking that.

I will admit that it is hard to try and think of it as a business and not our house as there is all likelihood we will move back into it in a few years time.

We didn’t really want to rent it out in the first place but i couldn’t go on not seeing my kids all week.

In my own situation I find the amount of initial work alone that he’s done in getting up to habitable standard justifies the 10% fee for quite a long time yet, not to mention the peace of mind that I don’t have to lift a finger should any maintenance jobs – plumbing, joinery etc need doing.
In evaluating whether it’s worth it for you, you probably need to consider whether he’s doing the job you expect him to be doing. If you’re needing to step in to sort stuff the agent should be doing, then maybe you need to get a better one. But there probably won’t be much difference in the prices they charge.
If there isn’t anything that needs doing, then you’ve got to basically regard it as an insurance policy for in case anything does – weighing up how likely something is to need doing and how difficult/costly it is for you to do it yourself.

I’ve been a landlord for the last 5-6 years and I would say this: If you are letting out your flat get a good agent to fully manage it for you. i.e. go for the fully managed service, not just tenant-finding.

I previously let out my flat using just the tenant finding service, and managed it myself, in order to save the approx 10% management fee. What I didn’t realise though until I did it, was that by getting a *good* agent I was also to benefit from his expertise in knowing what to charge and how to get the best rent, so even after his commission I’m still getting over £100 a month MORE than I was before!

Not only that he’s also furnished it and dealt with insurance contractors. Putting it in the hands of an expert is the best thing I could have done.

The last tenants were ‘difficult’, in that they left it not in the best condition, but my new agent told me that unless you’ve got a rock solid, signed inventory then you will have difficulty claiming the deposit back from the ADR service of the DPS, and it’s a lot better to do it by mutual agreement.
For tenants who have been smoking, it might be best to make an offer to give them some of the deposit back, but keep some back for decorating. Obviously you want to make the offer such that they will be likely to accept it but that you will be happy as well. The ADR service is a pain in the arse to initiate, I lost patience with it and in the end just made an offer that was favourable to the tenant because I didn’t have an up to date inventory anyway.
The other thing if you are letting it out is to try to not be emotionally involved in it, instead seeing it as an investment to be made money from. Make decisions based on the bottom line, not based on what you think you would like for ‘your’ flat. Obviously having an agent makes this easier as well.

I have it on good authority that there have been sightings of skulls in wharncliffe woods.

It could be interesting trying to clean up the extra stuff before we descend into an ice age if they over do it a bit.

there’s going to be an ice age in about 10,000 years anyway. It’s worthe remembering that anything we do climate related is only mitigation for the mean time until then.

I had a canyon mtb and got rid because the swing arm bearings developed play and the bolt holding them in was proprietary and there was no way to replace them.
Obviously you wouldn’t have this issue with a road bike but it did highlight to me that their customer service is crap, the chances of getting through to someone are minimal and then when (if) you do the chances of them speaking (good) english are fairly minimal.

Extrapolating, I don’t see why ALL trains can’t be driverless. Why only tubes? All they can do is accelerate and brake.

It will be a lot more difficult, but I believe one of the great technological advances of the 21st century will be driverless cars. Imagine just being able to drive to the top of a hill, then send your car back down to meet you at the bottom.

exactly – and these people make up about 99% of the 1% who aren’t the clueless proles. The people who have any idea of what’s involved are 1% of 1%.

Democracy is often touted as the be all and end all, but just consider that you can quite easily have far too much democracy for your own good.
By definition, the higher up the IQ scale you go, the fewer people you have inhabiting it, but it’s these people you want having more sway in decisions.
If I was in hospital I wouldn’t want a public referendum on how to do my kidney transplant or double heart bypass operation, so when it’s britain that’s on the operating table, I’m not sure it’s any different.

sorry but I agree with deadlydarcy – WE might have the wherewithall and intelligence to make the right decision in a referendum, but 99% of the general public are thick, get most of the information on politics from the daily mail or sun, and could not be trusted with a bargepole to make the sort of decision that politicians should be making.
I’m not really even sure they can be trusted to elect the correct political party in general elections, why else have we got the tories in the first place – most people choose politicians based on looks ffs. Blair looks prettier than Major, Cameron looks prettier than Gordon Brown.

Coleman, yes you only use it for initial installation. You don’t leave it in there, obviously :lol:

mine have survived getting wet.

tip, use a road bike’s inner tube rather than a mtb one, easier to wrap round.

gore ride on cables here, I find with others crud gets in them to the point they don’t work properly

You can normally book bikes online at http://www.eastcoast.co.uk.
Can be used for any train, not just an east coast one.

Also don’t wear your best suit trousers but some £9 asda basics.

Alternatively just wear your suit on the bike and cycle like a politician.

The live wire is the brown one. For those that are colour blind, that’s the one that *isn’t* the blue one.

skiing or snowshoeing in pyrennees

sorry can’t help but would be keen to have a look as well, let me know if you find out…

It doesn’t really matter what, as long as you do get some new ones.

They’re not puncturing because they’re bad tyres, they’re puncturing because they’re old.
There’s no such thing as a puncture proof tyre – fwiw I use michelin pr3 25s and change them when they start puncturing regularly.

where is the stain – I can’t tell looking at that pic.

