MNHQ here: Shelter's campaign for longer rental contracts

UK law does allow for a landlord to check up on who they are renting to though in the form of credit checks and references from previous landlords, confirmation of employment and earnings etc. I think that gives landlords a good idea as to whether a tenant is ok or not.

Tenants do not get to do the same in regard to landlords. And anyone can become a landlord - there are plenty out there who have IVAs, even bankruptcies, or criminal records etc. who really should not be in the position of being responsible for providing shelter as they are not fit to do so. And that is a problem that can and should be addressed at policy level but isn't being.

As for revenge evictions, they most certainly do happen. They are reported to be at the rate of close to a quarter of a million a year, and many more go unreported.

Also, special, please stop blaming tenants for landlords providing unfit properties. If a property is substandard, that is the landlord's fault, not the tenant's and to pretend otherwise shows a doublethink of Kafka-esque mental gymnastics.

Contributing is not taking over, it doesn't work like that outside student politics. No one is saying that there are no problems, just not the problem that is the subject of this campaign.

What *hetero" mentions would be good. UK law makes no distinction between normal people and filthy crooks, so landlords have to organise and budget for the latter even though most are the former.

So the property houses skanks for free for months. I spend two weeks cleaning up shit (literally) on far less than min wage because the house is not in London and so the 4% return is not a fortune. I don't see why that disqualifies me from commenting on the real problems.

Go blub to HQ if you dont like a post.

Probably the end of this thread. Pity shelter don't spend their cash doing something useful.

LL here.

I wouldn't be at all happy with that. I think we'd just sell rather than be forced into a 5 year contract, especially a one-sided one.

Personally the biggest problem for me, as a single mother, has been being accepted in the first place. For two whole years I have been applying for 2-3 houses per week! Round here, sooooo many people are looking to rent, that for each house they get 10-15 applications. So then the Landlord gets to 'pick' the person in the best situation - the professional couple. Now, I do understand this from a business perspective. However, what happens to people like me? Disabled single mother who is physically unable to work? The ONLY way I can pay rent is through housing benefit but of course, I get thrust into the category of 'Benefits Claimant' and laughed off by each & every single Landlord! Council have said I'm looking at a 5 year wait for Council or LA property. So we're stuck in an unsuitable, damp house....because we're 'Benefit claimants' - Despute the fact that I have SEVENTEEN YEARS worth of PERFECT references with all previous Landlords. Nope. Professional couple please!!

catneuterer - yes, it's quite a common model (and I think generally happens for longer periods than in the UK). What generally happens is that either there is a main tenant who effectively sublets the other rooms (in which case laws are a bit different, I believe, though there are still basic protections in place) or everyone goes on the contract, in which case everyone shares the rights and responsibilities. So if one person moves out of a house share the rest are often keen to 'recruit' a replacement.

I actually think that while this proposal doesn't specifically address the many many ways in which tenants are screwed, it is still helpful in regard to them because if a tenant has a guaranteed long tenure it will back up rights that already exist (eg duty to repair etc) but which are made a mockery of due to landlords being able to evict. It might also discourage the many hopelessly amateur clueless individuals who get into the game. So, not perfect but a start.

Hetero - are there any shared houses in Germany? If so, does that apply to rooms in shared houses too?

We rent privately, fortunately very luckily we are renting a house which belongs to a friends parent. The income from the rent goes towards her care costs.

We are fortunate that they have pretty much left us alone for the 18 months we have lived here, don't mind us having cats, don't mind us digging a pond in the garden etc. We have treated the house well and keep it clean and in good order.

We have been lucky not to have to pay agents fees but we fear that the time is coming that they will need to sell the house and then I have no idea where we will go. We can't afford to buy anywhere, our savings are dwindling paying the rent here, dp cannot get a job which covers the rent and we are going to end up relying on benefits which will be a nightmare when trying to rent privately.

Should add that where non-payment or serious breach of contract is involved, eviction without notice is possible (in practical terms it's notice of a month or two).

Here in Germany fixed-term tenancies are the exception. Most are open-ended. Tenants can leave at any point giving three months' notice. The notice period for landlords starts at three months, but gets longer the longer a tenant has been in a property (6 months after 5 years, 9 months after 8 years). A landlord must have a specific reason to give notice - serious breach of contract, such as antisocial behaviour, non-payment of rent, or needing the property for themselves (that is subject to quite high hurdles, needs to be proved and the LL will usually have to pay the tenant's moving costs). Not everyone works through agencies and they certainly don't get to charge tenants fees. There is a strong national tenants' association looking out for renters' interests. All this means renting is a properly viable option and the property ladder is unheard of. If people buy a house it tends to be for life and it's not always easy to sell. We could afford to buy but have chosen to rent, partly for this reason.

I agree about letting agents, as part of a court case, I proved beyond any doubt that the agent submitted false documents, a fictitious cleaning bill and a fake invoice.

