Labour’s tenants’ rights bill

Corporations and banks are hoovering up rental properties @pinkoink has perfectly written what is happening and will increase. In my life I have rented three properties, two were people that owned one house and one was a guy that owned five. I dealt with all of them directly, it was much better.

All great in theory but do you know how long this process takes. My father recently did it for a non paying tenant between waiting for a court date and then the baliffs it took nearly two years. Two years or not being paid. And after they left hes also had to pay a fortune to get the property into livable condition again as they wrecked the place on leaving and that was another 6 months of it not being rentable whilst it was repaired too and do you think hed get a penny out of them from the courts?

I myself rented out the property I had when I met my now husband. I was a good LL, the flat was well maintained cos I had lived in it and loved it. Every issue or breakage was sorted within a day. I treated them fairly. But when we came to buy our first propety together I had to sell my flat as the additional stamp duty would be unaffordable as an upfront payment. My tenants were devastated but I couldn't take such a massive hit for a property that was leaving me pretty much breaking even if you took the capital repayment of my mortgage out of the equation and a loss on it if you didn't.

Sadly many of these rules drive out small, good landlords who treat tenants well but do nothing for the big guys who treat tenants terribly

@pinkoink A very good point and an obvious danger that the big corporations attempt to effectively rig the market by being the near-monopoly providers of housing in an area.

The obvious solution to this is to prevent housing being a speculative commodity - it could still be an investment instrument with a rate of return - by imposing rent caps and by enforcing standards. That was actually the original idea behind privatising other utilities (i.e. a guaranteed rate of return in exchange for inprovements in service and more investment), but the big investors that took over the water and power companies were far smarter than the politicians and shafted both the government and the consumers.

It’s just another exercise to divert the public money (benefits) to corporations. Corporations don’t like small landlords and the middle class in general.

Large pension funds etc will snap up the cheap ex rentals going on the market, especially that a lot of them are being sold with sitting tenants. In a decade private renting will be dominated by corporations and rents will go up. We will continue to subsidise rent with benefits, so taxpayers money will be going to large global corporations instead of small individual landlords. You tell me if this is progress.

The proposed law says that landlords can increase rents once a year and only to ‘market levels’. But if two massive corporations or banks own all the private rentals in town, they will be in effect dictating what’s market rent in the area. Just charge each new tenant £100 more and in 2 years the new market rent for the area will be higher. Then increase it for the remaining tenants. Then start charging new tenants £100 more, etc etc.

This is what’s happened to vet fees once the big global capital dominated the market. They all charge the same high fees and the service has not improved. But unlike owning a pet, having a roof over one’s head isn’t really optional.

I know of one pension/investment fund that bough 500 homes in the North a couple of years back. They can easily afford one or two non-paying tenants, just charge the remaining 498 more. Small landlords don’t have the same buffer so more and more will be selling up. Some tenants might be able to buy their homes from the landlords who are exiting the market but not many. And certainly not the poorest who need housing security the most because they can’t secure another property on the open market due to very high rents.

I can see the sentiment behind this law but I feel it’s the wrong way round: increase social housing first to lower demand in the private rented sector and then tighten the rules. Otherwise the already high demand will only increase.

You can call me a doom monger but read my post in 10 years and we’ll see who was right. Although, obviously, I hope I’m wrong and it will work out great.

All across Europe there are rent controls, long-term tenancies, non-eviction laws, strict monitoring of standards etc. and these countries seem to be able to make it work. In many countries, renting is seen as the norm.

There are also many types of landlord in other countries. The "private landlord" that is typical in the UK is not so common in Europe, where there are council properties, housing associations, co-operative housing schemes and private companies that build, rent and maintain properties such as block of apartments based on a known rent and a known return on investment. What is also far less common is the idea of property as a speculative asset, and the hiding of the identity of the real owners. Certain cities in the UK (e.g. London, Leeds, Manchester) also suffer from property inflation caused by money from "dubious sources" being invested there with little or no real control.

It's ok Labour are building 1.5m house over this parliament so they'll be loads knocking about. Works out at about 25000 a month/800 a day (maybe not as my maths isn't great) although not sure they've managed many of those yet but we'll see, obviously they would have costed this plan and have to workforce (well the 6 main house builders will have) to throw them up on double quick time.

If you’re in a mid sized town there’ll be a few hundred homes on the market at any given time. Let’s say landlords panic and sell up. Even 100 would be enough to rock the entire local rental market, yet not be a huge number in terms of overall sellers. It might lead to accepting offers that are a bit lower but it’s not going to take 10-20k to help people on to the ladder.. you’d need to be halving prices at least and that simply won’t happen. The market will suck up any properties and the renters will get shafted even harder.

It's just another ill thought out policy from the 6th form kids that are now running the country

I doubt prices will drop, there may be a bit more availability but if you haven’t got the deposit and need to rent how will that work? What happens if you are a uni student or on a short contract and don’t want to move. There is a place for rental in our housing mix. Empty homes owned by speculators and not enough building are the bigger problems.

