Rainbow Capital Property
Response to Covid-19

Updated 13th May 2020

impact on Our Business

impact on our Financial Situation

1. Our business pays all its expenses – mortgage interest, council tax, energy bills, water rates, staff salaries, travel costs, repairs and replacement items, decoration, insurance, safety compliance licences, etc – from the money it earns in rents. Our costs are largely fixed and do not offer any immediate possibility for savings.

2. For the record, there are no grants to our business from the UK Government.  We can defer mortgage payments (which are on fixed rates and do not benefit from the interest rate cuts) and utility costs, but they still have to be paid back some time.  And we can borrow more money. But all these measures just add to our debts, they do not reduce costs.

3. Our strategy therefore remains as it always has been - to attract and retain the best possible tenants in the long term by providing a good service and charging fair market rents

impact on our Staff

1. Our business is managed by Andrew and Matt.  We live next door to the office, largely alone and we hope to be unaffected by the virus and to remain fit and well.  We expect to be working full time and provide a continuous support service to all our tenants in the usual way.

2. Our maintenance team is Atila and James.  They live with their families and travel in our van.  Again, we hope they will remain healthy throughout the period and we hope they will continue to perform their physical maintenance service to our portfolio in the usual way. If they fall ill, of course they will isolate at home and not visit our properties.

3. We are deliberately maintaining separation between us so one can take over and manage things if another falls ill.

rebates of rent if rooms are unoccupied

We know some tenants have been residing away from our properties in their parental or partners’ home. Some of our international tenants have returned to their home countries. We hope you will return to London soon.

We feel uneasy accepting full rent from tenants not making full use of their rooms, not knowing when restrictions will lift. We also want to provide a mechanism for tenants to save money if their finances have been hit.

Hence we are prepared to offer a rebate of rent paid for June (and beyond if restrictions persist) to anyone not residing in their room as follows: -

• We will refund a proportion of rent paid by any tenant not living in their room rather at parents’ or partner’s home. We will offer a higher rebate to our international tenants locked down overseas

• The refund will be transferred to a bank account of your choice on the 21st of any month affected as by this point we will have a picture of how much of the full month has been affected. We can confirm the amount due through an exchange of emails

• The only condition is that you must pay your normal rent in full and on time each month so we can manage our cashflow, pay mortgage interest, pay utility bills and staff salaries on an equally timely basis etc. And you must genuinely be staying at your parental or partners’ home for the long-term due to Covid reasons.  That is, if restrictions lift, you can’t simply be away on holiday, live between two houses etc! There has to be goodwill on both sides! 

Maintenance

Anticipating the lock down we did a fairly thorough maintenance sweep in March and have continued to maintain every property to the best of our ability as issues have arisen requiring our attention.

We would like to give every property another ‘MOT’ in the next couple of weeks. We will contact each tenant household separably to arrange this.

In the meantime, let us know if anything needs our attention and we will see how we can best help

Cleaning

Cleaning at most of our properties has now returned to normal. It is more important than ever to maintain them in good, clean sanitary condition. Tenants and cleaner can keep their social distance when she attends, with fair warning to take some exercise or withdraw to bedrooms.

Alongside any professional cleaning effort however we hope everyone might invest more personal time in cleaning, not just keeping surfaces tidy, but giving bathrooms, kitchens, common parts etc a proper deep clean, getting out the mop, vacuum, using cleaning products etc.

We will however respect your wishes on a property by property basis so please let us know if you still wish to opt out of regular fortnightly cleaning and / or how often you want your home cleaned - whether the cleaner continues to do it, or whether you will take over her responsibilities.

Declutter

1. There is a matter we have been considering for some time which might be quite an apt thing to do at this present time, with more people at home… Namely a general declutter of common parts, storage cupboards and - for those properties with them - cellars. We find there is a general build up of belongings, rubbish and general detritus in all the common areas, with much of it possibly left behind by old tenants. No one wants to risk throwing stuff away that isn’t theirs’ so it just builds up, year on year, reducing storage space for current tenants

2. In smaller properties (111CG, 112CG, 99CG, 14PM, 17PM, 12VC, 18SW, 96RQ, 2GQ, 3GQ, 29GQ and 39GQ) you should be able to have a good sort out of cupboards and put out for disposal anything not belonging to or required by existing housemates. At larger properties in Stratford, Clapham and Catford, we can supply you with labels and large rubbish bags to sort out what is required from what is not, and then visit to take away and dispose of all the extraneous stuff

3. The methodology should be for each of you to label what belongs to you that you want to keep in the storage areas with your name and room number. After a few days, anything not claimed by current tenants can be disposed of

Internet

1. With more people working and staying at home we know the internet will be critical.  Please be considerate towards its usage. It’s obvious that if everyone hammers it at the same time for social video conferencing, game playing or movie watching then it’s going to be under pressure. It would be courteous to prioritise it for work purposes if a housemate needs a stable connection

2. We always have the fastest, most voluminous internet package available for every property but if you do experience problems, first read our guidance in this link…

3. If problems persist beyond simple over-usage, we will give you the account details and you can resolve with the supplier directly

Heating

1. Now the weather is warm, we have turned our boilers to summer mode so central heating will no longer come on automatically

2. We appreciate the unpredictably of British weather however so you have the means to turn on the heating as and when you require

3. Here’s a link that reminds you how to do it (does not apply at 96RQ, 18SW and 12VC)

helping with our rental advertising

1. We may need to find new tenants from June onwards and we certainly will in August. We would normally advertise on Spareroom but at this time we might want to enlist the wider help of all our tenants

2. We will prepare a digital advertising campaign for those rooms we have vacant and we wonder if you would help us publicise it to your work and social groups?

3. Viewings would be challenging whilst a lock down is in force, so it may be we ask for your help doing video viewings. More on this in due course as the situation develops