Although the judge agreed and we won the case, nothing further was done about the agent, ARLA not interested.
He still drives his branded car around Tunbridge Wells and I want to do something horrible to his smug little face.

Every time we moved, it cost over £1k in letting agent fees, £4-500 cleaning fees and )£1800 removal costs.

Longer tenancies should be on offer, but not mandated.
As ever, the problem imo is letting agents. Many landlords do not investigate their chosen letting agent's practice with the tenants and tacitly approve very shady practice. Letting agents prefer tenants to leave after short periods and getting new tenants in, as they charge hefty fees to both parties and often encourage a rent raise. Landlords should be more aware of how they operate and imo should be more proactive in holding them accountable for bad practice.
There should be a mandatory code of practice for letting agents and strict consequences for breaking them.
Councils should properly assess situations where tenants are facing homelessness and allocate resources accordingly. If they suspect shady dealings (notice given for mutual gain for example) there should be penalties for landlords and some kind of regulatory body who could fine them.
Buy to let should be heavily taxed as the business it is, meaning it is only attractive to people with large sums to invest rather than chancers who flip mortgages and buy with tiny equity, creaming profit off the tenants.

Landlords would be more than welcome to sell stock, this would allow prices to fall and many more renters to buy properties, meaning the pressure on private rents would drop. Nobody wants to follow any of this through because no government wants to preside over a significant drop in the housing market.

Shame that this thread has been taken over by the very vocal landlords as usual.
I was a landlord for ten years while renting in another part of the country.

I had to move every single year bar one as each landlord decided to sell, getting two months notice each time (no longer based on rental payment dates either).

I would have welcomed longer, more secure contracts. I would also never rent with an escape clause as it makes a fixed term redundant.

It was utterly miserable and expensive to move with young children, to be expected to pay full rent with (often) daily intrusion for viewings.

Well exactly Special. And I would love a response to what is in fact in it for LLs, when the tenant will still be able to leave when they want to, it's just the LL that's stuck. They are within their rights to campaign for something like that, but they can't campaign for it by claiming it will somehow benefit LLs.

meanwhile.... I await a response from Shelter or MNHQ as to the many suggestions on this thread that they are barking up the wrong tree by campaigning for something that already exists, rather than to stop some real wrongs.

Eviction does not always mean a bad tenant. It can be caused by a change of landlord circumstances (dead, ill, job loss, BTL tax changes meaning no longer worth it).

given that eviction takes months and costs lots it is a strange whim. 'I know, I'll evict my tenant today. That will stop my income when they leave (or before) and cost me money to do.'

Apparently there are people who do this.

I think this is an excellent campaign fwiw

landlords do not evict on a whim
They absolutely do. It's happened to me and I certainly wasn't a bad tenant.

There is this totally illogical view that had the LL not acquired or bought the house, the tenants would somehow have been able to do so which completely ignores the fact that if the tenants had sufficient savings for a deposit they wouldn't be renting.
Btl inflates house prices.

You dont have to live in an HA property to be affected by their actions either.

Just seen this on fb.

"Absolute shower of a company, as private home owners we have been waiting 2 weeks for Hyde Housing to repair a leak after their contractors repaired a leaking pipe in our neighbours garden leaving us with no water and then leaving us with a leaking stopcock- after 2 weeks of phone calls and taking numerous days off work they still haven't rectified the problem and have now said a lot of errors have been made and they have to contact a manager. Do yourself a favour and don't let Hyde Housing send Relative anywhere near your home in fact I feel very sorry if u have to rely on them for any repairs because after the contractor left us with a leak they then sent a plumber without the correct part. Even after saying they were sending someone and getting me to wait in all day they couldn't even have the manners to let us know that no-one was coming."

twinkle what a ridiculous situation. A complete catch 22. I hope something comes up for you soon

I have a friend who has 3 children and has had to move 4 times in a few years. They are good tenants, but twice the landlord returned from abroad and wanted to live in the house and other were wanting to sell without sitting tenants. So each time money they had been saving for a deposit had to go on letting agent fees.

There are private rentals with long contracts now, landlords do not actually evict on a whim, especially as that whim takes months and costs a lot.

Long term tenants are better for everyone so I remain puzzled why shelter and mn are directing their energies at what already exists.

You were wise not to go for that unaffordable place. I hope something comes up soon.

No specialsubject - well there is.... As long as we don't live with him. We are just lucky he put us up. The alternative offered to us is 2 rooms in a b&b, with shared facilities, for 8 of us! Our income means his hb is stopped. And we aren't eligible as the tenancy is in his name.

twinkletoes is there no help for your dad? This is not a sustainable situation. And I see it is a housing association again... As helenadove links and others show, they do stuff which a private landlord would rightly be roasted for.

One size doesn't fit all with rentals. Making it easy (I don't know if there's any way to make it attractive) for LLs to offer longer term contracts would be good.