So we're being evicted AGAIN!

[OnandOnItGoes]

3rd rented property in 7 years. Been here for 4 years. Had to leave the last two properties as landlord selling, now we're in the same situation again.

Rent always paid on time and properties always very well looked after so it's not that we're bad tenants, just the never ending game we're stuck in.

We left within the notice period of last 2 properties but can't with this one as rents are £500+ for similar properties and much smaller worse properties with no parking/horrible areas are £200-300 a month more and we simply can't afford it or find one which we are successful for as they seem to only want 'professionals' in high paying jobs.

Council have been no help and have said as both DH and I work, we need to find another rented property. I can only work part time in a low paying admin job due to caring responsibilities as need to be on hand for disabled DC for school drop/pick up and after school as no after school care (teens). We have no family support.

Also worried about being put in temp accommodation as around here it seems to be adapted office blocks with lots of anti social issues. Also as we work I understand we'll have to pay a lot for it!

Section 21 expires on 15th May and I'm aware Landlord will start court process for possession as he's very keen to get us out and get it sold. I assume he'll use the accelerated procedure as he's a professional landlord with lots of properties and is selling most of them I believe.

Does anyone know how long we may have before bailiffs? We're in the South East. I've already looked into storage facilities so we can empty the house but we have no family to stay with so not sure where we'll go from there.

Of course we will continue looking for a property and continue paying rent but any advice on timeline will be helpful if anyone has been through the process recently?

The stress is unbearable and much worse this time due to the current rental market!

Apologies I should have worded my post more accurately!
I didn't mean you specifically I meant a generic landlord who is leveraged and because of that has to sell up leaving the tenants without a home.
A stable secure landlord who owns properties out right is in a position to provide a stable secure housing service.
An entrepreneur who wants to take a risk ought (in my opinion) not to be doing so in an area where their business failure would result in someone else (through no fault of their own) losing their home.

Swash, same with my sons - one house C and one D (no difference as far as I can see between the victorian 2 bed terraces 2 streets apart - when it becomes against the law to let out a D rating that house will have to be sold which is good news for first time buyers of course (and the state's plan - to ruin the private rented market so there are more houses for first time buyers to buy - about £350k in the case of the properties I mean in the SE).

The only way to possibly get council house type housing is to ride it out and get put in temp accommodation. Although your income sounds massive compared to many others the cost of renting is obscene and unaffordable for most normal households. Really hope you get a break and secure housing for your family xxx

Are you actively planning to make life he'll for the landlord too, what if they are in dire straits and need to sell

Eh?

It's the government that's created the problem, there must be some decent landlords that don't deserve to pay some ransoms rent, eh

The question is what should be the rent on a place that costs a landlord say £1090k to buy or £350k to buy? Currently it is what most others are charging and because of market forces will be what landlords need to charge to make profit after 45% or 40% or 20% income tax on the rent after all costs are deducted (and since the interest rules changed after those costs are added on top.

But not all landlords are born equal.

If you have a 75% LTV mortgage on your £350k property, your repayments are going to be X.

Compare with landlord B who has no mortgage. No X.

Compare with landlord C who has no mortgage, and they live in a country where their currency is unstable, or where they might get taxed heavily, or where investment offers poor yields. No X, happy to be be getting Y% ROI.

A will need to charge more than B, and B more than C.

Even though it boils my absolute piss, this is why I’ve not minded renting from landlords living overseas for the last 10 years (NZ as he went back, Germany as he moved for work. Neither U.K. born. And now an Abu Dhabi couple as the U.K. Plc has been up for sale for a while). These guys are delighted that I scratch their backs (being as helpful as possible/not demanding), and in turn I’ve never had a rent hike. I imagine they either had no mortgage or very small ones.

The last person on earth I’d rent from is a U.K. person BTL with a 75% mortgage. People need to do their detective work and steer clear if they can. For example I know my current landlord has an art collection, cos internet. Been here 18 months, after 12 refused another fixed term instigated by agent, and now on short rolling.

