Every autumn a version of the same question lands. The property is empty, the enquiries have thinned out, and someone suggests that furnishing it might get it let faster. Sometimes that is exactly right. Just as often it is an expensive way of solving the wrong problem.
In this two minute read, we pull out the five things from this afternoon's Budget that actually reach your front door. No politics, no page ninety of a document nobody opens.
It's Halloween week, so let's talk about fear. Not the plastic-spider kind. The kind that makes a buyer who loved your home on Tuesday go quiet by Friday.
Forget ghosts and creaking floorboards. The thing that genuinely haunts landlords is simpler: an empty property, eating money in the dark.
Nobody warns you about the strange bit in the middle. Your home goes live, there's a flurry of interest, and then, some weeks, nothing. A promising viewing goes silent. An offer finally lands and it's lower than you hoped.
A lock breaks. A side gate won't bolt. The outside light has been dead since March. In a rented home, whose job is that?
