Welcome to the first Landlords’ Barometer of 2019!

This is a very exciting year for propertytribes.com as we are celebrating our tenth anniversary.

For those who do not know, Property Tribes was started by myself and my husband Nick Tadd in 2009 as we were struggling to find sources of impartial and authentic information to help us develop our property business and portfolio.

As we had a circle of property investor contacts, and a small network of trusted property friends, we decided to start our own platform to generate and discuss the kind of topics and issues that we felt needed clarity bringing to them.

From the original 30 members, some of whom still comment on the site, ten years later Property Tribes now has over 35,000 members which is comparable to the two main landlord associations which have been in existence far longer.

Whilst our registered users are in excess of 35,000, this is not a true reflection of the number of people who use the site. Registration is only required if you intend to comment, so many users just consume the information and never actually post on the site.

We never had a commercial intention for the site, but it grew so big and started to cost us significant time and money, so we decided to commercialise it through a transparent advertising and affiliate model, so that the site could be maintained as free to use.

We have partnered with many leading industry names and stake-holders who “power” the education streams and conversations relevant to their product or service.

Some of our headline stats:

Property Tribes is ranked today by Alexa as the 11,653 busiest website in the UK.

Our youtube channel has over 850 videos, over 600k views, while around 49 days of video are consumed per month.

The average user views seven pages and visits the site for around eight minutes.

Property Tribes has between 3,000 and 4,000 visitors on a typical day and they view tens of thousands of pages per day.

We have ten years of back-end data of what landlords are searching for and looking at. This gives Property Tribes a unique insight into the velocity of topics and issues that are important for landlords.

Our community is very active and engaged and the site typically updates around every 20 minutes throughout the day.

This screenshot of a typical hour on Property Tribes show the kind activity we are seeing:

Property Tribes’ mission is to educate landlords, thereby assisting in raising standards in the private rental sector and creating a more positive experience for all parties.

Late last year, Nick and I were invited to London to meet with the special adviser to Housing Minister James Brokenshire, as he was interested to hear our views on what landlords are thinking and planning.

This invitation came about as Property Tribes has been particularly successful in engaging the small “amateur” landlord with three properties or fewer – the “mass landlord market” – as according to Homelet, this represents 97% of landlords in the UK.

These landlords are hard to identify as they are generally a professional person with a career and do not think of themselves as a landlord.

On Property Tribes, these non-professional landlords are supported by the 3% – the portfolio landlords – who answer their questions and give input and advice.

Plus we have many other high-profile contributors including industry analyst Kate Faulkner, solicitor and RLA Policy Director David Smith, Landlord Action founder Paul Shamplina, and some of the biggest portfolio landlords in the UK.

Throughout 2019, we will be championing the concept of the “Smart Landlord” as we believe that this is the profile of the landlord who will survive the challenges ahead as the PRS becomes more professional.

You may also like to take a look at this:

1. Launch of “Smart Landlord 2019”

We launch the concept of the “Smart Landlord” and I give my personal tip for what smart landlords will be doing in 2019.

2. Struggling to let a property in Liverpool for four months

This landlord turns to the community for advice on this perplexing situation.

3. Buying property with zero money claims …

This evergreen topic continues to re-occur as the “wealth creation” industry promote that people do not need money to get involved in property investment.

4. Does 75% Loan to Value still work on a single let in the south east?

As investors look to the north for higher returns, this is an interesting question to consider.

5. Shaking my head at lack of landlord knowledge

This landlord is perplexed about how little awareness there is amongst landlords of Section 24.

6. My two “recession-proof” property strategies

This landlord asks the community to critique two possible strategies.

Event news:

Events to get you fired up for 2019!

https://www.propertytribes.com/get-some-dates-your-diary-fire-up-2019-t-127637878.html

A round-up of mostly free events that you can attend to update your knowledge, get inspired, and network with landlords.

Wishing all readers of EYE a happy, healthy and prosperous 2019.