The Leslie & Co blog

The boiler stops. There is a patch spreading on the bathroom ceiling. The back door has stopped locking properly. Most tenants do the same thing at this point. They send a text, or mention it in passing, and then wait and feel...

The survey arrives as a PDF, usually late in the afternoon, and it is longer and more alarming than anybody expects. Somewhere in it, almost guaranteed, will be a recommendation to have the electrical installation inspected and...

Most people choose an estate agent on a feeling. Three agents come round, one of them seems the most confident, or the most likeable, or quotes the highest figure. A contract gets signed at the kitchen table that evening, often...

There is a change coming for landlords that has had far less attention than it deserves, largely because it does not have a date yet. Every private landlord in England will have to register themselves and each property they let on...

It is UK Savings Week, which makes this a reasonable moment to talk about the conversation we have more than almost any other. Somebody has a bit of money, or is about to. They are weighing up putting it into a pension or buying a...

No change. Again. On Thursday 17 September 2026 the Bank of England held Bank Rate at 3.75%. If you have been waiting for a clear signal before making a move, that can feel like another month of nothing happening. It is not quite...

People agonise over the house and take the street on trust. It is understandable. The house is what you look at, photograph, measure and lie awake thinking about. The street is just the thing around it, and it usually gets about...

Raising the rent used to be one of those things that often happened by agreement. A conversation, a text, a new figure on the standing order from next month. Since 1 May 2026, that informality is a problem. There is now one route,...

Your home goes live on a Thursday afternoon. By the following Tuesday, there are three letters on the mat, two of them handwritten, and somebody has knocked on the door to say they were just valuing a property round the corner. If...

There is a building you drive past every week and have never been inside. A chapel, a mill, an old town hall, a house behind a wall that you have always been mildly curious about. For ten days in September, a remarkable number of...