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Zhang Zhilin - Miss World 2007
2007-12-02 18:50:00
Zhang Zhilin is Miss World 2007 Miss China Zhang Zhi Li has won the title of Miss World 2007 on 1st December 2007. It’s the first time that an east asian has won the contest, but the secretary from Beijing was a firm favourite to win. This year the contest was hosted in Hainan Island, China. Miss Angola, Micaela Reis, came second, while Miss Mexico, Carolina Moran Gordillo, came third place. Check out the video of the final from youtube. I’m not sure what you guys think, but i think Miss Zhang standing tall at 6feet looks kinda alien like with long arms and fingers. Still I’m so happy for my fellow yellow lady to have won the beuty contest. Another reason to look to China for the future, they have lovely women. Well done China!!
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Repossession Stopped - Are Stopped!!
2007-11-29 18:26:00
A Property buying company trading as Repossession Stopped and Retail and Domestic Properties have this April gone into liquidation. They owed £19million to mortgage lenders on 230 properties. They had been operating the sell and rent back system long before other property investors got in to the game. I remember seeing their advertisments in the local papers going back a good few years. You may have seen the red postage stamp sized ad with the hand to stop repossessions. I always thought that they would have been really sucessfull in what they do as they seem to appear in most local papers around the midlands. On occasions we did go head to head with some of my clients telling me they had also called repossession stopped. Sometimes we beat them and did deals with clients, othertimes they beat us but I guess that is just business. I think they must have bought some properties for very low prices whilst they were the only company doing the sell to rent back scheme. They must have r...

Brits get rich in China
2007-11-26 12:53:00
I wrote about this documentary ages ago about 3 brits that risk it all to go and invest their money in China . Well today I found it on youtube so i thought i would post the 1st part up. This documentary introduces you to 36 Year old Tony Caldera and his failed Mersyside cushion business. He is taking his operation to China in a true if you can’t beat em, join em. He has borrowed £2 Million to build his factory in a paddy field. You also get to meet 70 year old Peter Williams who has spent all his savings on an energy saving switch for aircon units. He risks everything to sell the device to the Chinese with hundreds of millions of aircon units. My Favourite though is Vance Miller aged 42, the kitchen gangster from Rochdale. He has been all over China to get his kitchen parts at rock bottom prices. He is a character, really funny, but also has nerves of steel (watch part 2 and the quarry) Brits get rich in China - Part 1 Brits get rich in China - Part 2 Brits get rich i...
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nofollow - No more. WordPress Hacked
2007-11-23 23:32:00
I’ve uploaded a new theme today and somechanges to my blog. Don’t worry I don’t think that ugly picture of me will be staying for too long. One major change, that will hopefully temp more people to comment on this site is that I’ve removed the “nofollow” from the comments. By doing this I’m making the links that my visitors leave when they comment count towards backlinks for their site. The more “real” links that you have to a website, the better for the site as search engines count these links towards the sites popularity and it may help boost the sites page rank too. So if you’ve been shying away and not posting comments on here, now is your chance. Post a comment, leave a link to your site and it will count towards your sites popularity. I’ve tried to do this before by using a plugin for WordPress, but couldn’t get it working. Instead this time I’ve directly hacked the code for Wordpress . Only 1 line, but hack...
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Longer tenancy agreements
2007-11-22 23:44:00
I often get asked for long tenancy agreements of 3 to maybe 5 years to give my tenants long term security. Don’t get me wrong I would love nothing more to be able to give them a 25 year tenancy agreement and have the tenants agree to rent the property for 25 years. However the terms and conditions of the BTL mortgages we use stipulate that the tenant must be given an AST (Assured Shorthold Tena ncy) of usually no more than 12 months. 12 Month AST But why only 12 months? This is to protect the lenders interests as well as yours. If in the worse senario you couldn’t meet the mortgage payments either because you were not getting the rent or maybe you’ve spent it all on holidays. The bank to protect its loan would seek to evict the tenants, take the property back and sell it on to payback the loan. Evicting tenants Tenants can only be evicted if the contract has elapsed or the tenants are in breach of contract (usually for non payment of rent). I’ve learn’t...

