Labour's Proposed Tenancy Law Reforms

[Rommell]

www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/30/ed-miliband-labour-rental-market-reforms-property

Miliband announces long-overdue reforms concerning security of tenure, agency fees and a mechanism to determine rent rises, but stops short of rent capping. Dangerously Communist or a sensible measure to protect the millions reliant on a largely unregulated private rental market?

[ReallyTired]

MinesAPintOfTea What would you do if someone committed a crime while having a tenant in situ. It would be a bit harsh to evict somoene because their landlord has been convicted of fraud. I suppose we would have to decide what offenses should bar someone from becoming a landlord. It would be a bit harsh to bar someone with a long spent conviction.

Landlords really can make a tenant's life miserable in subtle ways if they choose to. My fear with three year tenancies is that a landlord would make a tenant's life hell if they could not give two months notice.

AST work well for both landlord and tenant. Why fix something that aint broke. There are lots of parts of the renting system that needs looking at.

[specialsubject]

ah, yes, Rommell. That's a familiar name in these debates....

Withholding rent is not allowed. Nor is keeping a deposit for no reason. Harrassing tenants is also illegal.

you don't need to take a 'leap of faith'. You inspect the property, talk to the landlord and make an adult decision.

the landlord may need the rent to pay the mortgage on the place, perhaps they have bought it as an investment for their old age? If you'll only rent from someone whose house cannot be repossessed then you can only rent from someone who has no mortgage. and that produces shrieks of 'rich entitled bastards' on here.

a CRB check for someone wanting to become a landlord seems quite reasonable. And for anyone setting up as a letting agent. But Millibean hasn't mentioned that.

as usual, wrong solution from an out of touch politician.

[Rommell]

ASTs work well for landlords. For tenants, not so much. They are not designed to give people long-term security, and some tenants do need that. For those that don't, they would still be able to give notice under what Miliband is proposing, so it won't affect them. But for those that do actually need a home, long-term, it will have a very positive impact.

[Rommell]

^You inspect the property, talk to the landlord and make an adult decision.^

And this is not enough for landlords to do with tenants, because ... [insert bullshit here]

[ReallyTired]

specialsubject

I think that Rommell makes good contributions to these debates.

Anyway I don't think a landlord needs a CRB check. Being a landlord is different to working with vunerable people. You are looking at different things. Prehaps I would call it a landlord check. Being fit to work with children and fit to be a landlord are two different things.

A CRB check looks at crimes commited as a child. I think it would be crazy to bar someone from being a landlord because they had a caution for stealing sweets from Woolworths at the age of 13.

For example I would bar anyone from being a landlord who has been made bankcrupt in the last five years. Or has a fraud conviction. Unlike a CRB check I think it would be unreasonable to expect a landlord to declare spent convictions or driving convictions. I would bar someone who had been jail from being a landlord for ten years.

[MinesAPintOfTea]

ReallyTired whilst that would be an issue when the law was implemented it could be such that it only applies to new tennancies. If you restrict the banning to "big" crimes, LL specific offences and bankruptcy then you are likely to lose your home due to the repercussions on them.

[Rommell]

Thanks ReallyTired and I agree with you on the CRB check thing. There are some things that are illegal (eg speeding, being caught shoplifting 20 years ago) that wouldn't have an impact on fitness to be a landlord. On the other side, declaring oneself bankrupt is not illegal but does, I would argue, impact on fitness to be a landlord.

[ReallyTired]

MinesAPintOfTea
I can't see why you can't force an existing landlord to use registered agency offering a fully managed service. At least it would mean the gas safety checks get done.

I agree its wrong to punish a tenant for the sins of his landlord by evicting him. Prehaps criminal landlords could be forced to sign their properties over to the council on a long term lease by a judge.

[ReallyTired]

"
I agree its wrong to punish a tenant for the sins of his landlord by evicting him. Prehaps criminal landlords could be forced to sign their properties over to the council on a long term lease by a judge."

Just thinking that if a criminal landlord had his property conficated he might stop paying the mortgage.