Aggressive alcoholic tenant who abused his partner was allowed to get a puppy. It has shit and pissed everywhere, upstairs, downstairs. Destroyed the brand new carpets we put in for them. There was actual lumps of shit in the adults' bedroom, god knows how they lived like that. I was extremely relieved we didn't have to go to court to get the house back.

What is the max you can raise rent by under the new proposed laws?

Won't help renters though.
I work in this market and finding properties for clients with good budgets, excellent jobs, no bad credit can be hard enough due to a lack of stock so God Help everyone else

Friends of ours who rent have just been served a section 21 eviction notice as LL selling due to new laws.

They can't afford, nor want to purchase a house, there are no rental properties in the village atm.

Theyre looking at love 7 miles away, kids changing schools, clubs etc

I agree with the changes to S21. More and more private tenants will be renting longer term, and they deserve security.
It will change the business model and some landlords will exit the market. Good. Too many landlords don't see themselves as running a business, but owning a passive investment that requires zero effort.
The government should simultaneously strengthen S8 to allow landlords to evict tenants who don't pay rent or behave anti-socially. They also need to sort out the backlog in the courts (which will take money up front) and get them working efficiently again.
They also need to work with the build to rent sector, and make this a more attractive prospect for bondholders. Lots of build to rent going up where I live.

I feel, the rental market isn't going to collapse this time round either.

Collapse might be too strong but lower supply means higher rents and it’ll be the more vulnerable section of the market who will feel it more

Landlords won’t be buying new properties to let in the same way they have in the past. Locally large houses are bought up in cheaper areas. The owner puts in a loft extension and a ground floor extension and turns the house in an HMO. Higher rental yields and easier to get rid of a problem tenant.

Any person who is a tenant is entitled, by law, to be evicted in the legal manner. So correct notice and then a possession order from the court. It's covered by the protection from eviction acts.
A tenancy exists if rent is requested for exclusive use of a property.
Rent arrears would mean a S8 notice and then court order.

Why weren't they paying rent? If they were supposed to be paying rent then your friend should have issued an S8 eviction notice for rent arrears.

But rent-arrears aside, if she's made a commitment to rent out her house and make it someone else's home, then she can't just demand it back and expect someone else to become homeless. Private rentals need to be a long term commitment. It's not fair on the tenant. In France, rental contracts are generally a minimum term of 3 years for an unfurnished rental, with 6 months notice required from the landlord when the term ends

In fact, in France they even have rent control agreements where in certain areas of high rental demand, there is a cap on the maximum rental charge.

As mentioned up thread, we only need to look at Scotland to see how badly this will work out for renters.

Not all renters want to or can buy. So for renters it's a problem.

Yup - when you stop the incentives and take away the profit you’re just encouraging people who are willing to cut corners.

The decent, law abiding landlords will sell up whilst the unscrupulous ones who didn’t give a shit will continue not giving a shit.

Lending is getting more, not less expensive so those who aren’t on the housing market because they can’t afford to be aren’t going to be able to get a mortgage anyway.

There’s always going to be demand for renting, not everyone in rented accommodation wants to buy, some rent for temporary jobs, new relationships, short term after relationship breakdowns. Alsorts of reasons. The demand for renting won’t disappear even if house prices fall.

We had several rentals and sold them. One buyer wanted to give us cash under the table to decrease the purchase price. I imagine he falls into the category of LL I’ve set out in my second paragraph…

Private LL’s don’t make up enough of the market that the small % who do sell will suddenly even out the housing market.

Last sentence should say:

I take no risks these days. I have my own criteria and I stick with it

As a LL sometimes I accept pets sometimes I don't - depends on the tenant.

However when you have 70 people chasing 1 property I can choose to be picky.

A single person or a couple with no dc in a well paid job is my preference. They're out of the house all day and no kids are drawing on the walls.

I've had my fingers burnt a few times so I have to think about my own family not someone else's. Tenants who don't pay means my family goes without. I take. I risks these days.

I don't see it as a bad thing that tenants have greater security of tenure. It ensures that tenants can actually make plans for their life and the landlord knows he has a tenant who wants to stay.

Well yes….and no

Recent events have shown that highly leveraged landlords have been hit very hard by mortgage interest rises (naively believing rates would stay low for ever) which has necessitated rent rises which may not be affordable to the tenant (particularly those on benefits which often don’t cover the whole of the rent anyway). So whilst long term tenant can be a good thing, if events transpire that means the landlord cannot afford to provide the property at all then the law should give some protection to the landlord too.

Renters get the right to request pets, not automatically to have them. Landlords can refuse on reasonable grounds.

It's a good idea to research what's actually going to be in the bill rather than listen to people with a political axe to grind

Decent article below

www.totallandlordinsurance.co.uk/knowledge-centre/renting-to-tenants-with-pets#:~:text=In%20line%20with%20the%20original,a%20description%20of%20the%20pet.

The problem isn't the renters bill. The lack of housing isn't due to shortage of willing landlords. Its due to massively insufficient housebuilding over the last two decades