Hi all, I would like to ask if you are a member of a landord association and if you think it’s worth becoming a member of one? I was thinking about joining the NRLA as it seems to be the biggest/. But is biggist best? What’s been your experience? Have you ever received accurate and valuable advice? Which offers the best benefits to its membership? Or do you perfer to use forums such as this one? Many thanks, Alex.
i have been in NRLA for about 10 years You get free advice on the phone . Membership fee is tax deductible. They used to hold free meetings. Since its amalgamation their e-mails seem to be all about SELLING landlord products and services.
I agree with Colin’s assessment. I’m also a member of the NRLA and on balance think its worthwhile. It would be much better if they had 80% of landlords as members, rather than about 5%, but thats the nature of representative bodies.
Personally I have gained nothing from my NRLA membership and think that important information is available through Open Rents messages here (for instance the recent one about important dates to note during 2021). I shall not be renewing my NRLA membership.
I found you have to ASK more to get an answer . Its the selling that bugs me re the NRLA . So far the amalgamation has done nothing to impress me
Thanks Colin, many share your views. Do you think I should join?
Alex.
I would say yes. its worth joining. The documents and resources are very good and the national representation will only work if the membership builds
I would say join. the fee is tax deductable and if they go back to regular meetings they are very informative.
I have been a member of NLA, now NRLA. for 10 + years. But I am NOT sure that the amalgamation of the 2 associations will be to my benefit.
The resource library which was an excellent source of information, has now been replaced with chargeable on-line courses, which you have to take in order to maintain your accredited status. I emailed my rep, and NRLA directly, with my concerns, and no one has answered me.
I have found the help given on the phone help line to be more ‘cagey’ with their advice since the merger, eg they will not comment/given advice on agreements that have a break clauses in them.
Having said all above, even if you ring the legal helpline once a year, the membership cost is less than an hour with a solicitor. I often used them as a ‘sounding board’ to double check something before I do it.
And five years ago I received a lot of one to one help over problems I was having with Brent Council and their newly introduced HMO scheme. The guy who helped me was amazing, but I do wonder if I would get the same level of support now.
Overall I am continuing my membership, but I do have reservations about the way the association is going and it’s direct benefits to me.
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the resource library is still there. They also told me that I didn’t need to undertake more courses to maintain accreditation, but could do so by reading and keeping up with the legislation in other ways.
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I think my main driver for joining a landlord association is the access to quality and accurate information and advice, so sad to hear that the NRLA is no longer as good as it was. Could I become a member without accreditation? What benefit to me would accreditation bring and what is required to achieve it?
Hi David
I received an email from NRLA dated 9.9.2020 and it specifically states ‘The NLA online library is no longer active’.
The same email explains that members will need to earn 5 Core points every 5 years and 5 standard points every year. ‘The Core points can only be earned by attending NRLA classroom courses or eLearning courses, and also some external courses’ - none of which are free.
The standard points can be earned by reading or attending meetings.
The last time I spoke to my NRLA rep she was most put out when I said I had attended a DPS course and wanted to know why I hadn’t gone through NLA. The DPS course was £20 and theirs was considerably more.
I have attended NLA courses, eg their PAT course, which was really good, very hands on and couldn’t be taught by reading.
But I do think that the pushing of these new courses, on quite basic topics, when denying access to excellent library resources is purely a money generating endeavour.
its all to make money sadly
The NLA online library is no longer active because it, and the RLA equivalent have been merged into the current Resources section of the website.
Interesting that when I spoke to the accreditation team they were adamant that CPD points could be earned by reading and not just courses and that accreditation could be maintained that way. My accreditation comes up for renewal in a few months, so I guess we will see.
If you are using a letting agent to manage your property/ies, then I wouldn’t worry too much about keeping up with things. If however your self managing then you will need some sort support.
I think that depends how good your agent is, which you may be able to tell without sufficient knowledge.
I cannot get on board with an organisation that simply reports on this new “breathing space” legislation rather than fighting it on their members behalf. If they were a proper pressure group centring landlords rights I might join up. But they are clearly not.
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They simply pass on the possible new rules, very unfair to landlords rather than fight against them. I bet a training course will follow soon after, may or may not with a charge.
It seems the NRLA start to provide platforms for those trainers who have been years through various media on and on the “no money down”, blar blar. They sent me an invitation recently about a course from one of these trainers. I thought he was offering something new being allowed to promote his course via NRLA. Guess what, still same stuff.
Even DPS now after a few taste of providing courses, start to charge now for education people what they do and how they do it.
Search on line, I think there are other similar providers too. Landlord referencing, the landlord zone, etc, etc.
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I joined the RLA in 2015; primarily for their documentation, as a new self managing landlord (I preferred the content and presentation of their docs to those of the NLA at the time). I continued to use them for documentation, their services for credit checks and referencing, and a very occasional phone call query (less than once a year). I’ve been very happy with them on the whole, in my experience the legal documentation alone is worth the fee. However, since their amalgamation with the NLA, they seem to have loads of glitches with their services, the website, and a vastly reduced selection of documentation. I shall continue with them for now, and hopefully these issues will improve.
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