www.estateagenttoday.co.uk

LHA is the allowance paid to housing benefit tenants in private rented accommodation. If private sector landlords reduce their rents they will be able to choose to receive Local Housing Allowance direct rather than relying on tenants to pass the payment on. This is one of several measures laid before Parliament in new Housing Benefit Regulations.

Welfare reform minister Lord Freud said: "We are looking for private landlords to respond to the need for lower rents and in return we are prepared to permit direct payments from the state."

"This incentive will bring an overall downward pressure on rents in the private sector. As these rents come down, more properties will become available to claimants and landlords will have certainty that their income will be protected."

New recipients of LHA will also have their allowances cut from next April. After this, the maximum paid to any LHA tenants anywhere in the country will be £400 a week for a four bed property. Furthermore, LHA will be calculated at 30% of local average rents rather than the current 50%.

The National Landlords Association noted: "Bringing forward the 30th percentile cut to April 2011 for new claimants will test how easily accessible rented housing will be for this group in need. The Government still needs to show how it will ensure that these tenants will be able to access at least the cheapest third of private rented properties and not be crowded out by other renters."

Why a Fixed Fee doesn't mean we don't care

This little video explains why we still work hard for you even though we don't charge a percentage for our management fee.

The Prestigious ESTAS and more

Are you wowed by Estate and Letting Agent Awards? Do you imagine that the judges pop into agent's offices up and down the country as mystery shoppers, talk to tenants and landlords and find out who is really happy with the service they are getting?

Oh you are very, very mistaken.

Some local-ish agents have won this award over the last few years but you may not be aware that to compete for this award and many others, agents have to PAY TO ENTER.

Now, knowing everything that you know about BlueDoor do you think we would spend money on entering our company for a so-called prestigious award?

You are right, we haven't and we won't.

The Negotiator Awards are given to the companies who can big themselves up and tell as many fibs as they like in 500 words or less. Yes, you nominate yourself and judges decide whether they like your nomination or not.

Do we fib? No!
Are we transparent? We think so and so do our customers.

The Estate agent Awards sponsored by the Sunday Times is another example of a ''big yourself up and pay a load of cash'' award. One ticket to sit at a swanky table at the awards luncheon costs £199.

Foxtons won one of these awards for goodness sake! They admit that the judging process was based on, and I quote,"A written submission, followed by a telephone interview."

So the next time you have an agent in your living room bragging about all their awards, ask them how much they cost and who wrote the submission and how honest are they really. Ask them if any of the judges looked at their boring online advertising and the  junk mail they are constantly throwing through people's letterboxes.

If you like us you do business with us and you tell other people about us. That is all we need. We don't need glitzy awards or nights on the town to know that we are good. People tell us and we are content with that.

Happy letting!

What's new in Abingdon?

Well there are new recycling bins everywhere for a start and in some places where they can't be put in back gardens the streets are looking pretty untidy.

Hodsons mistakenly put a To Let board in the front garden of a flat we manage which gave the tenant a bit of a scare

The flat they are advertising is upstairs and doesn't have a garden. You can see it on rightmove if you are interested. Nice location and an easy walk to town.

Apart from that, the fair was in town at the start of the week and I came home from teh office with a headache everyday after having to listen to:

"Dof Dof Dof chest thumping music, ScreEEEEEEaaaaaaMMMMMM if you want to GO Fassssster! ONE way round Pleeeeease and Press the Pedal to goooooo"

through my office window. Roll on the Runaway Fir on Monday and Tuesday, not.

The sunshine and local viewings have enabled me to leave the car at home most days and walk to work and then walk to appointments which is good for my wasit-line and the petrol bill. Walking also means that I bump into all sorts of tenants and landlords who are also out and about in the sunshine. None of them abused me as I passed by so we must be doing most things right!

How bogus solicitors robbed us of £735k

How bogus solicitors robbed us of £735k

By Sebastian O'Kelly
24 August 2010

Reader comments (2)

Three months after paying for the property, Nick Christofi, his partner Sharon Griffin and their two sons should be settled into a large Tudor-style four-bedroom house in the desirable North London suburb of Hadley Wood.

Conned: Nick and Sharon with sons Lewis and Harry and the Hadley Wood house they thought they had bought

WANT TO KNOW MORE?