Using a Letting Agent
2007-11-14 18:52:00
Do you use a letting agent to manage your properties or do you self manage? I currently only use an agent to manage 2 of my properties as they are not long term tenancies and they are also over 1 hours drive away. I would hate to be driving over an hour each time the tenant has a problem or i have to show tenants around. I think that using an agent for my whole portfolio is not required. They tend to charge about £50 per property per month (10 percent of the monthly rent) that would cost me over £2000 per month. A cost i cannot justify when most of my tenants never contact me or never needed anything from me. What does a letting agent do? I guess agents would help with the following: Chasing the bad payers Handle most of the mundane paperwork (tannancies, inventories etc) Liase with workmen Handle marketing and viewings of property. I would appreciate someone else chasing bad payers, its not a nice thing to do, but luckly i dont have too many of these. Doing most of the mundane ...
More About: Agent , Letting , Gent

fun in Thailand and Hong Kong
2007-10-29 13:10:00
i’ve been back from my group holiday to Thailand and Hong Kong for a week or so. i feel like i’m just managing to catch up with everything whilst i’ve been away. it’s definitely very busy now. whilst i was away my solicitor completed on 2 property purchases and another 2 the week i got back. there’s still 2 deals on boil and another 3 in the pipeline. i feel like i need another holiday! i’ve also had many people contact me via this site and i will be getting back to you very soon.. in the meantime here are a few pics from my holiday. the rooftop bar Siccorro in the stateside tower building in Bankok. This bar sits on the 64th floor of the hotel. the grand palace in Bankok is really grand. spot the ladyboys, one of thailands other well known attractions. Kata beach in Phuket the famous Halloween party in Ocean Park was really fun.

BMS fastest mortgage offer
2007-09-26 19:15:00
Birmingham Midshire Solutions, one of the mortgage lending arms of Halifax Bank of Scotland group do it again. they have from start to finish offered a mortgage in just under 14 days. thats the quickest time to offer i have had even beating their previous record. from the word GO! BMS use an online application from my mortgage broker which makes it fast. i pay for the valuation by visa card and the valuer calls the next day to arrange the viewing. within 2 days after the valuation the report is in my letter box. a few days after that the offer letter is in mine and my solicitors mail. my solicitors are not actually in a position to proceed yet. but at least the funding is available now. i’m always impressed by the speed of BMS and my only gripe with them is that the valuation is a tad expensive at £405 for a property sub £120k. this may go up for a more expensive property.
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Vaccination Jabs for Thailand
2007-09-18 15:03:00
in October i’ll be visiting the beautiful land that is Thailand . i’ll be going with 8 other friends of mine and we’ll be going via Hong Kong. it should be a great holiday and i’m really looking forward to this as i’ve never been to Thailand before. going to Thailand us brits or people born in britain and not native to these climates need vacinations against certain diseases. i don’t want to take my chances out there so i was a good boy and got all my jabs done today. i had to jabs one in each arm they were for the following: Typhoid Hepatitis A Diptheria Tetnus Polio apparantly i need to get the Hepatitis A booster after 6 months, then i’ll be protected for 10 years. malaria is a concern, but the nurse says that its only a real risk if i travel over the borders into Burma or go on mad trecks. if i stick to the citys and use lots of mosquito spray with “DEET” then i’ll be fine.

