BBC London has uncovered stark variations in councils’ positions on the practice.

Some have warned they will crack down on people renting out properties – but others have said it is not a problem.

The National Association of Estate Agents is calling for a review of the law on short term lettings.

But at the moment Londoners face a postcode lottery as to whether they can rent out their homes for the games.

Many local property owners see that there is an opportunity to rent out their homes on a short term basis during the Olympics as many visitors arrive in London for the games but many local councils take a differing view as whether this practice is acceptable.

Some councils effectively bans short term lets of 90 days or under unless planning permission is obtained – but this is rarely given.

Therefore if a home owner were to rent out there home during the games they could face a fine of £20,000 and even a criminal record.

Westminster Council told BBC London it was important to preserve the rental market for longer term residents.

It said numerous complaints had been received by residents complaining about noise and disruption in mansion blocks caused by short-term residents.

BBC London asked every council in the capital for details of what its policies were concerning short term lets.

Some 27 London boroughs said they had no problem with properties being let for short periods and this did not require any planning permission.

But Southwark, Tower Hamlets, Islington, Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Camden warned people who let properties for short periods without planning permission could be served with enforcement notices.

In some cases they could receive fines of up to £20,000 if they were deemed to be repeat offenders.

Chief executive of the National Association of Estate Agents, Peter Bolton King, said: “The problem here is a lack of a level playing field which means regulations are not being policed in the same way across London.

“I think it’s time for a review and to look at whether this is working or not.”

Isis insurance would also advise anyone letting out there property on this basis to ensure that they have the appropriate landlords insurance or to check with their existing insurer to ensure that appropriate let property insurance is in force.

The National Landlords Association recently  published their Landlord Optimism Index, which revealed that landlords are increasingly optimistic about the future of the lettings industry.

In addition a national lettings specialists Belvoir, who have more than 140 offices across the UK, say that the survey accurately reflects the trends they are seeing from their own landlords, but urges investors to seek expert specialist advice before committing to the purchase of a rental property.

Many reports suggest that many landlords are also looking to increase the size of their property portfolios over the coming months as they are presently seeing an increase in rental income of up to 5% over the past year which is very attractive given the current economic climate.

However, the rental yield which can be achieved is very dependent on both the type of property and also the area in which the property is located. Although the property market may appear to offer a number of properties which appear to be very cheap, there may well be a reason why the properties are on offer are priced at the level on offer. As always detailed research into the tenant demand in the area and the location itself will pay off in the long term to ensure a landlord purchases the right property.

Obviously, the purchase of an appropriate property is only one of the areas which a prospective landlord will need to consider. Obtaining good quality legal advise and perhaps researching good property management agents along with obtaining advise on taxation implications are all important to avoid any unforeseen problems later.

Also arranging the right level of let property insurance cover is very important and Isis insurance have many years experience in arranging let property insurance with a number of the UK’s leading let property insurance companies.

We are not a call centre, so when you contact us you will get straight through to a let property insurance specialist who will be able to discuss your individual needs with you.

The student let market has long been seen by many landlords and a number of let property insurers as the undesirable end of the let property market, but recent reports suggest that times attitudes from landlords in particular may be changing.

It seems that individual and large blocks of student accommodation have become increasingly popular as both a commercial and residential property investment. In fact recent reports have suggested that students generate the highest yields for property investors, with houses for students generating an average yield of 6.45%.

Many properties which attract students may be cheaper to purchase as the property may be in an area which students are happy to live, but may not be so attractive to owner occupiers or even professional tenants looking to rent. These properties can often by purchased at a discount as they tend to be shunned by owner occupiers.

Also student lets tend to attract a number of students who will in turn share the rental costs between them and of course may be supported by the Government Student Loans Company which can make them a safer risk for landlords.

In addition void periods tend to be low as there is usually a steady influx of new students seeking accommodation across the year.

The case for student let properties seems to becoming more compelling for landlords and the availability of landlords buy to let insurance for properties occupied by students is readily available from many buy to let insurance companies.

Isis Insurance has many years experience in placing landlords insurance and buy to let insurance and has facilities in place with a number of the UK’s leading landlords insurance companies and is able to offer competitive buy to let insurance for both individual properties and landlords who own a property portfolio.

Whilst the value of houses, and the corresponding increase or decrease in value is very dependent upon the area in which the property is situated, the demand for good quality rented property by tenants seems to be very strong.

Due in no small part to the current economic difficulties and the difficulties in obtaining mortgages, especially for first time buyers, people tend to move into rented accommodation and also once renting are tending to rent for longer periods. Since the credit crisis, which has seen mortgages even harder to come by, the percentage of households which rented privately has increased to almost 16 % by 2009/10. This figure is up from under 10% in 1999.

The gap between demand and supply has pushed up rents, particularly in London, where mainstream rents have increased by 16% last year according to one recent report.

The dilemma for landlords is that it is essential to do your research. The new caps on housing benefit will make rental payments unaffordable to social tenants in some areas, while public-sector redundancies will hurt rents in others.