• The top 10 fraud scams to avoid
• Benefit fraud: 30-second guide

MORTGAGE TABLES

Mortgage finder: Cut your monthly mortgage costs, with a quick comparison
- Mortgage tables

Instead, the family's life has been shattered after Nick discovered that he had been a victim of brazen conmen, who sold him the house while it was in the process of being repossessed, and then helped themselves to the full £735,000 asking price after setting up an all-too-plausible bogus solicitors' practice to receive the funds. The family's own lawyer, Pamela Murphy of Schubert Murphy, didn't realise it was a scam and is now disputing his claim that she acted negligently.
The Law Society also denies responsibility, although it carried details of the bogus Acorn Solicitors, based in Rotherham, on its website - and kept them there for six weeks even after the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) was informed that the practice was a criminal sham and police were investigating.
'This practice has been abandoned and the persons behind it are being sought,' say South Yorkshire Police, who are investigating the fraud.
The way the family were robbed of their money leaves open questions about the effectiveness of the legal profession to protect the public against criminality in its ranks.
'As soon as I realised what had happened, I informed the Law Society and the SRA,' says Nick, 40. 'Everybody wanted to wash their hands of this, until the police took what I was saying seriously.'
Several other property transactions involving Acorn Solicitors had been reported to the police as suspected fraud. The firm is also being investigated for pocketing several million pounds from frauds in construction contracts connected with the 2012 London Olympics.
Sharon, 42, and Nick, a small-scale property developer, were wanting to move from Cockfosters in North London to the more salubrious Hadley Wood nearby and were contacted in April by estate agents Sean Heaney about a house where the seller was after a quick sale.
The property was priced at £735,000, although the seller had paid £875,000 for it in December 2007. As the property was such a bargain, the agents were on only a one per cent commission to clinch a deal.
'Nothing decent usually comes up in Hadley Wood for less than £1million so I jumped at the chance to buy it,' says Nick, who was shown round the property by a man who said he was a friend of the seller.
With no time to sell their existing house, Nick borrowed £400,000 from his brother and another £200,000 from his brother-in-law in order to clinch the deal, and instructed Pamela Murphy, whom his family had used in the past.
Through the estate agent, Christofi's lawyers were put in contact with Acorn Solicitors, acting for the seller.
Acorn then repeatedly tried to speed up the process, which was completed in three weeks on May 21. Rather than move in immediately, Nick and Sharon had builders in to carry out refurbishment. But on June 9, they were astonished to receive a notice of eviction.
The house had been repossessed by Lloyds TSB, to whom the owner owed £843,000, with a repossession order granted last December. Indeed, the bank had sent in bailiffs in April, who found that the property was let to a family with young children.
'It is devastating what has happened to us,' says Nick. 'Both Sharon and I have been ill with stress because of this, not least because I owe all this money to my family. All we were trying to do was buy a house with a large enough garden for our children to kick around a football.'
The couple, whose sons Lewis and Harry are aged ten and eight, have managed to persuade Lloyds TSB to delay the eviction until October. Meanwhile, he is suing his solicitor Schubert Murphy for negligence. He says they failed to spot what he claims were ten 'tell-tale signs that Acorn Solicitors were bogus'. The firm denies negligence.
Most of these are minor inconsistencies, such as differing email and postal addresses and a website that never worked.
More seriously, although Acorn Solicitors were supposedly based in Rotherham, their client account was at a bank in Wembley, a highly unusual arrangement.
Schubert Murphy were unaware that solicitors in other property transactions had pulled out of deals with Acorn Solicitors and reported them to the police.
It is an additional confusion that there is a legitimate Acorn Solicitors based in Taunton in Somerset, and there is a retired solicitor called John Dobbs, the same name used as the registered solicitor of the fraudulent outfit. Neither are in any way connected with the bogus firm that was in Rotherham.
Nick and Sharon are pursuing the case with swanky City outfit Holman Fenwick Willan, who have taken it on as a 'no-win, no-fee' case.
'But unless they get a settlement before October, the bank will take back the house,' says Nick.
What will worry other home buyers is the prevalence of fraudsters establishing bogus solicitors, or cloning an existing one's identity and carrying out the conveyancing work with plausible competence.
Last week, the Law Society Gazette reported another case of identity theft when legitimate Bolton firm SK Solicitors were cloned by fraudsters in conveyancing transactions. Many may feel the response of the SRA and the Law Society to the Christofi case was especially feeble.
'I thought it was disgraceful that it took six weeks for the Law Society to remove the fraudsters from its website,' says Nick.
'Who else used that practice in the meantime?' In an email telling Nick that he was not eligible for compensation - because he had been robbed by a criminal rather than a crooked member of the legal profession - the SRA inadvertently leaked a series of emails between its bureaucrats.
'Perhaps we should advise "clients" that they appear to have been victims of an elaborate fraud and should make a complaint to the police,' wrote Tony Coletta on July 9. The public may be mystified why the SRA was not warning them about a practice that was already under police investigation.
The Law Society says it regrets that its website listing registered solicitors included a fraudulent practice, but pointed out that the data comes from the SRA.


Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/mortgages-and-homes/article.html?in_article_id=512866&in_page_id=8#ixzz0zRrXSk3Z

Scandalous!

We have just recently discovered that we are the fairest agents in town!

Who knew that we were the only ones who will let you move out of a property without charging you the earth? Or that we are the only ones who don't charge any renewal fees?

Honestly, what is going on with the world if someone wants to charge you for changing the date on an electronic document, reprinting it and putting it in the post to you, or worse, just emailing it to you so that you have to print it yourself!

If you have ever dealt with an agent who makes you mad, try us. We are a little bit kooky but we are also fair and honest.

Capital Gain Tax

Capital Gains Tax - levelling the playing-field between individual and corporate investors

Source: http://www.savills.co.uk

Yolande Barnes, Head of Residential Research at property adviser Savills, comments on the changes to Capital Gains Tax (CGT) announced in today's Budget:

"The limiting of the CGT rate to 28% for upper rate tax payers is a welcome deviation from the feared 40% or 50%. Also to be welcomed is its introduction from midnight tonight. A delayed or phased introduction would have led to second home owners and investors selling to beat the deadline and might have increased supply, depressing prices.

For a higher rate taxpayer who bought the average priced home ten years ago, as a second home or investment, and who sells it tomorrow, the changes will mean that they pay an extra £7,500 compared to what they would have paid yesterday. This represents an extra 56% in tax on the £85,000 gain.

Longer term, the raising of capital gains tax may discourage individual investors who make up the vast majority of residential property landlords. Although the luxury of a flat 18% CGT was only in place for two years, its demise removes the incentive for investors to gear up against the expectation of significant capital growth.

The change announced today will, however, begin to level the playing field between investment returns comprised of income and those derived from capital gains. This means that there is less incentive to look for high capital growth prospects as against yield and rental growth. This may start to subtly influence investment decisions in favour of the latter.

The new CGT rate also begins to even out one of the many differences between corporate investors and individual investors in the residential sector and between individual landlords and professionally managed corporate landlords and, while there are many more anomalies between these two to iron out, it may, in theory at least, encourage individuals to invest in corporate entities rather than direct into property.

Overall, there are inherent risks in discouraging any type of landlord at this time of growing demand for private renting. There are currently insufficient numbers of corporate investors and fund managers to take up the slack if private individuals withdraw from residential lettings. Compelling 'pull factors' still need to be put in place as a matter of urgency to attract corporate or institutional investors to the sector and to increase rental supply."

Just for Fun - Global Financial Collapse Explained

Deposits or insurance?

The tenants' deposit is not the equivalent of a new-for-old insurance policy.

The government knows that tenants do a bit of damage here and there so they give you 10% leeway on your rental profit for 'wear and tear' per year. They also kindly allow you to offset any expenditure on your property against your profit to reduce your taxable profit even further.

Folks like HomeLet offer landlord insurance policies to cover damage by tenants or the burning down of your property at pretty reasonable rates.

Or you can self-insure by putting away a bit of your monthly rent and not using it all to finance expensive cars or three holidays a year.

So why oh why do some landlords want to squeeze the tenant all the time? Why have they forgotten that there is a little bit of risk in every investment and frankly you are better off with a flat or a house as an investment than you would be with Equitable Life, Kaupthing or AIG to name a few.

All landlords need to treat their properties like a business. If you had a sweet shop you would expect some seasonal ups and downs as well as the possibility of the credit crunch affecting the business in some way. Little and often would be the best kind of scenario with happy customers and repeat business keeping things on the right track.

Investing in property should be seen the same way; it won't always be 'making hay while the sun shines' and there may be bumps in the road but if you keep everyone happy and watch the pennies whilst maintaining your property in a good state (note that I didn't say perfect there) it will all work out in the end.

