The problems I'm talking about are not due to the removal of tax relief on mortgage interest - that's an entirely different problem which wouldn't be faced by someone buying for cash.
The proposed removal of Section 21 will become a huge problem for all Landlords (except the lucky few who never have a bad tenant). Section 21 may be called a 'no fault' eviction, but what it really is is a 'no reason given' eviction. Landlords use this to evict tenants who don't pay, who cause damage, who are antisocial etc etc as it avoids having to have a court case. As it is, from issuing notice to getting the bailiffs in, using Section 21, takes at least a year at present. Using Section 8 (for fault) takes much longer as the courts are so clogged up. And when all the Landlords suddenly have no recourse to Section 21, then most of those evictions will have to go through the courts instead. They already don't have capacity and with that enormous increase in cases evictions are likely to take at least two years! And all the time tenants can be not paying, trashing the place etc etc.
Also it will be a particular problem for shared houses (HMOs) as landlords need to be able to evict people who cause problems for the other sharers - noisy/dirty/not paying share of communal costs etc. This is likely to be below the threshold for using antisocial behaviour grounds, and how would you prove it anyway. It would almost certainly mean that the good tenants will just leave, and then if you get more, they will leave too. I just can't see how it's possible to run shared houses if you aren't going to be able to get rid of troublemakers.
And what this will mean for tenants is that landlords are going to be extra, extra picky about who they take. If you risk not being able to evict for such a long time then you will never take a chance on someone. Only those tenants with the best credit history, employment history and references will be considered. I know, if Section 21 is removed, I would rather leave a house empty for a couple of months than take a chance on anyone I'm not as sure as I can be about.
And as for the EPC regulations. At present they must be a minimum of D I think, which is fair enough. It was proposed (until the Tories finally saw sense) to raise the minimum to a C. The thing is a huge proportion of the housing stock (certainly in London and probably in most of the country) are Victorian terraces. These are solid wall construction and so difficult to insulate. Even with good quality double glazing, double glazed doors, new boiler, loft insulation etc most Victorian terraces still only rate a D. To get to a C would involve digging up and replacing all the floors and cladding the outside. An average cost to do this would be £15 - 20,000. And even then it would only be a C. I can't see many homeowners doing this to their Victorian terraces - the cost, disruption (and ugly cladding) are way out of proportion to the benefits of going from an EPC D to a C. If this were to be brought in after all then thousands of tenants will be getting evicted, Landlords will be trying to sell the houses and the housing market will collapse. You may think that would be a good thing in the long run, but the chaos and disruption would be off the scale.