The key is to understand the fundamentals of the local market. Where will demand for private rental properties come from, and how easily can supply expand to meet it?

If it is properly thought-through buy to let offers the landlord a stable income but the wrong property in the wrong area, purchased the wrong price, or having the wrong tenants – can upset the equation. If that happens, the returns may well fail to compensate for the stress of buying and managing a second house.

Isis Insurance have many years experience arranging let property and buy to let insurance and have facilities with many of the UK’s leading let property insurance companies and can even provide cover for unoccupied property insurance.

The article suggests that there has been a continued rise in the number of people looking for homes to rent.

A survey by the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) said 74% of its members had more prospective tenants than homes to let.

Two years ago a similar survey found only 10% of letting agents had an over-supply of would-be tenants.

ARLA said many people were being forced to rent homes because they could not afford to buy.

Ian Potter of ARLA said there was a “clear shortage” of homes for people to buy.

“Faced with this, many people are turning to rental homes as a more flexible option than buying,” he said.”Yet as our research highlights that the dearth of properties is just as real in the private rented sector and is showing no signs of improvement.”

Debbie Vowles, of Andrews letting agents in Bristol, said: “We are seeing an average seven prospective tenants for every rental property available, and even more for three and four-bedroom family properties.”

“Those properties are flying off the shelf,” she added.

The problem is most acute in central London, where 82% of ARLA members said they had a surplus of prospective tenants, compared with just 8% two years ago.

ARLA surveyed 479 members in the second quarter of this year.

The growth in demand for rented property was also seen last week in the findings of the English Housing Survey, published by the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG).

It revealed that between 2005 and 2009-10 the number of people renting homes privately in England had risen by 1 million to 3.4 million – a rise of 40% in that time.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) said: “Private renting had grown to account for 16% of households, while 17% rented from social landlords.”

Isis insurance has been arranging landlords and let property insurance cover for many years and has access to many schemes from some of the UK’s leading let property insurance companies and is also able to arrange cover for unoccupied properties with a range of cover available.

Savills’ report, called World in London, says British sellers of homes in central London have outnumbered British buyers by 30pc this year, compared with 5pc in 2008. Meanwhile, foreign buyers have outnumbered foreign sellers by 58pc in 2011, up from 23pc in 2008.

The market is being boosted by the weakness of sterling and the perception of London as a safe haven amid political and economic uncertainty.

Yolande Barnes, head of residential research at Savills, said: “We anticipate that London will continue to attract overseas buyers in the foreseeable future, especially with the eyes of the world on the London Olympics next year. “The diversity of economies from which these buyers originate and of their motivations for purchase, mean that there will nearly always be an overseas market for London property for as long as London remains a major global city.”

The data shows that from 2007 to 2011, the most prevalent overseas buyers in London have been from Western Europe, with 11pc of the market by value. This group includes an increasing number of buyers from southern European countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain as they invest outside their homelands to avoid economic uncertainty.

However, in central London, the biggest investors have been from Eastern Europe, including oligarchs, with 15pc of the market and an average purchase price of £6.2m. Middle East and North African buyers account for 14pc and spend £4m. The average spend of British buyers is £1.5m.

In 2010 overall, overseas buyers made up 54pc of investment in central London properties worth above £5m.

The international demand highlights the split between London’s housing market and the rest of the UK, which is suffering from a lack of mortgage availability and spending cuts. While growth in UK house prices stalls, Savills has forecast that prime London prices will grow 33.4pc in the five years to the end of 2015.

Whilst London property may be at the extreme end of property valuations the trend for foreign purchasers to acquire many of the UKs prime location properties puts more pressure on UK house buyers and further down the chain buyers looking to purchase their first property. For this reason the buy to let market remains buoyant, with potential tenants facing a bidding war for properties on a number of occasions.

Isis insurance has many years experience in arranging let property and buy to let insurance and have a number of buy to let insurance schemes with some of the UK’s leading insurers.

It has been reported that tax officials are increasingly trawling through Land Registry records to check the accuracy of tax returns. If a property is not a seller’s main residence then capital gains tax (CGT) may be payable on the profit.

There  has been a massive increase in capital gains tax from enquiry work, particularly as the amount of CGT payable has collapsed as asset values slumped during the recession and this is seen as evidence of how aggressive HM Revenue & Customs [HMRC] is becoming in tackling tax evasion in this area.

The work was conducted by teams of special investigators set up in the past three years in the regional offices of HMRC.

Their establishment has come alongside the Revenue’s widely publicised campaign to uncover people who are hiding taxable income in offshore bank accounts.

“We risk assess returns using a variety of methods, as well as cross-matching database information, both our own and external,” said an HMRC spokesman.

“Enquiries into the disposal of second homes is just one area we look at,” he added.

CGT is payable on the sale of most assets, not just property and around 130,000 people paid capital gains tax in 2008-09.

The profit made on selling a property is liable to CGT unless it is someone’s main home at the time of the sale, or was their main home at any time in the three years before.