The biggest issue ofcourse is when a landlord cannot/ doesnt pay a mortgage for whatever reason and the mortgage property gets preposssed. I think a council would have to take on the mortgage payments, but its a huge problem is the mortgage is more than the rent.

Prehaps we need to look at how rental property repossession proceedings should work. At moment an excellent tenant can lose their home with very little notice, even if they have a contract and always pay their rent on time. I feel that this is a serious problem that needs looking at.

[MaryWestmacott]

Hmm, how long would a family member have to need to property for? Because I see a lot of cousins/adult children/grandparents suddenly 'needing' a property if it was the only way to get a tenant out for 2.5 years. If you only needed to stay in it for a month or so to be on side with the laws, I'm pretty sure most landlords would find someone in their extended family to move in for free to fulfil that.

[MinesAPintOfTea]

ReallyTired because as things stand at the moment it is the landlord's responsibility to do everything (including the gas safety checks) and if they choose an incompetent agent they can't sign over their legal responsibilities, they are just asking that agent to organise things for them.

How do you force someone to pay for a service they don't want and choose that service to ensure it will fulfil their legal responsibilities, especially when the person choosing has shown they will neglect those elsewhere? There are a lot of agents which don't bother to make sure properties are legal, I suspect these are also the ones which don't charge LLs as much (only experienced this as a tenant).

I agree a system where properties can be sold with sitting tenants would be better, especially where the new owner is intending to let the property, and carrying that over into repossessions would work well for tenants too.

[WheresRyder]

in theory it seems ok, but having already been the victim of a ll who wanted the property back for his 'family' to then twice see I back on the rental market at a couple of hundred £ in rent more than I was paying. The policy wouldn't stop that, in fact would seem that for a lot of landlords would be the reason that they would give so that they could charge higher rents.

I like the security aspect, as renter with dc, who all attend local schools, security would be lovely. if hey gave out 3/5 year tenancies, this is in line with the new local authority tenancy agreements, meaning both private and social tenants would have the same kind of security.

Private renting suits me in many ways, as a divorcee with a single income, I cannot afford to buy in the area that I work, or anywhere commutable, as I work and am not homeless I am not eligible for social housing (or at least I can go on the waiting list but highly unlikely to ever reach the top of the list), but I hated not having any security and ll's who would only commit to 6month tenancies and often moving on after the 6 months due to the rising rents here in the SE. I do have a decent ll now and I hope she finds me to be a decent tenant (never late with rent, keep house clean and tidy and let her know any issues asap, allow access to fix issues etc) but still having a 3/5yr tenancy agreement with controlled rent increases would be great.

[Rommell]

Quite a few of the objections people have to this proposal seem to hinge on the fact that some landlords might break the law - ie that they might lie about why they wanted the property back, they might harass tenants etc. And yes of course there are plenty of laws that are broken all the time, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have them.

[SnowinBerlin]

These proposals are a start - they may not be brilliant, they may be difficult to enforce, but at the moment Labour are the only main party attempting to acknowledge the fact there's a huge problem with security and protection for the explosion of tenants in the private rental sector.

I had hoped that this would spur the other parties to consider how they'd address the same issue. However, Grant Shapps has popped up for the Tories yelling "Venezuela" and "1970s Vietnam". I'm not joking on the last one, he actually quoted the 1970s Vietnamese Foreign Minister on how rent control (which this isn't) had destroyed Hanoi in a way the Americans had failed to through bombing.

The Renter vote is something that all parties need to consider in their manifestos.

[SnowinBerlin]

This is the sort of abuse that needs to be addressed - retaliatory evictions for requesting repairs.

[ReallyTired]

SnowinBerlin

Retalitory evictions make no financial sense. It makes sense to fix a boiler with tenant in situ. I recently had a massive boiler repair costing roughly £500. £500 isn't even one months rent.

The Wilsons are notiously evil landlords. The majority of landlords are not like that. Surely it makes sense to look at regulating property managment rather than making it impossible to evict a tenant.

[Caitlin17]

The situation in Scotland is far more regulated re landlord's responsibilities and registration. We have the equivalent of ASTs which Shelter want rid of but the sector will lose an awful lot of property if that happens. I have 2 flats bought with earned income with no mortgage. Neither are likely to be long term family homes; my son might move into one of them. I would not let the other out at all if tenants had absolute security of tenure. It would simply sit empty in case I needed to sell it, it's my pension.

