Unplandlords

Nickname for “accidental” landlords: property owners forced to rent real estate they cannot sell.

“Rents in London have tumbled this year as house sellers unable to get a good price are forced to become landlords,” The Evening Standard reported, quoting the property expert Sarah Beeny:

The property sales market is not going to bounce back as some imagine any time soon and whilst interest rates stay low even though the rental market is slower than it has been, I suspect we will see more and more “unplandlords” emerge.

The research underpinning this story was conducted by the property siteGumtree, which warned, “the new property professionals admit to serious gaps in their knowledge, posing risks to both themselves and their tenants.” These include:

– 46% who did not get a legally required gas safety certificate – Less than half (47%) installed a smoke alarm – Less than half requested references from tenants (46%) – Nearly two thirds (64%) failed to draft an inventory

Elsewhere: Movie Jargon Preservation |

On his blog Kung Fu Monkey, the screenwriter John Rogers has collected a splendid lexicon of slang used and abused in “the big writing rooms in LA.” The posts [one, two, three, four] may not be new (they date to 2005), but they are certainly noteworthy for those who have not stumbled across them before. ¶ Examples include: The Gilligan Cut — “When you cut directly from a character declaring there’s no way he’s going to do something, to him doing it, for comedic effect”; The Rake Bit — “Something that’s funny, goes on too long so it’s not funny, then goes on so long that it becomes INCREDIBLY funny”; and Gilding the Matzah — “Over-writing a joke, so it’s no longer funny.” ¶ Rogers links to an equally valuable glossary on The Artful Writer that lists, amongst other things, David Zucker’s 23 comedy phrases. (7)