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Birmingham Midshires declines Assignable Contracts
2008-06-09 19:57:00
www.daveso.com - Make Some Money - wrote: Birmingham Midshires declines Assignable Contracts Is this another sign of the credit crunch? During May Birmingham Midshires added a note to their mortgage book with the CML (Council of Mortgage Lenders) 5.1.1- Contact point if the seller has owned the property for less than 6 months. Completions Team at office issuing mortgage instructions. See Offer for contact details. NB We will not normally proceed on cases where the property is already owned by the borrower but for less than 6 months. Applications which involve assignable contracts are not acceptable. Assignable contracts, used heavily by some investors are no longer allowed by BMS. An assignable contract allows an investor to exchange contracts on a property, but sell his contract on to another investor, without buying the property. The new investor would just raise the funds and mortgage in the normal way and complete the sale. This is a sign that BMS are becoming more and more ti...

Mortgage Express Instant Remortgage - The End
2008-05-09 16:36:00
www.daveso.com - Make Some Money - wrote: Mortgage Express Instant Remortgage - The End Whilst I was away I was informed that Mortgage Express, one of my favourite mortgage lenders had overnight pulled the plug on their instant remortgage product. Mortgage Express were the only major mortgage company to allow an investor to remortgage their property before owning it for 6 months. An instant remortgage product allows investors to remortgage a property to 85% of its surveyed market value. This is regardless of purchase price. For example if you purchased a house for 60k and the surveyor agreed that the property is actually worth 100k the bank (mortgage express in this case) would lend you 85k as a remortgage on the day of completion. All you had to do would be to buy with 60k cash then the next day you would be given it back plus an extra 25k. Of course not everybody has 60k in cash sat in the bank, this created a need for bridging loans companies to lend the cash to purchase the prop...

My Wedding - Mr and Mrs So
2008-04-30 00:51:00
www.daveso.com - Make Some Money - wrote: My Wedding - Mr and Mrs So I’ve been absent for a few weeks as I’ve just been really busy preparing for the wedding. Now that its over and me and Sally are back from honeymoon we are still so busy and life has not yet returned to normality for us. Here is a picture at our wedding from our friend JMAC: It was most definitely the longest day of my life, waking up at 6am and busy busy until the end of the party at 3am. Everythingl went to plan (Sallys plans) and it all worked out perfectly. A picture of our honeymoon in the Maldives at sunset: The Maldives is one of the most boring locations I have been to, perfect then for a honeymoon. Even at full capacity we could only ever spot about 10 people on the beach on our island. The very helpful and friendly staff with the ideallic surroundings and perfect weather combined do make you feel like you are in paradise. More pictures and the full wedding story will be on my wifes (that sti...

UK Lenders tighten lending
2008-04-02 00:35:00
www.daveso.com - Make Some Money - wrote: UK Lenders tighten lending In the last 2 weeks or so ALL UK banks and lending institutions that I and my fellow investors use seem to have tightened their belts and repriced their mortgage products. Fixed rates have gone up as well as variable tracker rates. Arrangement fees are also still stupidly high. Even though UK Interest rates have recently come down or stayed the same for the last few months. These latest lending rate hikes are definitely a result of the US credit crunch and is a result of less money being available to the banks to lend out. BMS fixed rate products have gone from 3 year 5.09% rates to 2 year 5.54% rates with heafty arrangement fees of 2.5% of the loan amount (even this poor rate has today been pulled in favour of possibly an even worse product). Mortgage Express who do instant remortgages for investors have repriced their 2 year fixed rates at 6.09% making most deals not possible for investors who need the instant...
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Riga Stag do
2008-03-31 19:37:00
www.daveso.com - Make Some Money - wrote: Riga Stag do I’m sorry I’ve not had the chance to post for ages. I’m currently up to my neck in wedding planning for my upcoming wedding on the 8th April. A few weeks ago I was treated by my mates to a stag do in the Latvian city of Riga. Riga is supposed to be like prague but a bit less developed and a bit less expensive. At least thats what we thought, but erm we were wrong, quite wrong… The city is quite developed like most parts of Europe, but unlike most parts of Europe it doesn’t share the same prices, prices in Riga are a lot higher that most cities in Europe, being comparable to London and Paris for prices of drinks and eating out. This was quite a shock for most of us, but we still managed to enjoy ourselves and have a real good time. Here are some pictures: Riga Steak House The Stag gets tied up Olympic Taboganing in Riga ShareThis

