Many landlords like to offer their homes as furnished to entice tenants with the prospect of moving into a ready-made home. But did you know that there are regulations that must be adhered to with regard to rental furnishings? Your furniture and furnishings must meet fire safety standards in order to conform with The Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988 (as amended 1993). If your furnishings do not comply, you may face a fine or even imprisonment, in the case of fire and/or harm to tenants caused by unsafe goods at your property.

Furniture and Furnishings

Whilst most furniture and soft furnishings manufactured in the UK after 1990 meet current fire safety standards and will have a permanent label confirming this, some may not. And if you’ve supplied items that were manufactured abroad, we strongly advise you to take a close look at just how fire-safe they are. These include:

• Three piece suites, armchairs and sofas
• Scatter cushions, seat pads and bean bags
• Beds, padded headboards, mattresses and pillows
• Convertible sofa beds and futons
• Loose and stretched covers for upholstered furniture
• Nursery furniture and garden furniture suitable for indoor use

If you even suspect that an item may be a fire hazard, remove and replace it before your tenants move in. Carpets, curtains, bed linen, duvets, loose mattress covers and furniture manufactured before 1950 are all exempt from regulations. But, as above, follow your instincts – all tenants want to feel safe, protected and secure during their tenancies.

Is my furniture fire-resitant?

In order to be deemed “fire resistant”, all furniture must pass various tests that guarantee that it is fire safe. All post-1950 furniture must have:

• Covers which cannot be set alight by a lighted match
• Covers which do not ignite if a smouldering cigarette is placed on them
• Filling materials which can pass a standard ignitability test
• Labels that prove that the item complies with the regulations Both the filling and the covers must comply with the regulations because the toxic fumes from ignited fillings can be a cause of death.

If in doubt, check for the labels! All fire-safe furniture should have them.

The risks

If your furniture does not comply to these standards, you could face:

• A fine of £5,000 per item failing to comply
• Six months’ imprisonment
• Prosecution by your tenant for civil damages
• Invalidation of your property insurance
• And even potential manslaughter charges in the event of death

These regulations will be enforced by local Trading Standards.

How to comply

• Buy from a known, reputable retailer
• Always keep your receipts as proof of purchase
• Be aware that furniture stores have a duty to comply to these regulations
• If in doubt, speak to Trading Standards or don’t buy!

As a landlord, you are obliged to show “due diligence” – which means to ensure that you have taken all the steps you can to make sure that your furniture meets these safety regulations. Otherwise, you run the risk of being charged as above.

Don’t take the risk!

Julie Twist Properties offers a full furniture and furnishings service. We’ll create the look and feel you want your rental property to have whilst ensuring that every item complies with safety standards. Just give us your brief – from trendy to traditional – and we’ll do the rest. We’ve even got statistics to prove that a property furnished by us finds tenants faster!

Julie Twist Properties has rented and sold property in Manchester City Centre for the past 20 years, and is a leader in the market. Julie won Estate Agency of the year in 2005 and has been on the judging panel in London ever since. Apartments in Manchester City Centre are her passion. Julie Twist Properties offers a full Rental Management service, taking care of all aspects of your Let for you.

Many people who have government-related jobs need to have security clearances. These jobs are dependent on the people employed to be of the highest moral character because of national security issues. Even local and national law enforcement agencies can be very strict to various degrees about the background of employees.

The employee applying for a job that requires a background check knows that it could take months or longer for his approval. A comment by someone from his past could derail his chances for the job. While these background checks are not perfect, they are an essential part of many government-related jobs.

The financial services industry and insurance carriers are also on the band wagon for scrutinizing potential clients’ or employees’ credit history. While bad things do happen to good people, these institutions and the government have set up criteria.

One of the sticking points of these security checks is whether an individual is financially stable. While checking a credit report, an employer can see if the prospective employee has had a bankruptcy or foreclosure. If this is the case, the candidate will be passed over or, if he is lucky, delegated to a less responsible position.

The mortgage crisis has caused a lot of good people to have bad things happen to them. Most simply bought or refinanced a home at the height of the real estate market and are faced with a property that is worth half or less than they paid. While they are making their payments, they have to question the basic financial decision of whether it makes sense to continue or let the bank take the property back.

Another major group of individuals has lost their jobs, run through their savings and gone into foreclosure. For these people with security clearances, they face the risk of losing their grade or rating because of a pending foreclosure. This lost of “security status” can be devastating because it can take two years or longer to go through the process and all the while the candidate is working in a lower paying position.

The solutions to this problem are to face it head-on and not hide the issue if the employee has a job. The first step is to contact his superior and discuss the problem and show that the loan was sensible at the time it was gotten and that all possible steps have been taken currently to resolve the problem. The burdensome financial obligation that has resulted has to be shown to be in the process of some type of resolution.

The standard resolutions are to sell the property and take a loss, do a loan modification with the lender, rent the property and put in the negative cash flow monthly or do a short sale. Many people take the path of least resistance and keep making mortgage payments they can’t afford, rent the property and take a smaller loss each month or try for a loan modification that is at best, a postponement of the inevitable.

Short sales are becoming more and more popular because they eliminate the financial burden immediately and in most cases do not impact one’s security clearance. The reason is that the homeowner will not be burdened by continuing financial debt. A short sale is where the lender takes a principal reduction on the mortgage balance due so the property can be sold at current market value.

If the lender decides to foreclose, he is faced with trying to sell to the market and face the issues of an empty property that can be vandalized and is a financial liability that impacts the lender’s cash requirements. Therefore, many lenders ask the homeowner to try a short sale so they don’t have to foreclose and lose more money on the loan.

The principal amount the lender has reduced the loan balance and the costs to do the short sale can be either taken back as a personal note to the homeowner, turned into a deficiency judgment for future collection, charged to the homeowner in the form of an IRS Form 1099 C, or written out by the lender as an uncollectable bad debt.

If this situation occurs, most homeowners won’t sign a personal note because they are uninformed about the collectability of this note. The “value” of the note is similar to credit card debt and can be made much more comfortable over the pending payback. The homeowner should not consider a bankruptcy unless he also has substantial other debts to write off.

Consult with a bankruptcy attorney for specific information on whether you qualify and what steps have to be taken to benefit you the most. In addition, your accountant or CPA should be your source of what effects your actions will have on your income and any current regulations that will help your situation.

In summary, the best attack on the problem of keeping a security clearance is to look at doing a short sale. When concluded, the homeowner’s credit is affected but to a substantially lesser degree than a bankruptcy or a foreclosure. This process should substantially reduce security clearance reviews that result in downgrades and potential loss of your job.

In summary, before you do anything, check with the department who runs these security checks and explain your pending issue. Losing your clearance could result in losing your job and another two years to regain it back. Otherwise, your option is to continue making a burdensome mortgage payment or renting the property to reduce the monthly loss or do a shorts sale which should not affect your clearance.

Dave Dinkel has over 35 years experience in real estate investing which has given him a unique perspective into the real estate market. http://www.DaveDinkel.com is the place to interact with Dave Dinkel. You can read some of the latest informative Real Estate articles he has written. Here you can discover and educate yourself on topics ranging from foreclosure, For Sale By Owner(FSBO) Sales, Credit and much more.