Fair and reasonable are the watchwords because the Deposit schemes aren't keen on greedy landlords and tenants don't like feeling that they are being taken advantage of.

If you are looking for a good book to read over the summer which will also help you get in the Landlord Mind Set try the 3+1 Plan which I've linked to at the foot of this page.

The old types of agreement! Difference between Assured and Assured Shorthold Tenancy.

Assured Tenants

As assured tenancy is very different from an assured shorthold tenancy. An assured tenant has security of tenure which means that they have the right to remain in their home indefinitely should they wish. Most of these tenancies were created accidentally. For example perhaps a tenancy agreement was not drawn up when they moved into the property or perhaps the correct documents were not served on them when the tenancy was originally created.

Until 27 February 1997 in order to create an assured shorthold tenancy the landlord had to serve a special notice on the tenant called a "notice to quit", If this was not done for whatever reason the tenant will be able to claim the status of an assured tenant. The implications of this are very severe in that you will not be able to get vacant possession of you property.

It is also important to point out that you will not be abe to increase the rent annually as the rent will be set by the local rent officer from the rent office. In most cases you will be responsible for the upkeep of the outside of the property and your assured tenant will be responsible for the internal decoration

Selling An Assured Tenancy

Selling a property that is owned by an assured tenant doesn't need to be a complicated procedure provided you are selling to a company that is familiar with these types of tenancies. In this current climate they are pretty much un-mortgageable as banks and building societies will not consider the property as good security even though they are sold at a discount to there vacant value.

It is also worth noting that you are not required by law to provide a home information pack when selling a property with a sitting tenant.

Pig? Pig? Where?

I did a viewing at a property in Abingdon today which we have described as much like a Volvo from the nineties: boxy but big inside with loads of storage space.

It is a true maisonette with two floors and stairs inside to get up stairs to bed. It isn't on the ground floor, it starts on the first floor. As such it doesn't have a garden but it does have a large kind of roof terrace.

I was leaving this maisonette when I heard some snuffling and thought that I could hear a dog next door sniffing to see if I had a bone in my sock or something, but no!



It was a pig. Who on earth keeps a pig in a maisonette?

Imitation is what?

Lack of imagination that's what!

Look what I found on the doormat of a property I went to do a viewing at today



BlueDoor has always offered £50 if you recommend a landlord to us and we let their property. The offer is at the foot of every email we send out and we add it to other paperwork periodically which I might add is at no cost to landlords unlike printing and delivering junk mail.

What we do is is straightforward and simple. At the risk of sounding like Nick Clegg, we are straight forward with you up front.

Andrews on the other hand say 'You could receive £50' You helpfully fill in your details and the details of your friend which they then add to their database.

We don't collect data about anyone's friends. What usually happens is that a new landlord contacts us and says that they were recommended by so and so who is someone we know. We call their friend to thank them and put a cheque in the post or add a credit to their account if they are one of our landlords.

We offer Fixed Fees so no matter what your rent is you pay the same as everyone else. We treat everyone fairly which is why everyone pays the same fee.

Ring Andrews and ask them how fair they are.

Get Rightmove on your mobile

We have had a few calls from folks lately saying that they were down in Oxfordshire looking at properties which they didn't like only to go home and look at rightmove again and find a property of ours that they DID like. If you have an iPhone you never need to have that happen to you again.

Why? Because you can get an app for Rightmove!




You can download it for free and look at all the lovely pictures we use to advertise all our lovely properties. You can flick through them with your finger very easily and if you are near wifi it is amazingly fast.

Nice. Get your app and never miss a property!

Lettings Today
Inefficiencies, not cost, made us leave TDS, says Countrywide boss
Wednesday 7th April 2010

The boss of Countrywide Residential Lettings says the company pulled out of the Tenancy Deposit Scheme because of its service levels, rather than its price hikes.

It has now joined mydeposits.

The firm had been the TDS’s largest customer, previously paying in excess of £500,000 whilst having relatively few disputes.

John Hards, CRL’s co-managing director, said: “The money was one consideration, but it wasn’t just about that. It was more about administration and service levels. When we made comparisons, we found we got on well with the people at mydeposits and it felt to me like a robust business model.”

Hards, previously on ARLA’s Council, said: “I have been a passionate supporter of the TDS and was instrumental in getting it up and running. My company even put money into it. But at the end of the day, this was a business decision and it was time to move on.”

He said that as the workload for TDS had built up, it had led to delays in how it dealt with matters. “In fact, our disputes were well below the average,” he added.

