About Us

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.

In 2005, we 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.

Our main niche in the market place is the legal advice contained both on the website and the help-line.

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. Our aim is that a member will save at least the £80.00 per annum cost to be a subscriber (£120.00 letting agents with three or more staff).

If you take at look at the landlord forms 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. Of course, the usual assured shorthold tenancy agreements, section 21 and section 8 notices are available for free to subscribers.

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 recent important case would be Doncaster v Coventry City Council, First Tier Tribunal 032/09/00932, 5 October 2009.

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.

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

We truly hope you will consider subscribing to the Guild and we’re sure you will find us useful.

Rachel and Adrian