If they threatened any unreasonable rent increase, I’d walk. They can risk having no income for a month or two and take 1-2 years to bridge that loss.

They cant. Bedroom "tax" isnt a tax at all, it is a reduction in benefits in social housing if you have more bedroom than they deem essential. Im in social housing and work full time so pay the rent myself, my rent doesnt increase in the event of me having a spare room. Therefore it cannot be applied to own homes as they dont get a housing element in benefits if they are entitled. And they cannot charge people for having bedrooms they chose not to use in houses they can afford to own. Absolute fabricated tosh.

Going to be very interesting if they do
implement the minimum C rental easiest way to get a tenant evicted I can’t rent to you it’s illegal the county courts will be inundated with applications another Ill thought out policy it was £10k to upgrade now it’s dropping to £3k I head just tokenism

Hopeful;y the D rating in our case was a mistake but I am not holding my breath. May be the C house 2 streets away was the mistake and that one should be a D instead.

On foreign landlords, it is a variable picture. We have some empty houses locally one supposedly bought with laundered money by someone who lives abroad and they keep them empty because it is simply easier than having to deal with tenants. I see them and think wow - that person must be so rich to leave the property empty but I suppose they just don't want the hassle of tenants and just want to park the cash in the UK in a sense.

If a house costs £350k and rents out for £1100 a month and, say, the letting agent fees are £1800 including VAT if there is a move that year, building works might be £2500/ repairs, insurance £100, deposit scheme charge £20, compulosry gas check eg £180, the new electrical check thing £400 - I am guessing some of these figures. 5600 costs off 13 200 rent (although if relet in this particular year let us say one month empty 12,100 rent leavs 6500 profit taxed at say 40% income tax as the person has a job in the SE over the 40% limit that gives the landlord 2600 a month = £217 a month after tax which is about 0.75% interest so less than sticking the 350k in the bank at 1% interest rate . So as ever it might come down to if the capital value is rising or falling. If it is rising then the landlord should factor in the profit on the sale too after 28% capital gains tax is taken off.

It'll also cost you more in time and money to move house assuming there's somewhere for you to walk to.

Wow, I’d forgotten about capital gains tax.

So say our landlord sold our flat for £350k. I think he bought it off plan for £260k. He’d pay 26% of £90k - £6k allowance: £21.8k in tax? Still not bad for a couple of years, albeit I have no idea how much deposit you have to pay to secure off plan and how in advance they have this money.

True. It would be a balance. If they upped it £100/month I might just suck it up. Unless I could find something for less than we pay. As you say the cost and effort of moving is painful.

someone who lives abroad and they keep them empty because it is simply easier than having to deal with tenants
Surely this ought not to be allowed?

@Thesharkradar why shouldn’t it be allowed ? It’s their property

Because housing is a scarce resource in this country.

It is unique in being something that everyone needs one of, and only one, for even a basic standard of living, and that it is something where it is difficult and time consuming to make more.

Allowing people do to what they like with their property is fine when we're talking about things that are in abundance (e.g. food and clothing), and things which are luxuries not basic necessities (e.g. art and small aircraft).

Allowing some people to leave scarce housing empty just because they own it, while others have none at all, is obscene. It's equivalent to having a swimming pool during a drought when your neighbours are dying of thirst and crops are failing.

@SamShortForSambuca maybe start with the empty council houses ? I have tenants ongoing but I can see if they push this certification through I will leave them empty I’ll have no choice

I've just gone and looked up the stats on empty homes for the purposes of this discussion.

Snapshot from March 31st 2022 - 33,300 vacant council dwellings in England, of which 15,100 are available immediately for letting or just need minor repairs (i.e. the sort of temporary vacancies that are inevitable when people move in and out).

Source: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1124293/LT612.ods

The remaining 18,200 are, I would strongly suspect, almost all in need of more serious repair work. As an example, Southwark alone accounts for 1001 of those empty homes - because some of them are in such bad condition they are awaiting demolition, and the rest needing other major refurbishment, including fire safety works.

