To think tenants aren't aware of the effect the section 21 ban will have?

[Treacletoots]

Another win for tenants... No more no fault evictions. Or is it a case of be careful what you wish for?

An unintended consequence of this will likely be more section 8 notices if a landlord needs to remove a tenant. Section 8 notices usually are accompanied by a CCJ if they are successful and due to rent arrears. Currently most landlords use section 21 to save the hassle of court and the tenant doesnt get a CCJ.

Good landlords simply don't evict good tenants for no reason. It doesn't make sense. With the tenant fee bans it makes even less sense to remove tenants and then have to fork out again to refresh the property, re reference new tenants, advertise etc.

In 90%of cases tenancies are ended by the tenant and in only 2% are they revenge evictions. Landlords will be more worried than ever to let to higher risk tenants so may just sell up, losing houses from the rental market. Local authorities don't have enough housing to re home people and so this will likely cause more homeless.

Can nobody else see that banning section 21 will likely lead to more suffering, not less!

"In Europe there is much tighter legislation around renting"

Yup. I live in Germany and I've been both LL and renter - the system is more stable for both and has far fewer forms etc

Big difference in Germany:
an LL can't normally evict a tenant just to sell
However, a sitting tenant is actually an asset in a sale, so LLs can easil sell if they want their capital back.

I'm renting now in Germany - previous tenant was here for 40 years
Tenants can decorate to their own taste, just have to paint white again before they move out
Some tenants buy their own kitchens, which they either sell on to the next tenant, or take with them.

I was never asked for a credit check, just 3 months salary slip
The system of every resident being registered at the town hall is probably why - very easy to chase a non-payer.
As an LL, I had to do that once re a guy whose business went bust; he moved 3 times to escape his arrears, but to no avail and he had to pay all my costs too

I found it much less stressful as an LL in Germany than in the UK

I'd never rent in the UK, as there is no longterm security and you can't treat the place like a real home.

Oh and in Germany there are no inspections by agents during the tenancy
So tenants have their privacy
So long as they pay the rent and don't create a clear nuisance to the neighbours, tenants can stay 40 years, redecorate as they please, with no checks on them

I’m actually quite worried about this.
We are accidental landlords - husband accepted a job abroad and we didn’t want to sell and loose our house in the U.K. as this is a time limited contract. We have tenants in who are very good, always pay on time and have looked after the place very welll.
We have 18 months left until we come home. We will, at some point, need to sell our property and buy another, as it turns out we’re coming back to a different hit of the U.K. in order to sell we will need our tenants out, although I will feel sorry for them as they have been very very good tenants.
If I can’t evict them when we come home, how am I going to be able to afford to get my own house? I don’t want to rent, and will achieve substantially less on an occupied sale than an empty sale.
None of this was even envisioned 3 1/2 years ago when we left the U.K.

Frenchfancy - selling the property is discounted, as is moving back into the property

I totally agree that the moment a property is rented it becomes the home of the tenant, end of. As for letting with the intention to sale without informing the tenant, that should be made illegal.

However, I think this is too much of a generalisation
If a landlord is messed about, the largest loss they're looking at is financial. And if you can't afford the eviction and rent loss of a rogue tenant, you shouldn't be a landlord
If all landlords who do rely on regular rent to keep the house we're to stop being landlords, there would be a crisis of lack of ré tal property and even longer waits for social properties. Financial losses do to tenants who mess about could be huge, both in terms of lack of re tal but sometimes even worse with damage. £10k is not unheard off. If you only let one property, this is a massive amount to find, especially after paying taxes on the property.

As for the comment that tenants pay for the mortgage, we'll that's is correct, or if not paying the mortgage, paying their pension, but this only seem unfair because the person is visible. Our taxes go towards people's homes and pensions, some who have never worked nor contributed in their lives.

At least whilst renting it gives someone both a home and a pension to someone who will not rely on benefits for it. It is highly likely that in 10 years time, if not earlier, people who receive an income from property and have a private pension won't be able to claim the state pension. For all we know, it is those who are renting who'll have the last laugh, getting in benefits, ie. Tax payers money, as much if not more what landlords will get from their own investment, whilst still having to pay taxes!

