Meet our new property blogger

Lea Beven of Limecastle will be talking you through everything from how to be a great landlord to finding the perfect room in our new property blog.

Hello and welcome to what will hopefully be the first of many blogposts from Limecastle, a unique agency specialising in house shares and lettings.

We'll be sharing some huge tips and tricks in lettings, helping you become the perfect landlord and guiding tenants in making sure they find something suitable and of good standard.

Taking in a lodger is back in trend at the moment.

It gives you room to breathe with the current financial climate as you can receive up to £4,250 each year tax free for renting a room - that's over £350 a month!

Getting a lodger can also make for good company; one of my own lodgers has now become a close family friend and even works as my accountant.

Professional house shares are popping up all over the place, but you do need to be careful about what you are signing up for as many are run by mean landlords or overrun with nightmare tenants.

Some of our stories will give you an insight into what living in a shared house can be like.

In fact, it was only the last Bank holiday Sunday, that we had a lady step off the train in Wolverhampton carrying just one bag.

She had travelled up from London, was tired and hot, and needed to find somewhere to move into in one day - she started work on the Monday morning.

Time is short and most of the landlords are away for the holiday, but luckily for her we had keys to three or four rooms to show her.

We drive around in the roaring heat and finally at 3.45 she picks a room only to realise that she needs to be in tonight and has no bedding!

We jumped back in the car and drove around to the local supermarket where she was able to grab a budget bed kit moments before the store closed.

A lucky night for our 'last minute' lodger.

One key to making things work is to make sure your house share has got all bills included.

This means that no one will squabble about who owes what, and no one person can get victimised for using a lot.

You would be surprised at what happens; one young gentleman came to us after he was saddled with over £1,000 of debt from his old place after he put the utilities in his name and his housemates refused to pay up.

Sad stories like this make us all the more determined to get this industry on track – so it is our mission to make a difference in the four counties we cover!