Welcome to The Guild of Residential Landlords

So who are we?

The Guild of Residential Landlords is one of the landlords associations that operate nationally. Some 25 - 30 years ago, the association was run only in the south west, namely, Plymouth, Weston Super Mare, Bristol and Cardiff. Because of this, membership is still considerable in these areas.

In 2000, the name was changed and the company taken to a limited company and called The Guild of Residential Landlords. The main intention of the name change was to take the company national rather than operate only in the south west.

At this time Adrian Thompson (which is me writing this page) became a director of the Guild after being with the previous association for some years.

In 2005, Rachel (my beloved partner) and I purchased the Guild after the original chairman retired. Our main aim when purchasing the company was to continue the personal service and legal advice that was previously provided and to expand the Guild much more on-line. I think we have achieved this goal although as technology moves on, it seems never ending to keep updated.

We are also private landlords in our own right, managing a large number of properties. I have been doing this job literally all my life. When I was a nipper, I used to run round to the back door of the rented house so that when my dad went to the front door to collect the rent, I could spot the tenant trying to run away! You'd probably call that harassment nowadays!

We now have around 2,500 subscribers all over England and Wales (and a few abroad.)

Our main niche in the market place is the legal advice contained both on the website and the help-line. We spend thousands every year on professional subscriptions and for example we have access to every landlord and tenant related Court of Appeal and House of Lords case since 1737 (I think that's the right date.)

We also have access to every piece of landlord and tenant legislation regularly updated that exists in England and Wales.

I suppose in a way, all our subscribers are contributing towards all the subscriptions, we then take all the information, try and put it in a format that is easily read and then all subscribers have access to the information whenever needed.

In the words of one of our subscribers who is a member of the Guild and also a member of one of the other nationals stated: "We use (the other association) for the news and you (the Guild) for legal advice." I think this one line sums us up perfectly.

Our main subscriber base is what we would term the professional landlord. Although we have seen a recent increase in 'reluctant landlords'.

Our main discounted outsourced service is without question the discounted buildings insurance which we introduce. I am not aware of a single subscriber who has not made savings through this and the savings will, as a rule at least cover the £70.00 per annum cost to be a subscriber.

If you take at look at the stationery we supply (available both on-line and via post), you will see many documents are very specialist and might only be used by one or two subscribers each year. However, that's because we cover everything landlord and tenant not just the basic assured shorthold tenancy stuff.

You can check out our comparison table which is a quick glance at some of the services we offer.

We have assisted many subscribers with court cases and attended many times including residential property tribunal cases. One example of a Court of Appeal case commonly referred to by practitioners that we assisted with would be Laine v Cadwallader (2000) 33 HLR 397.

With all the information available on-line nowadays, it might be asked why should someone pay to be a member of any landlords association? In reply, many subscribers who join us have had serious problems after being misinformed on public forums or using some of the many available free documents. Our view is that there are two ways of making money to pay the bills. Firstly, you can offer the service for free. However, this involves massive amounts of time obtaining sponsors to advertise through the company perhaps on the website. It also means, any services that are outsourced (for example buildings insurance) is not normally as cheap because anybody offering free information needs to add money to these services.

We prefer the second option which is to charge for the service but spend all our time assisting members with their problems and providing legal advice to the best of our ability and updating the website. The only adverts you will see on this website have not been charged for. They are all genuine services that we believe in.

We will never offer a service that we would not personally use on our own properties.

I truly hope you will consider subscribing to the Guild. I am sure you will find us useful.