Change of law for landlords and tennants

[Gin96]

www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/15/short-notice-evictions-face-axe-in-tenant-rights-victory

Do you think this will help tenants? Will landlords think renting is to much hassle and start selling their properties?

I have a BTL mortgage, but it is small, circa £200pcm so it is easily covered along with the council tax and insurance etc. Given how much of the rent is taxed there will be very little net difference.

But anyone with a large mortgage will sell up instead and clear off their own mortgage. That is my Plan B.

Thus putting more much needed property on the market and reducing prices.

@Homefireburn1ng
But it won't. In the area there is a shortage of property, the market isn't going to be suddenly flooded. A house worth £300k isn't suddenly going to be worth £150k. Even a 20% price drop will still make it un-affordable for the vast majority of the renting population. You are deluded.

My typical tenants have a joint income of £50-£60k. They couldn't afford to buy my BTL (tiny 2 bed house). It'd have to drop in value by 40% for them to buy it assuming they could get the deposit. Not going to happen. Your average person earning £25k a year will still have no chance of buying.

It's ridiculous to say a renter can't have a mortgage because they don't have the 20% or whatever deposit when they may be paying more rent monthly than a mortgage would be. It's a bonkers system.

The deposit is to stop people falling into negative equity and just walking away or declaring bankruptcy and leaving the property to be repossessed with an amount outstand8ng which means the bank cannot recoup the amount outstanding on the mortgage.
Deposits have been the norm for a very long time, excepting a silly decade where people were being given 100% or even 125% mortgages (and that led to problems).

I’m not convinced that this will lead to a reduction in property prices due to more houses being put on the market.
I think we run the risk of some would be landlords not renting out their properties due to fear of not being able to get it back when they want it and choosing to just leave the property empty instead.

But if there are more of any property bracket and they drop, buyers can move up a bracket and the whole chain will drop, right down to the bottom.

I frankly don’t buy it that hoards of ll will leave property empty. Many are older and far more likely to worry. I have known a fair few in my family who sold because they didn’t want to leave a house empty. If there are houses empty c’est la vie. In the long run it will be better for renters. The rest of Europe manage to have very long term rentals with good conditions and terms for renters so it can be done.

I'm renting but I'm on a 30 day Statutory Periodic Tenancy. So my Landlord can choose not to renew my tenancy at the end of any given month. Can anyone tell me if this now means that this will no longer be the case?

Despite renting for 17 years this has lost me a bit as my tenancy is specific and quite different to a AS tenancy.

Thanks

The rest of Europe manage to have very long term rentals with good conditions and terms for renters so it can be done.

Are we comparing with Europe where tenants take on most of he maintenance and upkeep themselves?

90% of tenancies are ended by the tenant, not the landlord, currently. Most landlords just want to get their monthly rent and have a tenant who looks after the property. They have no reason to serve notice to tenants as unless the property is particularly desirable, there will always be an empty period between tenants and that's a month or two of lost rent.

I think some will struggle to find rental properties going forward... I rent out a flat I used to live in. My tenants have mostly been young sharers and couples, they've been working as baristas or nannies or shop managers - they are simply not at a stage of their life where they would want to buy and couldn't afford it anyway. Most have stayed for 12-18 months before they've given notice. I'd love to have a tenant who wanted to stay for a few years!

When posters blithely say "The Rest of Europe" they usually don't know very much about rental contracts in Latvia, Belgium, Romania, Ukraine, Malta, Greece etc. They think that all those nice Swiss, Swedes and Germans know how to do things properly. (Especially for their nice middle class employed tenants).

I don't think it is quite so Utopian in many countries if you have no job, a low income, are disabled/sick, have to move around a lot.

Same viccat. We’ve rented our UK house out for about 5 years and had 5 sets of tenants. The preceding 4 sets were all new to the area and rented our house as a stop gap. All bar one left after 6 months because they’d bought somewhere. The final tenant seems to have made it his home and we are very happy about that.

Agree, we rent in Germany and it’s very stable for tenants but the costs of moving are huge. Our deposit is three months rent and kitchens, curtains/blinds and even flooring do not come as standard.

Nothing to stop the laws being set so that rent rises are capped per year, that would prevent LL from hiking rents to get ride of tenants

I hope if renters will now have life time tenancy's they become liable for their own repair costs

So you want to charge an absolute premium in rent and do no repairs whatsoever, simply because your tenants have long term protection from you putting the rent up when the mood takes you?

Why the hell should they repair YOUR property that YOU are gaining on month on month as it increases in value? You disgust me.

People like you are precisely the reason why all LL, good and bad, have a bad name and if I were one of the other LL's on this thread I would be fucking fuming that you were making us all look like money grubbing scumbags.

I thought it was 50/50 as regards ending tenancy. Some tenants are going to be in shit accommodation, some will be in short term but will want longer so if a longer comes up will jump at the end of the tenancy....