Soda Estates gets authority from google
2008-03-05 20:23:00
www.daveso.com - Make Some Money - wrote: Soda Estates gets authority from google Whilst there is another PR update happening at the moment, most of my sites have not been affected. One site has reached PR4 which is very good considering I have not even promoted it much. One of my best website marketing achievements at the moment is for the Soda Estates site. When I do a google search for “soda estates” I get the following result: See the links underneath the listing (how we help, latest news, repossession stopped) ? In the webmaster community a site is considered to have “authority” when it has those links. The site becomes an authoritive site. According to google however there is no such thing as an “authoritive” site. The correct name for these links is “sitelinks” as listed in Google s webmaster tools. Google adds them to a site to help the users browse to different sections of the site and these happen automatically. They cannot b...
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my first eviction - update3
2008-02-26 20:05:00
www.daveso.com - Make Some Money - wrote: my first eviction - update3 This is an update of the eviction of my non paying tenants, the process has well and truly dragged out for ages and ages. About 5 months in total. In court the judge had ordered that the tenants leave on Jan 23rd and give up possession of the property. The tenants had agreed and I was to meet them there on the 23rd. On the 21st I called the tenants and asked about the 23rd and they told me they would not be leaving. Great!! I went back to court when I could to ask for the court baliff to kick them out. This cost me £95 and I had to wait for the baliff to arrange a date. When I finally got documentation through for the eviction from the baliff the date they had set was for the 18th Feb at 11am. This was nearly another 4 weeks from when the judge had ordered them out. another 4 weeks of non rent payment Grrrr!!! Court Baliff and the Police The court baliff will turn up with the police if you think that it will be ...
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Planning permission on our house
2008-02-25 22:37:00
www.daveso.com - Make Some Money - wrote: Planning permission on our house We recieved some very good news last week. The planning permission that we submitted on our new property has been granted! In October of 2007 me and The Sally bought a small bungalow in need of some work, but with a view to die for. It will be our new home for after our wedding and of course after its ready. The house is actually a split level bungalow and if I needed to ever used the term “diseptively spacious” it would definitely be this house. From the front of the property it looks like any regular bungalow as you can see: As its on a slope from the rear however it looks more like a regular house. The part in blue is the proposed single storey extension we plan to add: From the side of the property you can see the extension in its full glory: The extension is not very big at 3m X 5m but will add a decent sized dining / poker room to our house. The extension will have a balcony over the top ...
More About: House , Permission

Freedom 2 Surf Suck
2008-02-16 12:48:00
www.daveso.com - Make Some Money - wrote: Freedom 2 Surf Suck My ISP Freedom 2 Surf had a major outage last week and I was without internet access for almost 3 days. Their sales guys confirmed that over 3000 users had been affected and had no internet. I only found this out after calling the sales department as I had been on hold to the technical team for over 2 hours on an 0870 rip off number!! Crap Website, Crap Service I thought 3000 users is a pretty major outage but its not even reported on their service status website. Talk about misleading customers. Technical support called me about 1 day after my broadband came back on, this is the conversation i had: f2s: “hi this is Micheal from Freedom to Surf, I’m just calling to check that your broadband is working now” dave so: “yes it is thanks, what was the problem?” f2s: “we don’t know” dave so: “my internet was down for 3 days and you don’t know why?” f2s: “s...

