AIBU to worry about Section 21 ending causing mass evictions?

[Itsabingthin]

Has anyone noticed mass evictions happening due to the section 21 ending? In may the new law will make it harder for landlords to evict tenants so a lot are evicting tenants now, even good ones.

My friend got a surprise eviction notice yesterday and she is in temporary housing as it is. The neighbours opposite me are also getting evicted. These are no fault evictions.

Where will all these families go?

@Catterbat there's little to no money left in being a landlord now for many, the risks are also high, it is better to sell than make a loss. A non paying tenant can take months to evict and no guarantee you'll ever see the money you're owed.

What will happen? Long term stability for decades and beyond, at the expense of limited issues for a few months as things stabilise around the time of the change.

just to add, I will never donate a penny to shelter ever again.

..big companies will buy them up and fill the breach and rents will increase hugely.

Big companies aren't interested in buying and renting out individual flats and houses. They buy up or build blocks of flats, entire developments or parts of developments.

Take a look at what properties Lloyds and Grainger are renting out on their websites, for instance
https://www.lloydsliving.co.uk/
https://www.graingerplc.co.uk/

Edited for spelling

The houses will still exist. Either they will flood the housing market causing prices to drop and current renters will be able to afford them (and for those who can't, they will rent the properties vacated by those who can) or they will be back on the rental market offered for rent with new contracts and a higher £ pm.

Yep, I'm currently in a Travelodge with my DH and 3 sons.

If you're right in thinking most landlords will end tenancies and sell up, this will vastly increase the supply of homes for sale. Consequently, prices should go down and more people will be able to buy.

This is fine where people have the deposit to be able to buy. The people who really suffer are those without the deposit who face an ever increasing rent (due to the scarcity of rental properties) and are therefore even less able to save for the deposit. These people end up trapped in renting, mainly down to not having a bank of mum and dad to help with the deposit. Lack of social mobility is becoming increasingly ingrained in this country.

Yes, I agree. The lack of social mobility is getting worse and it's hurting us.

I'm not keeping up with this, but am wondering if the govt is simultaneously easing restrictions and providing incentives to housing associations or local authority housing schemes? Could kill two birds, in that case.

The requirements for bringing a house up to standard with certificates and safety measures are baffling when private owners don’t have the same requirements. I have been a landlord in the past when our family worked abroad for a few years. It was a really good family home in an area desperately short of housing. But wouldn’t meet energy efficiency standards and these days I would have had to do expensive work to make it comply.

Why are the housing requirements not universal and only needed because someone is a tenant? I know it’s because a landlord has to take responsibility - but it’s infantilising people to not allow them to pay their money and take their choice to live somewhere without wired in smoke alarms and energy efficiency if that’s all that’s available.

My friend would have been an accidental landlord as she’s met someone and moved in with him and her 3 bedroom house is empty. She said she’d rather hang on to it and rent it out in case relationship doesn’t work out. But now she’s too worried about being a landlord so it’s been empty for 9 months now.

Can someone explain why ‘BlackRock’ etc automatically = bad?

Investment / asset management firms manage large sums of money that they accrue from lots of small investors and some larger ones (like pension funds). The investors want return on their investment. If an investment company builds a rental property then they receive steady income in the form of rent, which is just the sort of thing their investors want.

They don’t want the faff of a revolving door of tenants so try to be fair landlords. They’re good because the chance of them evicting you for no good reason is minimal so you can get truly invested in the local area / schools without fear that you’re going to have to move constantly. They have money to make any necessary repairs. Look to continental Europe where investors owning ‘build to rent’ blocks is far more common. People seem happy to rent there.

If they charged above market rent who would pay it? Well actually with the evictions going on rents in the UK will be soaring soon so the market rent will be far far higher than ever. But that’s what we wanted with the RRB, no?

The bad landlords will continue being bad landlords, tenants won’t dare speak up as they will know how hard it is to find another home.

Landlords who rent out individual rooms without the licence or tiny rooms to families will keep doing so.

The law abiding ones will realise £100 profit a month just isn’t worth it. So rents will rise or they will sell.

