MD Amy Wray attends ARLA’s Regional Meeting in York

Amy attended ARLA’s regional meeting  in York earlier this week, a function that she attends every 6 months. Amy has kindly passed on her notes from the meeting to share with you.

A note from our Managing Director Amy Wray:

As workloads increase it’s sometimes difficult to find the time to attend such events as the ARLA regional meetings but staying true to Applegate’s core values set almost four years ago now, I know that investing time on training and support is of the utmost importance to benefit landlords and tenants alike, hence my attendance at this latest meeting.

Carole Carter (Citi Lets, York – Regional Representative ARLA) reminded me of this almost straight away, welcoming everyone and reiterating the importance of these meetings in order to ensure we remain fully up to date with changes and current case laws. The guest speakers at the even were Peter Savage (Vice President of ARLA) and Matthew Pugh from Langleys Solicitors.

Peter gave a general overview of how ARLA are working hard to push awareness to tenants and landlords and have now actually agreed to run several commercial campaigns to support this. ARLA are working closely with Housing Minister Mark Prisk to encourage the regulation of Letting Agents and whilst this may be some time off, we feel that the implementation of all agents now being required to be part of a redress scheme by October 2013 is  huge step in the right direction (such as the Property Ombudsman). As ARLA licensed letting agents, Applegate Lettings have always been members of The Property Lettings Ombudsman and clearly market this for all our clients to see.

Matthew Pugh gave a general overview on the various ‘types’ of tenancies available to landlords and agents and the use of Section 21′s and 8′s with each one. He also discussed the ‘Superstrike’ case, which is currently going to the High Court of Appeal and could potentially have a huge impact on the way agents and landlords handle bonds and the prescribed information attached to these.

All in all it was another great meeting and I met some fantastic new people, a very informative day!