Source: https://www.mylondon.news/news/south-london-news/london-borough-hundreds-homes-been-23038894 

In England here are 248,149 long term empty homes of all tenures (so 215,149 privately owned, the rest local authority owned) - in other words only 13.4% of empty housing is council owned.

Source: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1140982/LT615_16.03.23.ods 

Sometimes houses (of all tenures) are long term empty for completely sane reasons. My late grandmother's house has been empty for two years - she went into a care home, died two months later before we could sell the house, then we had to start probate, then put it on the market (sold about 10 months ago) and the new owners are midway through a much-needed full refurbishment (rewiring, replastering, rerendering, reroofing.... the lot). Sometimes they're long term empty for other, much less justifiable reasons.

Meanwhile, there's a reported 495,000 second homes in the UK belonging to people resident in England (second homes owned, for instance, by Welsh or Scottish people, are in addition to that). Houses rented out to long term tenants are also not included in that statistic.

Source: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/898190/2020_EHS_second_homes_factsheet.pdf

So, in summary
215,149 long term empty privately owned homes
495,000 privately owned second homes
... and you think the 18,200 empty council homes requiring demolition / major refurbishment are the issue?

@SamShortForSambuca i don’t think they’re solely the problem no but it doesn’t help seeing as most people want a council place secure tenancy and cheaper rent

I think the vast majority of those council owned empty homes will be empty for very sensible reasons, like refurbishment, and when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it then you'd find very few could be brought back into occupation any quicker than the current plan.

Of the 495,000 second homes, 27% are in the South West, and Cornwall is seeing a particularly acute Airbnb-induced housing shortage, with local people unable to stay in the county they were brought up in (and knock-on effects for businesses trying to find staff etc)

The town my partner was brought up in is now 28% second homes and holiday lets, and housing affordability is a big part of why he left - he couldn't afford to leave home without leaving the county.

If we make private renting more secure - by ending the ability of landlords to evict without giving a good reason - then private renting will become more tolerable for many people. For me, the worst part of renting was never the financial side, it was living with a sword of Damocles hanging over your head in the form of a S21, having to ask your landlord for permission to own so much as a hamster, and always having to stare at magnolia painted walls, not even allowed to put up a picture.

There were 94,870 homeless households in temporary accommodation as of June 2022. Not all of those will end up in a secure council tenancy in the long term; the council can discharge their duty by offering a home in the private rented sector.

Having two homes when others have none is obscene. If we banned second homes and brought the long-term empty privately owned homes back into use as primary residences, we'd have housed those homeless households 7.5x over.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/may/08/labour-considering-higher-taxes-foreign-buyers-uk-homes

Manchester and similar cities going to suffer. The 50% cap on foreign ownership tells you how big the problem is, and the fact that will destroy the market, emphasises it. The stamp duty surcharge is the icing on the cake.

Presume current owners are going to start selling up ASAP. If HS2 is pulled, Manchester risks being Dublin 2.0.

Our council charges double council tax on empty properties which was a bit shit whilst I was trying to install a floor and a roof to make it habitable

For empty properties my local council charges zero for the first six months, normal for the next six months, and 200% thereafter.

I do have sympathy with those who are actively renovating an uninhabitable property (i.e. currently have builders in, not just those who are talking about doing it maybe someday)

That said, after my last (foreign) landlord spent years ignoring the damp and then sent me a S21 'no fault' eviction notice because she wanted to turn it into an Airbnb (I suppose it's easier to just keep painting over the damp when it's an Airbnb?), I took great pleasure in emailing the council to check it was correctly recorded as being a second home on their systems, and thus liable for the double council tax.

I agree, it's very problematic, yes it does belong to them but at the same time housing is a basic necessity and they are hoarding it
we are in a huge mess because the cost of housing has risen out of proportion to everything else such that normal people dont have proper homes, this is in no small part due to the low interest rates since 2008 and govt housing policy making things worse.
Afaik some other countries have stricter rules when it comes to overseas buyers?