Bank rate cut to 5.25%
2008-02-08 00:07:00
www.daveso.com - Make Some Money - wrote: Bank rate cut to 5.25% The UK Bank of England has cut interest rates to 5.25% from 5.5% following signs that the UK economy is slowing down. The Bank needs to ensure that growth and inflation are balanced but the move today was widely anticipated by analysts after cuts in the US, where the Federal Reserve slashed its borrowing costs to 3% from 4.25%. Even myself, I predicted that the prices would be falling. I should have put money on it, that the interest rates would fall in February. Well actually, maybe I did as the last 3-4 investment mortgages I took out were on variable rates so I should be slightly better off every month on these mortgages. A quarter point reduction in the rates would reduce the payments by about £25 on each of these mortgages. Not all mortgage lenders will pass the interest rate cut onto their customers soon, limiting the cut’s impact on the economy. Some banks will not cut their rates until the 1st of the n...
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Happy Chinese New Year 2008
2008-02-07 00:52:00
www.daveso.com - Make Some Money - wrote: Happy Chinese New Year 2008 Gung Hei Fat Choi - San Lien Fai Lok !! Happy new year! Chinese people all over the world will be celebrating the coming of the new year. The festival which traditionally lasts 15 days begins on the first day of the new lunar month. There are 12 animals in the chinese zodiac, each year is attributed to one animal. 2008 is the year of the Rat. Google China is celebrating with this festive image which replaces their normal Google logo. Google is China’s second most used search engine falling behind the much more established Baidu. Baidu have also a festive Chinese New Year image. Which image do you prefer? I’m off now to hang my red lantern and eat some lotus seeds. Gong Hei Fat choi!! ShareThis

ITN Repossession Survey
2008-02-02 10:32:00
Original post from: Make Some Money ITN Repossession Survey I’ve been contacted by ITN News regarding current repossessions rates and a survey that they are currently doing for a news item. I’ve sent a reply back to them with as much information that I can give, I hope it will be helpful to them. They will probably want Sell and Rent back information soon too (The HM Treasury did). Here’s the email they sent me: My name is G… B… and I work on the consumer desk for ITV news. We are conducting a survey to do a story on repossessions - here are the details. I hope you can help - we wanted a new angle and who better than the people who help others in this situation. Here are the details… We are putting together a survey on repossessions by calling the advice websites and centres and asking these generic questions. We feel it important to show that this is a current situation affecting many peoples lives. Can you let me know if you are able to t...

Why I like Property Investment So Much
2008-01-30 11:12:00
Original post from: Make Some Money Why I like Property Investment So Much Why do I like property investment so much? In my eyes Property Investment seems like an easy lazy mans way to make some money and provide passive income. Why do I think this? I can only speak with my own experience and this is my experience of property investment: In February of 2002 I bought my first house, this was against advice from my work colleagues and friends who were telling me houseprices which averaged £92,256 (Halifax data) were too expensive and will drop any time soon. Against all the advice I recieved I decided to take the plunge as I needed somewhere to live and I didn’t want to rent forever. My first house was a 2 year old 3 bed semi-detached property on a fairly new estate. The house had been repossessed by the bank and the estate agent had it on the market for a few months with little interest. The house was on the market for £80k so I put an offer in for £78k It was a price that...

Sell Quickly Rent back Fast - new website
2008-01-28 11:09:00
Original post from: Make Some Money Sell Quickly Rent back Fast - new website This week I have released a new Real Estate website titled Sell Quickly Rent Back Fast. The site will be an information based site to appeal to UK homeowners wishing to sell their homes quickly and those interested in Rent Back schemes. Presently there is not much information on the web for people in the UK trying to sell their property quickly or for those intereseted in Rent Back schemes. I aim to make this site a resource for people that wish to know more or are in a situation that requires a quick property sale. They can read more about how sell and rent back schemes work and the potential pitfalls they may face with unscrupulous landlords. Selling ones home is peotentially one of the biggest financial transactions you can make, therefore it is important to seek advice and do much research before entering into any agreements. The site is powered by wordpress blogging software with a free theme download...
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Nice boobs, big ass - Jennifer Love Hewitt
2008-01-26 12:15:00
Original post from: Make Some Money Nice boobs, big ass - Jennifer Love Hewitt One of my favourite, favourite actresses from my teen years has to be Jennifer Love Hewitt. That gorgeous smile, nice long brown hair, perk perfectly formed, ahem assets just kept me mesmorized in her films such as “I know what you did last summer”, “I Still Know What You Did Last Summer” and “Heartbreakers” to name a few. Recent pictures I’ve seen seem to show that her age (soon to be 28) and maybe her hormones seem to be catching up with her once perfect figure. From the front she looks perfect as ever: From the rear however she’s starting to show some celulite in that cute bum of hers. Big bum or not, Jennifer Love Hewitt is still one of my favourite actresses. Thumbs up to her for not being afraid to show that lovely bum off. Women don’t have to be stick thin and ill looking just to seem attractive, Jennys got it all !! ShareThis