But I’m sure the government or a caring corporation (hedge fund) will step in and do a far better job at providing homes than individual landlords. And those caring corporations certainly won’t want a profit of £100 per house.

I am not a landlord. I understand American is banning companies mass buying housing - Labour should do the same - but they won’t.

Maybe black rock are buying as they knew the Gov policy would cause rents to sky rocket. Will they take more money for asylum seekers rent or rent to a local family for less?

Id far prefer to rent from a person than a corporation with departments you can never get hold of.

Millions of happy renters in the continent would disagree with you. But hey, what would they know?

A lot of landlords are evicting to re-let though not sell. The letting agent who manages a neighbours property (which usually has only a handful of properties to let on their books) has loads of properties available to rent from April. They advised landlords to evict and relet before the changes in May.

Growing up and even now, none of the (mortgaged) houses I lived in would meet rental standards.

Agree with PP who said the landlords rental property is likely a higher state of energy efficiency and snag-list stuff than their own house they live in themselves!

Or the big companies don’t step in and house prices fall massively. Great for ftb but not so good for people who have already bought and are in negative equity.

Personally I’d love to see house prices fall but I’d feel sorry for anyone affected by that if it happens.

Why? I genuinely don’t see the benefit for this but appreciate I might be missing something.

A lot of my friends are landlords and aren’t doing this. They hate having to get new tenants. Not only do you have a couple of dead months with no income but you have to redecorate, new carpets, pay fees to the letting agents for finding new people and of course the risk that you get rid of decent tenant for unknown ones.

The only time I could see it being useful if you have people renting who you already know miss rent payments, etc. 🤷‍♀️

@Buzzlightfear

To answer your question. I’m a landlord and am on a FB and various other LL forums - basically they’re scared. Why?

The fines are huge for not being compliant.
Before May we have to issue a notice to tenants about the new changes - failure to do so £7000 fine. Failure to protect a deposit within 30 days 1-3 times the deposit amount. Failure to register with ICO £4000 fine and so on. if you need a selective licence for your property up to £1000. Yes , a LL should adhere and be compliant but a mistake will be costly.

There are also tenant forums advising people to play the system - move in don’t pay your rent it’ll take 18 months to get you out. Nice cheap living. Not many want to take the risk of this happening.

These are just some of the reasons why they’re exiting.

I have lovely tenants but as soon as they move out I will be selling up. Not because of the new rules but because of age.

Yep. And the mass sale of private rentals. It was obvious it would happen. But the private rental market now is horrifically expensive and very very limited. I really feel for the vulnerable in this equation. But it was a self fulfilling prophecy. Private landlords will stop being landlords if there is no benefit to them.

This is what we have done. Had two rental properties which were used by us or family and then kept on to rent out.
We always let at very good rental prices (below going rate) and were good landlords.
we sold both last year due to changes with the section 21 clause and because financially it just wasn’t making any sense to continue anymore.

Section 21 notices allow landlords to evict on a known pathway and the tenant can’t spin it out indefinitely - we evicted a non paying tenant under a section 21 a few years ago in preference to using a section 8 (which was designed for non payers) because it was so much more straightforward. The courts are backed up now so getting rid of nightmare tenants in the future is going to be hideous and I have a monthly mortgage to pay…
The non paying tenant still owes us £11k.
i will be selling up when our current tenants give notice.

The corporate landlord we had was by far the best and easiest to deal with.

@Buzzlightfear plus you can’t say no to dogs or charge more for them. Great you may say.

I had a tenant once who had 3 huge dogs, she didn’t tell me at the time, when she moved out, after only living there a short while, I had to rip up all the carpets as they stank of dog wee. I still remember the stench - it was awful.

The new Act says tough you have to accept this. Another reason why LLs are exiting.

Exactly, the dreaded service charges. Also the other crap that comes with leasehold tenure. The days of sellers making money on flats are long gone, generally speaking. There is an enormous number of flats for sale, often reduced and on sale for months and months. I would never buy one, no matter how cheap. More broadly, the property market is nowhere near as buoyant as a few years ago, so some landlords hoping to sell are in for a rude awakening.