Sellers also have an annual tax-free allowance to set against any CGT bill.

Even if there is still CGT to pay, a landlord can reduce the bill by offsetting:

• the cost of buying the premises, such as stamp duty, legal and surveyor’s fees
• the cost of selling the property, such as legal or estate agent’s fees
• the cost of any enhancements at any time in the period of ownership, such as a loft extension or garage or conservatory.

However many landlords sometimes feel they have had the costs but can’t prove it, because they haven’t retained the necessary paperwork. Also many HMRC investigations lead to disagreements over whether some costs are repair costs or enhancement to the property and HMRC often challenges the records for expenditure going back 20 years or more.

Isis insurance is a leading landlords and buy to let insurance broker and is able to place landlords insurance with a number of buy to let insurance companies who offer specialist policies for landlord insurance cover.

As the government’s austerity measures continue to bite potential first time buyers are unable to afford to buy homes and therefore tend to rent properties for longer periods. This appears to be a trend which has developed since mortgages became harder to secure.

Since buy to let finance became harder to secure a significant gap has developed between demand and supply, which has in turn resulted in an increase in rents in certain areas where young professionals would once have purchased rather than rented property.

As has always been the case the area that the property is situated in will affect the type of tenant that the landlord is able to attract and it is a fact that the right area with the right tenant will always be a more attractive proposition to a let property owner than the wrong area which may in turn attract the wrong tenant.

The key is for the let property owner to understand the fundamentals of the local property market as this will greater increase the value of the investment.

However with the availability of tenants on the rise even areas which have not historically proved attractive to landlords could now become more attractive as the cost of property has fallen over the recent past.

As a final point the area in which the property is situated plays an important part in the calculation of the buy to let insurance cost and is a point often neglected by newer let property landlords.

Isis Insurance have a number of years experience in arranging buy to let property insurance and landlords insurance and are able to place insurance cover with a number of specialist let property insurance companies and are also able to place unoccupied property insurance.

From the end of March, the organisation has started to issue localised flood warnings to an extra 160,000 properties with a telephone landline at risk of river or sea flooding – taking the total number of properties signed up to 1.1 million.

The extension of the organisation’s flood warning service was one of the key recommendations from the independent Pitt Review into the summer 2007 floods. The Environment Agency is also continuing to expand the number of areas in England and Wales that are eligible for its service.

The automatic registration of more properties at risk of flooding is the latest move to improve flood risk information to the public.

A new iPhone app ‘Flood Alert’, which uses live data from the Environment Agency to provide users with real time updates on nearby flood warnings, was launched by Halcrow earlier this month. Further applications for other smart phones are being developed by other third parties.

Last year, the Environment Agency launched a service allowing householders and businesses to monitor rising river levels during a potential flood. The service at http://www.environment-agency.gov.uk/riverlevels shows updated river and sea levels at over 1,700 locations across England and Wales.

Environment Agency Acting Director of Flood and Coastal Risk, David Rooke, said: “Our free flood warning service now provides advanced warnings to over a million homes and business, giving more people vital time to get prepared for flooding, and by doing so, protecting lives and property.

“One in six homes in England and Wales is at risk of flooding. We urge everyone to check whether their property is at risk by visiting the Environment Agency’s website and taking steps to prepare, such as looking at ways to make properties more resistant to floods.”

Environment Minister, Richard Benyon said:“I am delighted that so many people are now signed up to receive alerts. An early warning will give people time to prepare for potential flooding whether that is by moving furniture upstairs, checking on elderly neighbours or preparing a grab bag in case evacuation is advised. The extra time gained by an early warning can help keep people safe during a flood and minimise damage to property.”

Flood risk is just one of the issues faced by property owners and also impacts on owners of buy to let properties and is a major cost influence in insurers pricing of buy to let property insurance.

The increased availability and usage of the national flood warning system can only be seen as a substantial benefit to property owners and let property insurance companies alike.

Isis Insurance offer a range of buy to let insurance policies, including unoccupied property insurance. Call us on 01625 539 656 for more information and to get a quote.

A report by Consumer Focus mentions that many people renting in the private sector had very little information available to them before they signed a tenancy agreement with a landlord.

On the other side Landlords can ask potential tenants for references, deposits and other personal information.

The group would like lettings agents to follow the example of sites such as eBay which give customer feedback.

Consumer Focus said it had written to some of the largest letting agents in England asking them to look at how they could use the internet to encourage more feedback about landlords.

In a survey of 2,000 people carried out in January, it found nine out of 10 tenants thought such a website would help them make better decisions about who to rent a home from. “Currently the landlord is firmly in the driving seat despite rent being a massive outgoing for many of us,” said Claire McAnulty from the group.

“People often sign up with little more than a gut feeling after a cursory tour of the property.

“The best way to help private renters is to ensure they have the information to know what they are getting into.”

Isis Insurance are a specialist landlords and let property insurance broker and have many years in arranging landlords insurance.