UK property on the brink of meltdown
2008-01-19 14:33:00
Original post from: Make Some Money UK property on the brink of meltdown Current market predictions are varying widely but it seems that industry leaders such as Nationwide, Experian and Intermediary Mortgage Lenders Association are all predicting negative growth in 2008, with the latest report from Capital Economics assuming a 5 percent downturn. House prices in the UK could be falling as fast today as they did during the property crash of the early 1990s, according to the report. According to the The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) the number of estate agents reporting falling prices is now at its highest level since 1992, when Britain was in the midst of its worst-ever house price crash. Last months interest rate cut which was intended to ease the strain on mortgage borrowers, but didn’t have much effect. Rics spokesman Ian Perry warned: “The Bank of England may have to cut rates further if the market is to remain stable.” I’m not too worri...
More About: Property

Google Pagerank 2008 Q1 Update
2008-01-13 20:06:00
Something strange is happening at the Google datacentres. The Google search seems to be returning some strange results on some of my targeted keywords. This usually indicates that a Pagerank (PR) update is in process. I’ve just checked the Pagerank for my sites and can confirm that this blog (www.daveso.com) has reached PR3, Yipee!! But what exactly is Pagerank? An Explaination of Pagerank The Pagerank of a website is greater the more incoming links the site has, it is a measure of a websites link popularity. Sites rank from 0 to 10 for Pagerank. New sites are ranked 0 whereas very popular sites (Google.com) can rank as high as 10. The number given is a measure of a websites popularity. In a nutshell, google considers each link to be a vote for that site, the more links a site has the more popular it must be. Links from more popular sites are considered as more important than others. Google uses Pagerank along with other factors to determine where to place a website in its sea...
More About: Google Pagerank , Update , 2008

my first eviction - update2
2008-01-09 23:45:00
Possession Court Hearing The possession court hearing for my first eviction was scheduled for today at 12pm. I put my suit on and took the following evidence: Tennancy agreement Rent received statement Section 8 notice Court Possession Hearing letters I ended up being 8mins late due to traffic and I thought I was going to miss my appointment so whilst driving was cursing all the slow drivers on the way! I even had to park my car on double yellows outside the County Court as I didn’t want to miss my appointment. Luckily the hearing was late as the judge was still in session so I got to move my car into a nearby carpark. Bad Tenant When I sat down in the waiting room I could see my tenant but did not make eye contact with them. I felt quite bad as this is finally the day a judge will hopefully ask them to leave. I had to tell myself again, its the tenent that has done me over by not paying me money that they owe me, they owe me money a lot of money. They owe me money and have m...
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Rent Increases - 33pence per day
2008-01-07 18:14:00
How often should I put my rents up? In a perfect world for my tenants rents would stay the same or come down every year. If I could do this and still earn a decent living then I would keep rents the same just to keep the tenants happy. Unfortunately in the world we live in the price of everything goes up. Petrol, food, cigarettes, clothes all go up with inflation thats a fact of life in the UK. In real affordabilty terms I therefore have to put my rents up to just to be making the same amount of money each year. It is only fair that I put my rents up in line with inflation each year. Most landlords/agents do this every 6 months. How much of a rent increase is too much? On an average monthly rent of £450 per month I will be puting the rent up by £10 per month. This is not much really, it works out to an increase of 33pence per day or £2.30 per week. Hopefully i wont be upsetting too many people by doing this. Recent anecdotal news suggests that rents in the east midlands have been...
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Affiliate marketing is the smart way to make money online
2008-01-04 18:42:00
Affiliate marketing is the art of promoting a product for a merchant and making a small commission on each sale. This is no new thing at all people have had affiliate sites for ages, some more much more successful then others. To give you a few examples nearly all shopping and insurance comparison sites are infact affiliate sites. So when you go to compareplasmaTVprices.com and search for the cheapest 50inch plasma TV and buy, the comparison site is actually earning a nice little commission from you. Most sites disguise this fact by offering something useful, like price/model comparison. The following is a video from a guy called Andrew from Fly LLC. Andrew tells us about his online store The Friendly Hippo and how he made $11k Dollars in 1 month as an Amazon affiliate. Pretty impressive! What happened to Froogle? Well done to Andrew he seems to be making money online. I think he should spend some of it on a new microphone, the one he has buzzes a bit.
More About: Marketing , Affiliate Marketing , Money , Affiliate , Make Money