Re other countries my friends who were working in Belgium thought they had the worst of both worlds; landlords in Belgium who wouldn't do anything, didn't provide any safety checks, houses with no fire alarms, didn't do annual checks on boilers etc, didn't do repairs but tenants of their own Scotland where they had to do all of this. We're not talking student flats in Belgium but relatively senior government staff.

[SnowinBerlin]

The Wilsons are notiously evil landlords. The majority of landlords are not like that.

Agree. But the Wilsons are a a shining example of how dodgy landlords can operate with impunity and how vulnerable tenants are. They own over 1,000 properties in one town and control almost the entire rental market in Ashford. Two people controlling the lives of thousands.

They openly boast about how badly they treat their tenants - even giving TV interviews about how they have fun evicting. Ask for repairs? Evicted. Fergus Wilson drives past your house and thinks the car on your drive is too nice. Evicted. On in-work benefits? Evicted. He sued a plumber who condemned a death-trap boiler, as by refusing to pass it as safe he cost him rental income. He lost but refuses to pay the plumber's costs. The Wilsons are totally untouchable, and their tenants are cowed by their threats of immediate retaliation.

I would like to see them put up against a wall and shot subject to more stringent regulation which protects their tenants.

[Rommell]

Iseenyou, we don't even have a free market here anyway - it is distorted by LHA, £9.3 billion of which goes to private landlords every year. Landlords often seem to forget that many of them are being subsidised by the state when they wax lyrical about the free market.

[Rommell]

Iseenyou the £9.3 billion figure is correct. I can't find the govt statistic page where I saw it (and it was actually a govt statistic, not an opinion piece), but this article quotes it as well:

www.insidehousing.co.uk/increase-council-powers-to-improve-standard-of-prs-homes-says-think-tank/7001486.article

That is £9.3 billion a year, every year, that could be going towards building council housing which is an investment that pays for itself many times over. And instead it is all going into building up private property empires. It is nothing short of scandalous.

There is another article here:

www.gmb.org.uk/newsroom/landlords-hit-housing-benefit-jackpot

which makes for similarly depressing reading, just because of the sums of money sloshing about. It's a gravy train, and it's being funded by every tax-payer.

[ReallyTired]

Why make life hell for honest law abididng landlords. We need laws to regulate crooked landlords and enforce exisiting laws.

Iseenyou

The problem with increasing captical gains tax is charged on lots of different types of investment. For example if someone works hard on setting up a business then sells that business they could be charged captial gains tax. Captial gains tax is also paid on shares. If people don't invest in shares then its hard for enterpenuers to get finance to realise their dreams.

Punitive captical gains tax discourages initative and damages the ecomony. People need a reward for taking on a risk. Even honest landlords.

[Caitlin17]

Rommell you know as a landlord I pay tax too. As it happens the market for my flats are not tenants who will be on housing benefit. The location, size and Council tax band of one means is not a flat anyone relying on benefits would consider and it's not a family home. The other is a one bedroom flat in a traditional working class area but changing demographics mean it's now attractive to students or young workers looking for a flat cheap enough to rent without having to share.

Neither has a mortgage on it. The first one was bought as my husband and I were going to separate. I had a mortgage to buy it. it happened just having the possibility of separate houses was enough to keep us together. It was more or less unoccupied for about 3 years before I started letting it. The mortgage was paid from my income, I didn't need the rent to pay it.

[Caitlin17]

ReallyTired we do have laws to deal with bad landlords. Scotland has a bucket load of legislation. We do seem to be ahead of England as every landlord in Scotland has had to be registered as a fit and proper person with the Local Authority. Recovery of agency and other expenses is illegal.Repairs can be forced by order of The Private Rented Housing Panel.
If my tenants behave in an anti social manner the Council can force me to deal with it.

If there is still bad landlords in Scotland that's a failure of the regulatory authorities to user the powers available to them.

I'm at bit sceptical at the idea there isn't an English equivalent of these laws.