The other 50% may well want security and to stay longer. Why on earth would anybody begrudge families and children that?

It's all claptrap anyway, just a sticking plaster that doesn't actually address the real issues in renting. All the changes will do is make it very difficult in entirely new ways for some Ts and some LLs.

And none of it will address rogue agents, appearig daily in trade press at tthe moment.

Statistically 90% of Ts end a tenancy, for reasons of their own. When a LL does end a tenancy 90% of them are for non payment of rent. So all this pfaffing is to address the 10% of 'other reasons', many of which will remain legitimate reasons for ending a tenancy.

What should be done is that LAs are given reasons to applly the law as it already stands. Police made to know and act according to the law as it already stands. For both Ts and LLs who break said laws to be brought to book, using laws that often already exist! Basically, the existing laws are probably fine, but with a total lack of adequate policing both Ts and LLs can be dealt with very badly with little or no recourse.

And for the poster asking about the notice they need to give at the end of a fixed tenancy, in a rolling tenancy a tenant is only obliged to give 1 month's notice, in line with a rental period anything else about notice in the AST can be ignored as it cannot override the law!

That a T does not know this is indicative of some of the issues the industry faces (not blaming the poster, just pointing out that this is a real issue that need not exist!)

I hope if renters will now have life time tenancy's they become liable for their own repair costs Not such a stupid statement. It could make some residential tenancies like commercial ones. Then the LL would be responsible for the fabric of the building and the tenant for the interior and the contents.

You disgust me. May not be a well thought out position given the possible reality of the suggestion!

If the new legislation is implemented and does not allow me the option to evict a bad tenant or, dare I say, sell the property one day, then I shall be selling up before the legislation hits.

This won't benefit tenants in the long term, landlords have had just about enough, with increased legislation, increased tax, little to no support when tenants behave badly, and in recent surveys 46% of landlords report they have experienced a problem tenant ...
The government appears to have forgotten that they have almost no social housing, people further south than Birmingham can't afford to buy so what exactly are they going to do when landlords decide enough enough?

Maybe the Local Authority can buy up the housing stock. Then we could all be social tenants.
Having expereinced both LA and a private LL I know which I prefer. The LA never carreid out repairs - or if they did I'd have to wait in for three days. The neighbours were real problem neighbours and the LA couldn't evict. My rent was badly messed up, (the LA had paid it into the wrong rent account and were threatening eviction yet I could never see or speak to anyone!). My private LLs were much, much better - by miles!
That is just a personal experience but I use it to say that everyone needs options when renting.

It'll just make me as a landlord even pickier about tenants in the first place

While I support the idea in principle, I expect many LLs will feel as you do - and how that will impact on more vulnerable would-be tenants remains to be seen

Law of unintended consequences and all that ...

Homefireburn1ng. You really need to read what other people are writing and at least try to understand it.

Perhaps the landlord can pay a fee to the tenant if they want to evict them early to sell and it's not the tenants choice. For example, if they they could give the tenant some compensation for having to find a new place so the equivalent of 6 months rent or some sort of formula? That would put off LLs evicting tenants with the pretence that they are going to to sell when they just want to raise the rent or an excuse to evict the tenant such as not wanting to make repairs.

CuriousaboutSamphire
A very well informed post.

I might take a work contract next year which will involve moving for a year, the plan was to rent our house out and rent in the other location, almost certainly moving back at the end of the year (this would all be disclosed before anyone even looked at the house). If this law comes in, there’s no way we’d take that risk on renting it out, we will leave it either empty or one of our nieces/newphews/godchildren can live in it. We will probably just rent somewhere a bit smaller/cheaper than we’d planned.

IF it was a longer contract then we might consider still renting the house out, but if we did we would be vetting the tenants to the nth degree, their incomes would need to be significantly higher than we’d insist on now, their jobs more secure and no children or pets and of an age where children are highly unlikely. Whereas if it stays how it is now I’d be happy with children and pets etc.

IF we are going to be in a position where tenants hold all the cards as to when the tenancy ends, of course we will have to be as careful as possible to choose the safest tenants we can in regard to rent payments, care of the property and not pissing our neighbours off.

Anyone who thinks this will benefit anyone, IMO, is deluded.

Incredibly you could. Just not using the most common form of contract, the AST, Assured Shorthold Tenancy. There may be some changes but there will still be a need fixed, short term tenancies.

The truth is that, after a short period of upheaval whist LLs and LAs get their paperwork sorted, there will be very little difference for all sensible Ts and LLs. The biggest difference a T will feel is through the Tenant Fee Ban this June - and that won't be a positive change either! Again, embroidering round the egde and unintended yet blindingly obvious consequences (see Scotland).

And thans Didyousaysomethingdarling I try to stay on top of it all so I can talk sense to my clients, LAs, LLs and Ts alike!