Goal Setting for Q1 2008
2008-01-03 20:07:00
Rather than make New year resolutions I always prefer to set goals a few times a year. I do this as I prefer to make goals several times a year rather than just in january and if you read my earlier post you know that most resolutions made in the new year usually fail. So what goals will i set for the first quarter of 2008 ? Professional Goal s 1. Make money online I make a bit of money offline with my property investments, it would be nice to make some money online. Even though my proffession is actually IT I’ve yet to make any money directly from the web. I’ve started to run google ads on this site and will be looking into other money making ways for this site. I’ll report as much as I can on this blog. 2. Build an extension I’ve bought many a homes, had a few done up and refurbished, but never extended any of them. My next major project is to extend my own home. Well the new house that I have purchased for me and the misses. I’ll report more on this bl...

5 Reasons why New years Resolutions fail
2008-01-02 20:56:00
Do you make new years resoulutions? Do you find that making new years resolutions like quit smoking, lose weight, work harder, go to the gym etc. are bound to fail? Research shows that 9 out of 10 new years resoulutions fail within days of making them. I have comiled a list of 5 reasons this may happen: 1. You are trying to “not” do something. Because you are not trying for something positive, it can be harder to acheive. Make your resolution about something you want and think about how to achieve it. If you want to work harder, think about why. It maybe as you’ve always want to buy that dream car. Think how you will achieve this, pull in extra shifts, blog more etc. 2. You haven’t written it down. You should always write down resolutions or goals that you make. Spends some time to make it look good. Hang it on the wall, make yourself proud of YOUR resolution. Also if the resolution is written down and in plain sight, you aint gonna forget it soon! 3. You’...
More About: Reasons , Years , New Years , Resolutions

Happy New Year 2008!!!
2008-01-01 18:12:00
Happy to New year to you all for 2008 . Can you believe the bare cheek of these ladies? hehe. Wishing you all the health and lots of wealth, may 2008 be a prosperous and happy year for you !! How did you celebrate NYE? me and my friends went out for a meal in Iguanas restaurant, then ended up in our local kareoke bar to sing the night away. We’re all really good singers hence we didn’t leave the place till 5am. Luckily my fiance was with us and got there just in time to see in 2008.
More About: New Year , Happy , Happy New Year , Year

Merry Christmas to you all!!
2007-12-24 19:34:00
Merry Christmas Everyone!! Christmas time, mistletoe and wine Children singing christian rhyme With logs on the fire and gifts on the tree A time to rejoice in the good that we see upside down christmas tree xmas john lewis nottingham I found this upsidedown Xmas tree in the John Lewis in Nottingham its quite different I think you’ll agree. I think all Christmas trees should be like this one. It makes sense to me as there is alot more space to put all your presents under the tree. I’m not quite sure where the fairy/star should sit at the top though! A time for giving, a time for getting, A time for forgiving and for forgetting. Christmas is love, christmas is peace, A time for hating and fighting to cease. Merry Christmas Everyone!!
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Google Adwords Prices
2007-12-21 20:16:00
The keywords that I compete for on my property sites are always increasing. When I first started using adwords for my sites about 3 years ago it came to about 50p per click, I considered that expensive. It can now be as much as £10 per single click. That click may not even bring you any business, I’ve found that it may take up to 10 clicks for 1 person to complete the online form, it can then take 10-15 of these leads before we can convert one to a sale. That’s about £100 for a lead, which then works out to about £1500 to achieve a sale!! It’s surprising then that there are still so many new entrants to this market. Just try typing “sell my house quickly” into google and see the hundreds of responses. It is my estimate that there is a new site up every week. Currently there must be something like 200 sites advertising quick property buying. All these sites are just simply competing for the same commodity, its no wonder than that the adwords prices have shot...
More About: Google , Google Adwords , Adwords , Prices

