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?

[Solopower1]

Caitlin, I rent in Scotland. Whatever the laws, there is still no security of tenure for young families (or anyone else).

Renting is really hard in the private sector. Can you imagine being told to leave your home (two weeks before Christmas) after you had lived there for six years, after being a model tenant, after having made friends, got a job nearby, sent your child to a local school? No need for lurid horror stories - just that perfectly legal fact. That wouldn't happen with a council house.

And he was a good landlord. Apart from his habit of letting himself into the flat when I was out, that is. Totally illegal, but how could I prove it? And all that would happen would be that I would lose my hishome. Laws, no matter how good, can't protect all of us all of the time. We need a fairer system.

Renting is horrible for those reasons: lack of security, lack of privacy.

[JessicaMary]

Yes, London is different although anywhere in the UK I would advise our children to buy as soon as they can as early as they can whatever it takes if they can manage it for all kinds of reasons.

If the state wants long term leases to be compulsory it could build (or buy properties) and offer them on that basis. Assured shortholds can be any period as far as I know, certainly up to 10 years and some landlords want that but most of them and most tenants at least in London anyway and all those without families including all those single men after divorce who probably expect to buy again or remarry again but not sure when it will happen do not really want to sign up to long deals.

i think an awful lot of people who own on this thread will also pay half their net income on mortgage - mine was costing me £90k a year interest /costs when interest rates were 6%, by the way, after divorce - not fun when you've no savings and are over drawn. There are a lot of risks with trying to secure your future sometimes. I also remember the day Black Monday when interest rates rose twice first to 8% and then to 12% and we had borrowed 5x joint salaries and selling two buy to lets at about a third of what we'd paid for them. Owning is not some easy bed of roses for the spoilt rich who always do well out of it either although on balance as I say if you can buy ideally before you have children in your 20s it tends to be a good plan.