my first eviction - update
2007-09-17 14:34:00
This is an update to this post about Eviction using a Section 8 Notice well its been 14 days now since i issued the Section 8 Notice and the tenant has made an effort to contact me. about a week ago i got a text message from them asking me to call them. she tried to explain that apon visiting her back it has become apparent that loans.co.uk has been taking money from her account. they do not have a loan and the police have been informed as it could be identity fraud. identity fraud so for all the weeks that the standing order has been refused its because loans.co.uk was taking money on a direct debit from their account, which meant no money left for me. she assured me that she would now keep the rent in a jar at home and i’m welcome to come and collect it. its ok i told her, but she must deposit it in to my bank as she has my bank details. missing money i check my account everyday, but no deposits. i contact the tenant and she informs me that she has just paid the last weeks...
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Northern Rock Collapse?
2007-09-17 09:30:00
Northern Rock Plc, the U.K.’s worst performing bank stock, will receive emergency funds from the Bank of England. this is to ease a credit shortage sparked by U.S. subprime mortgage defaults. since the funding has been agreed its customers have been rushing to branches to withdraw money in a panic. they fear the worst for the bank and have withdrawn at least 2 billion pounds, about 8 percent of its retail deposits. the branches are too busy to serve most of the queuing customers, the website has also experienced problems as people rush to withdraw money. northern rock lending rising credit costs due to the US credit crunch left Northern Rock unable to make new loans, sparking the first rescue of a U.K. lender by the central bank in 34 years. The bailout stoked concern among investors and depositors that other financial firms relying on short-term money market credit rather than deposits from customers may be vulnerable because the rate they borrow at exceeds the amount they e...
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my first eviction
2007-09-04 12:44:00
back in may i wrote about my bad tenants situation in this post http://www.daveso.com/property-investment /watch-out-bad-tennants/ since visiting them 2 of the 3 bad payers are slowly paying of their arrears by paying more every month. I have 1 tenant though that just does not play ball. I have changed her payments to weekly payments to make it easier for her to pay. she assured me that she would never be late on her payments again. it’s the banks fault - i’ve paid you after going to see her she paid for about 4 weeks in a row, then its back to her old tricks with only 2 payments the next month. in July she paid on the 10th and then no other payments were made. so much for her promises. “it’s the banks fault - i’ve paid you” she keeps telling me. looking at her bank statements i can see that she has paid the bank £35 each time for cancelled standing order. her bank Natwest are charging her £35 each week as she has insufficient funds to pay me. th...
More About: Eviction

cheaper car insurance
2007-08-25 12:57:00
my car insurance with elephant insurance was due to run out in a few days and the renewal price was £1030.00 or thereabouts so i thought i would set about trying to get a cheaper quote. my car insurance only cost me £700.00 last year but i guess will have gone up as i had a slight prang earlier this year. you can read about my repair with lookers honda nottingham my honda s2000 after a little prang i only went to 2 other compaies so not really an exhaustive search. the first other company i went to was DirectLine who quoted £1160.00 for the same cover. this was no better so i thought i would try another company. Tesco Value i thought Tesco should be quite competitive as they like to promote their value range of food and services. the online quote system they use was very similar to DirectLine’s too similar infact. DirectLine actually run the Tesco car insurance. As the country’s leading partnership provider of insurance and motoring assistance, UKI Partnerships te...
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Best Mortgages for the BTL Investor
2007-08-19 19:54:00
as a keen BTL investor I have used many different mortgage companies and here is my current list of best and worst lenders. they are rated by a mixture of speed to offer, speed to complete, rate of their products. The Good 1. BMS - Birmingham Midshires. speed to offer is excellent and no problems with completions either. i’ve had valuations booked the same day as my broker has instructed them. They products are amongst the best out there. the only thing that lets them down is they only offer 85% of purchase price for their instant remortgages. 2. MX - Mort gage Express. Speed to offer is good, but they sometimes have delays, no problems with completions. Product wise they are quite competitive and used to offer a really good five year deal. They are one of the only lenders who do instant remortgaging to 85% Value of property. 3. TMW - The Mortgage works. Speed to offer is ok, overall speed is consistent. They have good products for limited co’s but require you to use thei...
More About: Investor , Mortgages , Ages

house prices set to rise 40% over the next 5 years
2007-08-16 01:19:00
House price increase ok so i usually take newspaper headlines with a pinch of salt. however most of them were reporting that that UK house prices are set to rise 40% over the next 5 years. this is not a figure plucked out of thin air either. figures have been taken from a report from the National Housing Federation. the report features new projections commissioned from Oxford Economics which also show that the average price in London will nearly hit half a million pounds in time for the 2012 London Olympics. Home Truths the report is titled Home Truths reveals that a housing market crash is ‘unlikely’ and that home ownership will move even further out of the reach of many first time buyers as the average house price is now nearly 11 times average earning. housing supply has dropped even further behind housing demand with over 1.6m households (equating to almost 4m people) are on waiting lists for a social home Federation Chief Executive David Orr said: “Our report sh...
More About: House , House Prices , Years , Rise , Ouse

