By Christopher Browne

Have you thought of joining a landlords' association?

There are four national ones and about 20 regional ones and they actively promote the cause of the independent buy-to-let landlord. Yet their numbers remain pitifully small.

Only 20,000 of an estimated 800,000 landlords in the UK belong to an association and yet these bodies make perfect partners to websites like Property Secrets. For, like PS, they offer advice, help to show you how it's all done, hold conferences and keep you in touch with events in the industry.

Some of the most ardent government lobbying on the two recent Housing Acts has been led by men like Mike Stimpson, chairman of the National Federation of Residential Landlords (NFRL) and David Salusbury who heads up the National Landlords Association (NLA).

It is because of associations like these that we'll soon have a standard shorthold tenancy agreement instead of 20 different versions while the UK's archaic county court system could well be replaced by Australian-style arbitration panels that make their decisions in two to four weeks instead of six months.

And if a landlord gets into a serious fix who can he turn to? A landlords' association, of course.