Swingofthings and where will these properties disappear? So if the landlords start selling up what happens to these rental properties?

I have no idea who is advising the government on laws and legislation which I think is aimed at limiting landlords and the BTL industry because all they have ended up doing is forcing rents up and costing tenants more money.

Everything has been done with an eye on protecting tenants rights but not really understanding the moves Landlords will take to protect their interests.

The legislation stating that interest on a mortgage could not be put against the tax bill just resulted in Landlords raising rents to protect their income.

After all these little niggles aimed at Landlords and the cry of "There will be a flood of properties on the market and the price will go down"
There hasn't been a big drop in prices due to this and there hasn't been this big rush of FTBs buying up places.

@icedgem85 what you've witnessed there is a massive racist arsehole for which I'm afraid we don't seem to have any answer for in the UK and seems to be on the rise since brexit :(

I'm genuinely disgusted how you were treated, and can understand your negative opinion towards landlords.

Another point of note for unintended consequences, with the tenants fee ban, its going to make lets with pets more and more rare.

I allow my tenants pets and 4 out of 5 times they've been no problem. 1 out of 5 I had to replace every carpet in the house because it was not usable ever again.

The dog wasn't the problem in my opinion, the tenants allowing it to crap on the carpet and not taking it out enough obviously were the issue.

Sadly a 5 week deposit doesn't come close to replacing the carpets. How many lls will just say no pets in the future rather than risk losing thousands of pounds?

Do fees need to be capped. Absolutely. I have always used open rent which charges £25 for referencing and that's all my tenants have ever paid. But the total fee ban, will again only serve to make landlords even more picky.

Do fees need to be capped. Absolutely. I have always used open rent which charges £25 for referencing and that's all my tenants have ever paid. But the total fee ban, will again only serve to make landlords even more picky. Yep! I make my living providing one of the services that is currently often shared by LL and T. Paying for my Check Out usually helps tenants focus on the ingoing inventory and they tend to leave things very much as found, FTW notwithstanding.

Marketing science has long known that a thing is worth what was paid for it, free things have little value. We all know that, it is pretty much a given.

There are some much more effective things that could have been changed that really would have made renting easier and safer for all sides - and the industry knows it only too well. Trade press has items in it every day, Landlordzone (which is a great resource for LLs and tenants alike) is full of debates, discussions and guesstimates on how the new laws will fail to deliver. Yet nobody seems to have asked them.

Shelter seems to come in for a lot of criticism for its poltical input here. Reading some of there statements it is only too easy to see that they have a very skewed, Londoncentric, view of the rental market and have pushed for changes that fit their own agenda!

@curiousaboutsamphire. Explains perhaps why university take up has risen since the introduction of fees! I'm so old, I could have gone for free. Most of my peers thought, bugger that, that looks far too much work, I'd rather get a job, the irony!

I do agree the change will make LL's less likely to accept any risk, if they think it'll be more complicated and complex to evict if needed.

I'm worried we'll see LLs not accepting pets, children, pregnant women, DSS, disabled, first time renters, etc.

It'll be full-time employed high earning couples with a solid rental and employment history allowed only. Which means tenants living in shit houses with shit landlords won't be able to move out.

Ironically, those are the ones that need protecting.

All these objections by landlords just point to the need for substantial overhaul of the law on tenancy to make profit from rentals a much more serious, committed business and redefine the rental market as a means of letting the private sector offer socialised housing.

I’m struck by how many have said “but it’s my home!”. They should be thinking “it’s a property in my heavily regulated housing business that I operate on an indefinite basis because I chose to be a landlord”.

Hmmm the government is pretty happy picking up the extra tax. As I’ve said on other threads I could have comfortably just shut the door on my 4 bed detached and just left it empty, but instead I rented it for 3 years to a family at £300 a month below market rate. They’ve ended up owing me £4000 in rent arrears etc so wouldn’t make that mistake again

A prohibition on multiple property ownership other than for licensed long-term landlords would be part of the legal overhaul.