GMAC cannot meet completion dates - Rubbish!!
2007-08-10 13:24:00
this is the second mortgage that i’m trying to complete on with GMAC RFC. they have been an absolute nightmare according to my solicitor. both times GMAC have not been able to meet the completion date and requested more information such as asking for mining reports at the last minute when there have been no problems with subsidence. these kinds of questions should have been made way before the completion date, NOT last minute. i have a third application going through with them and they have messed that up already. needing me to confirm if i am a first time buyer or not?? i guess i can say that they are being consistent at least. consistently appalling benefits of using GMAC RFC GMAC are currently one of the only BTL Lenders who will allow a 89% LTV, only requiring you to put down an 11% deposit. the rental coverage they require is only 100% of the monthly mortgage payments which means that its easier to get deals to “stack” using this lender. is 100% rental coverag...
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Interest rates go up, do investors still buy?
2007-08-09 00:55:00
As the interest rates go up do property investors still buy more investment properties or do they hold off? As an investor myself I have to ask myself the question “should I still buy more?”. Well my answer is “Yes, of Course!” but i have to be more cautious as less deals stack up with higher interest rates. most all the mortgage lenders have strict criteria about monthly rents needing to be about 120% of the mortgage payments. this is to protect them from over lending making sure the rent you recieve is enough to cover the mortgage and some more. when rates were lower this criteria was easily met. as rates increase this is harder to achieve on most properties. advantages of high interest rates there are of course always some advantages to higher rates: more homeowners will be overstretched and may struggle with payments. investors in a good position will be able to help these homeowners out with sell and rent back arrangements confidence in the market may a...
More About: Interest Rates , Interest , Investors , Rates , Rate

google adwords open to click fraud
2007-07-28 14:52:00
i use google adwords on one of my property sites and some of my other sites that i run. it has been getting more and more expensive to bid for the keywords that i want a year ago it would have cost £.50 for the keywords “sell my house quickly”, whereas now it costs around £4.00. thats for one click, ouch! poor performing adverts i’ve been a bit disappointed with the results this month as even though the budget of £40 per day is being used up we do not seem to be getting any conversions. conversions for my sites would mean people are submitting their details. so we still get about 6-10 clicks a day which drains the budget, but no conversions. this IS quite strange as normally the ratio is about 3 clicks to one conversion. one malicious IP address i downloaded this months log files for my site just to see if it would show me what what happening. after looking through the logs for a few minutes it became apparent that alot of the visits were coming from one IP addr...
More About: Google , Fraud , Open , Click , Google Adwords