More Unpaid Rent
2007-12-20 11:00:00
I’m still waiting for the court date for my unpaying tenant, so that I can eventually get them out and get new tenants who DO pay rent in. I’m trying not to think about it too much as its not very nice to throw someone out of their home. But the fact is I really don’t want to pay any for them to live there every month, they should be paying me. The courts have set a date for Jan 2008, hopefully all will go well then. More Rent Arrears Just to pee me off even more another tenant who has had payment problems in the past has stopped paying rent, even though they are only meant to pay £85 per week, they can’t even afford that. I can’t believe it. They have about 10 weeks worth of arrears now. I must be strong and send them their final warning. I feel really bad sending them notices when its so close to Xmas as they really shouldn’t be thinking about losing the roof over their heads during their Xmas holiday. Christmas is a time when we should celebra...

HM Treasury want Sell and Rent back
2007-12-14 10:46:00
The HM Treasury have contacted me as they would like more information on the Sell and Rent Back type of business. They sent me a letter asking me to fill in a questionaire as the media have shown concerns in these types of transactions. This is the letter they sent me: The wording of the letter: As you will be aware there has been some recent interest in the sale and rent back market. Mortgage industry representatives and consumer groups have expressed some concerns about the experience of consumers considering these types of products. Her Majesty’s Treasury, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, the Department for Communities and Local Government, and the Ministry of Justice, working alongside the Financial Services Authority (FSA) and the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), are therefore seeking to establish further and better information on the sale and rent back market, and the role that these schemes play in the UK housing market. We would be very gra...

Interest Rates Down to 5.5%
2007-12-14 00:01:00
Thats right Interest rates down to 5.5% and I’m about a week late to report this but is it really news? The Bank of England last week dropped their base rate to 5.5% the first drop in rates in 2 years. Economists predict that rate will reach 5% by mid next year. Save £21, Merry Christmas!! On a mortgage of £100k the annual interest is £5750 at the old rate. At the new rate it would be £5500. Thats a whole £250 cheaper a year, on someones mothly mortgage payments thats a whopping £21 cheaper every month. Nothing really to right home about, thats less then £1 per day cheaper. Interesting things are happening on the new mortgage side of things though. Confidence in lower interest rates for the near future is high. Fixed rates are falling, lenders are lowering their fat arrangement fees, things in general are looking better for investors. The best rate for investors at the moment is from.. Yup you guessed it BMS. Birmingham Midshire Solutions have released a 5.09% 3 year f...
More About: Interest Rates , Rates , Eres

No Bubble in Technology
2007-12-10 20:36:00
I’ve seen this video about a possible technology bubble on several sites and still think its well funny. Why not put it on my blog too too: Is there a technology bubble? Is face book really worth $15 billion? I’m not too sure about that but this video sure is funny i like the part about the sausage fest.
More About: Technology , Bubble

Home Information Packs - waste of money
2007-12-05 14:11:00
As of December 14, 2007 any property that is being advertised for sale in England and Wales are going to require a Home Information Pack (HIP). Purpose of the Home Information Packs The Home Information Packs were introduced by the British government in an effort to lessen the rising amounts of incomplete house sales. Before the Home Information Packs was introduced, most of the details needed by the purchaser could not be gotten until an offer to buy had been made. This situation created issues for the buyer in relation to the state of the property and the legality of the documents presented by the seller. In most cases money would already have been spent before this information is received. The result of this is usually an attempt by the purchaser to renegotiate the sale agreement with the seller, which can lead to delays in closing the purchase and eventually the deal falls through. These failed transactions have been estimated to have incurred losses for buyers of over £1,000...
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