Hards declined to talk about the terms of the deal with mydeposits or whether it would be cheaper than TDS. Nor would he comment on rumours that another very large lettings chain has also been in talks with mydeposits.

Hards said CRL has not signed up to mydeposits for a particular period, but added: “As a company, we do not hop around between suppliers.”

Hards also revealed that he will be stepping down from the board of NFoPP next month. But he stressed: “This has absolutely nothing to do with our leaving TDS, and I remain a very strong advocate of ARLA. However, Countrywide is planning major expansion and there is a lot of work for me to do. It would not be fair on NFoPP for me to continue as I would not be able to offer sufficient commitment.”

Mydeposits was also the specific subject of Parliamentary questions last week when the shadow treasury secretary, Greg Hands, asked about the level of complaints against it. The exchange went as follows:

Mr. Hands: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government how many complaints his Department has received on MyDeposits.co.uk in each year since its inception.

Mr. Ian Austin: The Department has no role in dealing with complaints about the tenancy deposit protection scheme providers. Complaints about the handling of tenancy deposit protection cases are dealt with by the three scheme providers through their own formal complaints procedures.

Mr. Hands: To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government if he will review the operation of the Housing Act 2004 in respect of the regulation of licensed deposit-takers for the purpose of protecting tenants’ deposits, with particular reference to MyDeposits.co.uk

Mr. Ian Austin: As with any new legislation, we are monitoring the implementation of the tenancy deposit protection provisions in the Housing Act 2004. However, we have no plans to make any amendments to the legislation at present.

Holy fish in my eye BartMan

Look at the bend on those kitchen cupboards. Who'd buy a house with such bendy furniture?

Oh, silly me.

The estate agent's fish-eye camera lens strikes again.

I use a normal camera with a lovely flip out and spin LCD screen. It takes pictures that actually look like the thing I have pointed it at. It is pure rocket science really and means that when someone sees my pictures on rightmove then goes to the house, they recognise the rooms!

Words and Pictures

We deal in words all day. Telephone calls, emails, texts, voicemail, negotiations, letters, offers, agreements, statements, words, words words.

Sometimes it is a relief to play with words and not have to think too hard about what they mean. Have you ever played with words?
















You can make your own over at Wordle Just click on the create button and see what you can make!

Are the stars mis-aligned?

Everybody looks but no-one makes offers. No-one can commit right now and they have to have a think about it.

What is going on? Whatever happened to "I like it/it will do to keep my stuff from getting wet/I like the look of that fridge"?

All the properties we have available right now have something special about them. Either the location, the period features, the views.... they are all waiting for someone to love them or at least want to shack up with them for a year then see how it goes. We even have an office available to save a marriage from a miserable entrepreneur working from home and drinking too much coffee.

Have a look at our listings on rightmove and tell me which one you would rent.

Still Unusual

Two things you may or may not know about BlueDoor:

We don't charge renewal fees to Landlords or Tenants.

We don't do boards.

It is a little known fact that there are agents like us out there in the wilderness also not charging ridiculous renewal fees. We are proud to be one of them and wish that other agents would join us.

If you read the property sections of any weekend broadsheets you will probably have read a lot about unfair charges levied by agents on poor tenants and landlords and the moves by the Office of Fair Trading to force Foxtons to remove the unfair fees terms in their agreements.

Elsewhere you may have read about Estate Agents protesting that they cannot sell houses without having numerous boards on both sides of the streets of Hammersmith and Fulham and Brighton and Hove.

None of our properties stay empty for very long. The average is probably a matter of days rather than weeks and we achieve this by advertising properties in the best way possible: with lots of pictures and interesting advertising text. We don thave boards and it doesn't affect our ability to let properties.

In and around Abingdon it seems that agents can get a board up faster than they can get a property advertised on rightmove or their own website. How can a tenant find out anything about the property from a board? How many people will see a board in a no through road versus how many will see it advertised online when they are browsing in their lunch break?

Pictures are the key here. If a tenant can see a picture of each room they can really get an idea about whether they can see themselves in the property or not. This saves us time because only people who are really interested in the hose want to view it and it also saves prospective tenants time as they don't waste their afternoon looking at a place that they wouldn't have bothered with if they know it had a shower but not a bath or a mirrored bedroom ceiling or whatever.

Work smarter not harder, goes the saying. Well, we do work hard but we also work smart. You too can work smart by instructing us.