But I accept this is all theoretical, would be very complex and would mean vast change in the market. So not for this thread!

I'm worried we'll see LLs not accepting pets, children, pregnant women, DSS, disabled, first time renters, etc ... Ironically, those are the ones that need protecting

This is precisely what I've been saying all along, and short of forcing LLs to take tenants they don't want - which obviously isn't going to work - I'm not sure how it can be overcome

I'd hope we all accept the need for proper protections, but that has to apply to everyone, and however much the all-LLs-are-bastards folk might enjoy it, legislation inspired by little more than spite really isn't sensible

Hideous as some LLs' behaviour is, it's interesting to see Shelter's own data on the numbers his actually affects - which all makes me wonder if this isn't merely politically-motivated headline grabbing in advance of the local elections

@KissingInTheRain if it's just a temporary let of your only home then it's not an indefinite let in your "housing business". You are suggesting landlords are too focused on profit yet are simultaneously arguing they should see it as more of a business. You can't have it both ways.

While my tenants were in, it was their home. But it is still my home that I needed back after and that I spent years and every penny I had on renovating, only for them to come in and trash it. And the deposit didn't cover the damage. I'm not a professional landlord and I couldn't assume the cost, I'm a soon to be single mum on a low income and my flat is all I have. I was also obviously a tenant myself during this time, so I have seen both sides, and I was so so much more respectful there than they were in my property - unfortunately, there are some bad tenants around, this is not all tenants = good landlords = evil as it is in the black and white ideological prism many seem to be looking at this through.

People like me actually make up a large percentage of the rental market. If you want us out - and to be honest that will happen if the trend continues - then we won't be selling our homes and flooding the market with cheap properties, we'll be leaving them empty or not going away, putting further pressure on demand/prices. So be careful what you wish for.

People like me actually make up a large percentage of the rental market

Where's the data/link for that?

I'm not a professional landlord and I couldn't assume the cost

Then you shouldn't rent your home out. Simple as that. I'm not surprised you had problem tenants, you're a problem 'accidental' landlord.

The Residential Landlord’s’ Association claims that only 11% of tenancies are ended by landlords, with over three quarters of these evictions due to high rent arrears. In fact the statistics show that there are more social tenants evicted every year than there are in the private sector.
The lack of provision for the most vulnerable tenants, many of whom would previously been housed in what is now a depleted social housing sector, it would seem, has left private tenants increasingly defaulting on rental payments.
So, it could be argued, it’s the Government’s own actions that brought about a rise in homelessness, and that if abolishing no-fault evictions results in a mass exodus of landlords, then it will probably result in an even greater crisis in English housing than already exists.

This is taken from an article on Landlord Zone and I completely agree with it. If section 8 is brought in there is no chance I would rent to anyone I deemed to be even a slight risk, so definitely not anyone receiving UC.

The government needs to sort out the lack of social housing and UC, not bring in ill considered changes which will negatively impact the rental market.

Landlords with multiple properties who let as their sole business (who are imo generally the crap landlords) will no doubt work around Section 8 and still evict tenants unfairly. The "accidental" landlords like myself will most likely either sell up or become far more stringent which will result in there being less well looked after properties available which are owned by decent landlords.

With this new law, does anyone know what happens if a landlord is forced to sell rented out property due to divorce? How much notice can we give to a tenant?

This new law does not exist yet.

Agree that bad landlords seem to be able to ignore any of the laws, or interpret them in ways that make the law ineffective.

I just don’t get why there is so much hatred on MN for landlords. I rent, and need a home, so I depend on landlords to provide me with a roof over my head. No landlord = nowhere to live. If the landlord decided not to rent anymore, it would not benefit me or other renters, because the extra property on the market for sale would still be out of reach for most renters, who mainly rent because they can’t afford to get on the property ladder. Obviously there are crap landlords, but there are also a hell of a lot crap tenants too.

This new law comes in in June this year. Everyone in the industry needs to gear up for it...

Oops. Thought I was on the fee ban thread - sorry.