Please have $3 million US dollars
2007-07-23 23:16:00
I can’t believe the ammount of spam i get in my mailbox just the other day though one particular email caught my eye. a mr Chen Minyong of the Singapore United Overseas bank wants to give someone over $3 million dollars and he has chosen me!! there must be a catch i thought as there is never such thing as a free lunch. well in this instance the catch is that he wants to put $15 million into my bank account first. hmmm well i guess that would be ok. Good Day, This mail might come to you as a surprise and the temptation to ignore it as serious could come into your mind but please consider it a divine wish and accept it with a deep sense of humility. My name is Mr.Chen Minyong, an external auditor for the United Overseas Bank,Singapore,working as part of a bigger team that covers the entire Asian region. An investor died without naming a next of kin to his fund in my bank.The amount is $15.7M and banking regulation/legislation in Singapore demand that i notify the fiscal authori...
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Return to Facebook!!!
2007-07-19 01:04:00
I’ve had a reply from facebook regarding my being banned from the site. they have let me off and allowed me back in, but i’m not to send multiple messages again.. here is the reply from facebook: Hi Dave, Your account was disabled because you took repeated actions that could be construed as spam. For instance, it is a violation of Facebook ’s Terms of Use to repeatedly send the same message or to make the same post. Facebook prides itself in protecting users from spam, and we take this standard very seriously. However, after reviewing your situation, we have reconfirmed your account and you should now be able to access it again. Please do not send or post any more form messages. Further violations of our Terms will result in the termination of your account. Finally, please be aware that when a warning message appears on your homepage, it will generally be displayed for 24 hours. It can be displayed for longer, however, if you continue performing these abusive a...
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The Real Tranformers
2007-07-17 21:09:00
i found this clip whilst looking for a trailer for the new transformers film by Michael Bay. it comes out in the UK on 27/07/07. its already been released in most other countries so pirate versions are available on lots of sites. i will resist temptation and wait until its UK cinema release as i’m a huge transformers fan. the clip shows real people in their transformers outfits that they have made. check out the optimus prime, its so cool.
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Barred from Facebook!!
2007-07-17 01:41:00
Being bored and in a funny mood i thought that i would try and see if anyone else on facebook had the same name as me (just in case you missed it my name is Dave So) the search turned up 30, yes 30 other Dave/David So’s mostly they were in the States and i think i’m the only one in the UK. Anyway i thought it would be fun to create a group called “my name is Dave So or David So” and invite the other Dave’s to join. only to my horror once the group is created you can only invite your friends to join. thats not going to stop me i thought. i’ll just message each dave so and send him a link to my group. so off i went to message them all. after about 6-7 messages sent, a red message came up telling me that it looks like i’m trying to spam and i should stop or my account will be frozen. i thought they’d be able to tell that i wasn’t a spammer, but no, i got banned so in the end i wrote them a quick email to ask them to reinstate me. ...
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Goal Setting for Q3/Q4 of 2007
2007-07-11 18:59:00
Goal Setting for Q3/Q4 of 2007 now that we are into the second half of 2007 I have set my new goals for the rest of the year. these goals will complement my 5 year goals and my 10 year goals. Is it really important to set goals and why should we do this? well have you ever heard the saying “He who fails to plan, plans to fail” ? a set of achievable goals is a plan for yourself. having a clear set of achievable goals will help you regain focus when you sometimes come slightly off track. setting goals is something that most people do not do. The reason is quite simple if you set goal and don’t achieve it then it becomes a constant reminder of how you have failed. instead of having a constant reminder of how you have failed, it’s easier for most people to just never set any goals. if you do not set goals in your life, you never know if you are achieving anything significant and you may never achieve anything significant either. so what are my goals for the rest of ...
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Find a good mortgage broker
2007-07-10 18:07:00
Find a good mortgage broker a friend of mine has just had a slight balls up with a mortgage on a property he was buying. he was buying below market value and hence needed to arrange an immediate remortgage to release his funds for more investment. he used a random mortgage broker who to me sounds completely rubbish. the broker lined him up with a Birmingham midshires product which sounded good enough to him at the time. my friend needed to release 85% of the property valuation, NOT the purchase price. This would have been possible with Birmingham midshires 12 MONTHS AGO but since then Birmingham midshires have changed their policy and they only allow remortgages up to 85% of the purchase price within 6 months or purchasing. Anyone who has been buying BMV or any decent mortgage broker would have known that. I think my friend went for a local free mortgage broker to save money. I feel it may have been a false economy for my friend as he has now had to shell out for the valuation of a...
More About: Mortgage , Find , Good , Broker , Mort

Bank of England Interest rates rise again to 5.75%
2007-07-09 18:41:00
Interest rates rise again to 5.75% The Bank of England raised its base rates yet again this month up to 5.75% this is the highest interest rates have been since 2001. This is bad news for anyone borrowing money for any reason as mortgages and loans of any type will be affected. Many homeowners could soon be facing mortgage arrears and financial hardship as monthly outgoings will be increased by the recent rate rise. A borrower with a £100,000 variable rate repayment mortgage is paying £104 a month more than at the same time last year. Experts predict that the rates could hit 6% by the end of the year. Most homeowners (57%) however are on fixed rate mortgages and therefore will not feel the pinch of the higher interest rates on their mortgage. until at least their fixed rate period ends and they have to remortgage. They may then find that it will be harder to get as good a deal on their home mortgage. How does this affect investors with BTL mortgages? well as an investor myself I ...
More About: Interest Rates , Interest , Rise

your winning team
2007-07-03 13:42:00
your winning team to succeed in property it is important to have a good reliable team of professionals to help you. without a good to help you, you will constantly be jumping over hurdle upon hurdle on your own. with a good team in place you will benefit from their experience and be able to overcome any problems in a short time frame. my team consists of: solicitors - 1 for myself and 1 i recommend to work for the sellers of the property. mortgage broker - this person is key to your success, they will scour the market and find you the best deals. it is also very important that they can also package mortgage applications. a mortgage packager will be able to save you the deal when it may be lost by a normal mortgage broker. surveyor - they must be realistic with their valuations. they must be a fellow of RICS and they must also be on the panel for your favorite mortgage lenders. builder - they must be experienced but also offer a good price and be able to work to schedule accoun...
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