Paying just £65+VAT pcm for management and rent collection is pretty smart don't you think?

Sell, sell, sell. Buy, buy, buy

I could give this advice every day and if everyone I gave it to took my advice, everything would be ok.

Sell your big properties and buy small ones.

I give you that advice for free.

Have a look at rightmove at the cost of a 1 bed house or flat. Look at the rents on similar properties and do some maths.

The yields on smaller properties are good; they rent very easily; they rent to good people who work all day and those people tend not to make a mess.

Now think about buying just one and getting the smallest mortgage on it that you can. Don't overstretch yourself and go buying 5 of them and spreading your debt far and wide.

Three studios will give more income than one larger property but can cost the same to service. You reduce your risk in terms of voids because it is unlikely that more than one will be empty at any given time.

We want our student properties to have a magic fridge!

Elderly widow loses tenancy deposit case

News Story
Elderly widow loses tenancy deposit case
Friday 3rd July 2009

A shocking case has emerged in which an 81-year-old widow suffering from dementia was sued in court over a tenancy deposit.

The court has found in favour of her former tenants, even though their deposit had been safely protected, in this case by the agents, just as the law requires.

Yet frail Mrs Dorothy Osborn had to be taken from her care home in Norfolk and driven 200 miles to the county court hearing in Portsmouth by her son Michael Osborn.

The court had previously not been able to advise Osborn whether he could appear on behalf of his mother as her ‘litigation friend’, although when the case was subsequently heard on June 23, he was allowed to speak for her in the case of Locke & Orchard (the tenants) v Osborn.

Osborn, an estate agent and also founder of the website Brightmove, said: “It was very unfair on my elderly mother to have been summonsed in this way.”

The tenants, one of whom is understood to work in the legal profession, had rented the property through Countrywide Residential Lettings. The house in question was in Mrs Osborn’s home city of Portsmouth, and had been bought by her and her late husband Stan, a Fellow of the NAEA, in the 1970s. After their retirement, the couple moved away to Norfolk, where he died three years later.

According to both Osborn and Countrywide, the Portsmouth tenants had had their £695 deposit protected, perfectly properly and as the law requires. Countrywide had used the TDS insurance-backed scheme.

However, for some reason the firm inadvertently failed to give the tenants the prescribed information, as the law also requires, within 14 days of the deposit being taken by the agents. Prescribed information includes details such as the address of the rental property and information as to how the deposit is protected.

The court also found that the deposit was not returned in full within 14 days of the end of the tenancy, another requirement of the legislation.

Section 214 of the Housing Act 2004 allows tenants redress against either the agent or the landlord, but in this case the tenants successfully pursued their elderly landlord through the courts for the legally prescribed penalty – three times the deposit, plus costs and interest.

The money will now have to be paid by Mrs Osborn within 30 days. Her son said: “We are just awaiting the official notification of the judgement.

“My mother was not able to follow the court proceedings at all. I made a point of asking her if she had understood them, and she replied, ‘Not a word, John’.”

John Hards, chairman of Countrywide Residential Lettings, said aspects of the case had been shameful and upsetting, but that the court’s hands were tied in applying both the law and penalties laid down by an Act of Parliament.

“We worked with the elderly lady’s relative throughout,” he said. “We are very strict on our procedures and we spend a lot of time and money in trying to get them right.

“But although we did register the deposit correctly, in this case obviously something slipped through the net and I’ll be looking into what happened. I certainly wouldn’t want to see the lady out of pocket if it was our fault, and we will look to reimburse her.”

Happy New Year Abingdon!

The new year has started very crisply hasn't it? The grass looked like frost on frost on frost this morning which was very beautiful.

My frugal tip for this time of year is to wear more clothes. Honestly! Add layers, ladies and gentlemen before you run to the heating thermostat. Having your home like the Bahamas while it is so cold outside is a recipe for condensation and mouldiness in cold spots like window and door lintels and parts of the house which are less well insulated.


This kind of thing isn't pretty but it won't kill you. A wipe with some white vinegar will get rid of the blackness and reducing the temperature inside the house will help the condensation too. Wiping the windows isn't a bad idea and a microfibre cloth from your nearest pound shop is the ideal thing to use. This problem can't me prevented entirely because you can't stop the cold meeting the warmer walls and windows of any house.

See my Topical Tip of the Month from this month last year for more ideas on keeping warm.