Yewtree Property - some of the best-equipped student houses in Cheltenham

www.yewtree.com >> allan AT read.net << 01242 771 734

Deposit: £250 per person - this will be returned immediately after the end of the contract, subject to there being no damage. We accept fair wear and tear and minor breakages - in fact we rarely make deductions. Deposits taken after April 5th 2007 will be deposited with the insurance-based scheme under the new Tenancy Deposit requirements of the Housing Act.

Rent: Should be paid by Bank Standing Order (we provide the form) such that the rent is credited direct to our bank account on the first day of the August and monthly thereafter. The lease runs for 12 months from July 1st - June 30th (inclusive), irrespective of whether you stay in the property over the summer or not. July and August are charged at half price so that in practice you pay rent on August 1st for 11 months. If any tenants want to pay termly, this can be arranged with 4 post-dated cheques (dated Aug 1st for the July/Aug period; Oct 16th for the Sept/Dec 4-month period; Jan 16th for the Jan/Mar 3-month period and finally April 16th for the Apr/June 3-month period). We will present the cheques when we hear that the Student Loan Company has generally credited student accounts. If your loan is later than normal, it is your responsibility to monitor your account and request us to delay presenting the cheque.

Parental guarantees: approximately 10% of our students get into financial difficulties towards the end of the lease; so to safeguard our income we insist on all students having a parental guarantee from a parent or guardian. It is a simple document that contains the following words: "I guarantee to the Landlords the payment of the Rent and the observation of the performance by the Tenant of the Tenancy Agreement. If the Tenant defaults in payment of the Rent for 14 days, I will, at your request in writing, pay the said Rent to you. If the Tenant defaults in their observation and performance of the terms of the Tenancy Agreement then I will pay to you all losses and expenses and costs to which you shall be entitled to receive to the extent that you have not received them from the Tenant." Essentially, this means that the guarantor will pay the rent if the student doesn't - guarantors are not responsible for other tenants, nor any damage to the house or contents as we will already hold sufficient deposit.

Council Tax: all full-time students at University are exempt from Council Tax. We require all students to provide us with their registration certificates obtained when registering at the beginning of each academic year. We send these forms to Cheltenham Borough Council each year and they then zero-rate the house. If a student leaves the University but stays in the house, that student will become liable for the Council Tax for the entire house (usually with a 25% discount). The Council will pursue the tenant direct at their home address. We require any tenant ceasing to be a student to inform us immediately so that we can let the Council know.

Insurance: we insure the property - we do not insure tenants' belongings: we understand that the cheapest way to do this is for parents to extend their own household insurance to cover portable possessions of their child. Otherwise, a separate policy for the student living in a shared house without individual locks on the doors is very expensive. Almost all bedroom doors have privacy bolts on the inside. Please note that the deadlock on many doors are there for the landlord's benefit - we do not normally provide keys to deadlocks. Unfortunately the absence of a key makes it difficult for the student to take out a separate policy - that is why we recommend the portable possessions route; they are also covered when they leave the PC on the train then!

The Contract: our contract is basically the standard Assured Shorthold Tenancy agreement under the Housing Act. We modify it slightly for use with students, and to comply with the requirements of the University of Gloucestershire - in particular, we have to ensure that there is a break point should the student leave university, plus ensure that they are only responsible for their own rents. If another leaves without paying, that is our problem, not the remaining tenants.

Our aim: is to provide the best possible student accommodation in Cheltenham. We believe that the University currently considers us one of the best landlords in town, but you must check with them (officially, they do not make recommendations). Our houses are registered with them and they conduct regular annual inspections. Furthermore, they make a point of visiting all 1st years at our houses, once they have settled in during the autumn term. If you wish to talk directly to an Accommodation Officer, please see the University webpage giving their telephone numbers. If there are any unresolved problems, you can always contact them.

Safety: All our houses have electrically connected smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors (where there is a gas boiler), a fire extinguisher and fire blanket. All houses have electrical safety test certificates (see www.yewtree.com/certs) and where appropriate, gas safety certificates. All of our properties have been completely renovated, including: boarding of all floors with marine ply to contain smoke, changing all bedroom doors to fire doors with intumescent strips where required by government legislation. Candles are not allowed to be brought into the house and smoking is not permitted. Anyone burning a carpet will be buying a new one. Most of our houses are licensed as HMOs (Houses in Multiple Occupation) under the new Housing Act as a result of being 3-storey houses with more than 5 tenants

Telephones: All houses have an incoming telephone line - this will not allow normal outgoing calls, with the exception of 999 & 0800 numbers.

TV: All houses have a television connected to Virgin Media digital cable providing 100+ channels - we pay for the TV licence, which also covers tenants' own TVs that they might use in their bedrooms - this is as a result of having a joint tenancy agreement. Most of the larger houses have widescreen TVs. All bedrooms have Freeview boxes where you can view 30 TV & listen to 20 radio channels.

Internet: all bedrooms in all houses are connected to the internet via Telewest broadband - help will be given to set up a Windows LAN connection if you have problems with your PC (but it is basically your problem if your PC doesn't want to play ball). Essentially, we have installed a Local Area Network in each house, connecting each bedroom in the house. In each bedroom there is an RJ45 socket though which you must connect your PC via an RJ45 patch lead (circa £7 from PC World, B&Q, Maplin or Staples). If you haven't got an Ethernet card in your desktop PC, you'll need to buy one (circa £10 from PC World - and that includes the patch lead), or, for laptop PCs, a USB Ethernet adapter (about £40). All wiring is CAT-5 star networked back to a Broadband Router. The router also allows file swapping and gaming with others in the house. If you do not want others to access your hard drive, do not enable that option. The router is linked to the Virgin Media cable modem. Both router and modem should be permanently left on. If they fail to allow access to the Internet anytime, re-boot both by switching off/on at the plug (first of all though, switch off all PCs - not hibernate - and remove the power lead - this will force the PCs to forget their IP address on the LAN - otherwise you will get an IP conflict when you re-boot as the DHCP table is reset and new IP addresses of the form 192.168.1.1xx are dynamically allocated by the router to each PC). Broadband is 'always on'; you simply click on Internet Explorer and you're away. The big advantage of broadband is, of course, that you can all use the service simultaneously. The potential bandwidth is shared equally between the active users at any specific moment in time (ie those actually downloading at that millisecond). Tenants must not install wireless networks - because we are one of the few landlords that install broadband, neighbours try to piggyback wireless services for free and slow down the service. http://www.beelinebandwidthtest.com provides a good test of download speed.

Equipment: all our houses are well equipped with cooker(s), washing machine, microwave, refrigerator(s), freezer(s), vacuum cleaner, crockery, cutlery, saucepans, ironing board, etc. For legal reasons we do not provide: kettle, toaster, iron, desk/bedside lamps.

Maintenance: any gas boilers are covered by British Gas maintenance contracts which we pay for - any problems with the boiler, just call them (0845 9 500 400 or 0116 250 2000) quoting your address only and they will fix for free, very quickly. Any faults with equipment we provide will be rectified at our expense.

Useful advice: the Accommodation office provides a useful booklet in Adobe PDF format (all the photos in the Private Sector Housing section on page 14 are taken in our properties). There is also a section on the Uni website devoted to registered housing (where the first photo is of one of our properties). There is also a student guide to university registered flats and houses - have I seen that house on the cover before - ah well, I think you get the picture.

Landlords: Allan & Joan Read, Yew Tree House, Edge, Gloucestershire GL6 6NR

Cheltenham 01242 771 734 home or 07715 661 604 mobile or email allan AT read.net