What does “fast enough” mean? When I ride, it’s not a race. YMMV

Yes but the fun of riding it derives from racing.
In the same way that the javelin contest in the olympics derives from warfare. They aren’t actually trying to attack anybody, but that’s how it came about.

I personally didn’t like climachx. Too many nasty surprises of off camber and otherwise unrideable bits. YMMV.

there’s a school of thought that says if you didn’t have to brake for the corner, then you weren’t going fast enough on the straight.

you aren’t supposed to put brookses on mtbs you know, the mud will ruin the leather.

Bonj,what is this *magic* orange spacer to which you refer?
Is it the answer to all my front mech fettling ills?

it comes with every new front mech when it’s bought new in the box. If you bought an OEM one you might not have it as the bike shop will have just taken it off a bike and may not have thought to include one. Most people toss it to one side ‘cos they’re the sort that don’t bother reading the instructions but it does have a purpose.

Or if you bought your whole bike as a complete bike then you won’t have one either, but I don’t generally do that.

I’ve got one in the garage, I’ll post a pic of it tomorrow.
You can improvise, but it has to be the right shape to keep the front mech open, it’s surprising how many things just ping out and wont’ stay in and hold it.

I don’t get how front mechs are that hard. There are two golden rules, (a) do it in order – 1st position, 2nd limit, 3rd tension – and (b) always use the orange spacer you get with it to put some quiescent tension in it, in order to avoid having to have about 10 turns on the head tube barrel adjuster to start off with.
If you follow those golden rules it’s piss easy and it cannot fail to work perfectly.

I’ve been working in a shop in London all summer, and I now hate all other peoples bikes.

If you work in a bike shop, you will by definition hate the bikes that get brought in there – because the people who take pride in their bikes don’t take it to the shop to get serviced. The people that take their bike to the shop to get serviced are the ones that want it to “just work”.

bleeding brakes.

Anything that just doesn’t seem to progress.

(I’ve had a day taken up by the first two combined and given up)

anything cable related on the road bike that you don’t anticipate will require bar tape removal, but that then does.

Or anything that requires more stripping down than originally thought.

Anything that involves an essential washer or other tiny part falling on the floor and thus lost, or an essential bolt’s threads stripping, or an unreplaceable bolt rounding, that means the job then can’t be completed.

Changing the chain. Only a two minute’s job but always seems more fiddly than it should be.

That said as per the previous poster says disappearing into the garage with the radio and a drink to fettle is otherwise very enjoyable.

if your bike will take a frame pump they are in a different league to mini pumps.
i’ve got this one
http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=11312
for my road bike and i dont’ even need to bother finishing off with the track pump when i get home

obviously you will be able to do it, but it’ll be a PITA.
i.e. if you mean “will it be physically possible to make a journey”, given that a ford ka is the only option, for one specific journey, then yes.

if you mean “should I consider getting a ford ka” for mtb purposes generally, then no.

ok, I got it running through now but having trouble bleeding it.

the procedure i’m doing is: open bleed nipple, depress lever, close bleed nipple, release lever. Making sure the reservoir is always full.

But the bubbles just keep on coming through thick and fast.

Any ideas?

ok cheers, so it doesn’t matter if there’s tiny remnants of 4.1 among 5 or vv, as long as it’s largely flushed through?

… it’s just the build quality on these things, are just totally rock solid. Time will tell but it is very confidence inspiring…

good luck changing the swing arm bearings.

They haven’t been built with maintainability in mind, IME.

ordnance survey are taking over the world.

somewhere between “fairly” and “moderately” tight. Definitely less tight than “very” tight, however.

Seriously though, what i often do if i haven’t got my torque wrench to hand is to use a T-handled allen key, but use the long end, so I am only turning using the short end, and only using thumb and forefinger on about a 6cm length of it. Torque is Newtons times metres, if you reduce the metres, you reduce the torque.

IME in a small company it never pays to be the nice guy.

No different to fat bikers on here

Pot, kettle.

Quite. When I went to inners last year I saw a fella whose belly pretty much reached the handlebars. ‘Yeah but I bet he goes down hill quite fast!’
Yeah. prob’ly goes down a chimney quite fast as well if santa was ever ill.

i’ve had a planet x sl pro carbon since 2007 and I love it.
I may be wrong but I suspect the “crap quality carbon” story is a simply a myth often trotted out by those selling carbon bikes that are expensive but without anything tangible to show for why they’re more expensive.

Planet X are based in doncaster. (Which isn’t “the south” but it is south of scotland.) I think they have also got a showroom now in rotherham.

PRetty good service in my experience.

Worst of all were the folk in the hire car descending to Bridge of Balgie, epic twisty long descent but they were going at about 15mph despite two cyclists on their bumper trying to find a way past

don’t get me started on majorcan coaches. :evil: GRR!

it is open, was there on saturday.
A lot of it is still unnecessarily bumpy and I don’t mean braking bumps either as there are lots of pointless bumps where you are having to pedal so certainly wouldn’t be braking, but there are quite a few small jumps that i’m sure weren’t there before the winter.