Renters rights bill

[MoneyNeverSleeps]

A question for LL’s please - what changes will you make in preparation for Labours Renters rights bill please? And what do you see as the wider consequences?

For those who simply wish to hate on LL’s, please don’t bother posting.

This is not the strong argument for the PRS you think it is.

Renters registration database is a back door way to ensure tax is paid on income, atm no one knows how many rented properties there actually are and who knows what is declared or not.

Going to take some setting up and as you say, what is the cost? the govt website says "Fair and proportionate" to what? the value of the home? % of rent?

The EPC proposed changes, saw many LLs leave the sector, this could drive many more away & with no SH alternative yet in place.

Labour need to tread carefully on this.

@MoneyNeverSleeps 5% net 6% gross, obv dependent on it not needing a new roof etc.
But i know the tenant v well, saw how she looked after her previous home, so no worries on that score.

Another LL here who is selling up as we speak! Owned a single property, did everything by the book, kept rents at below market rates during covid despite my DH's business being completely decimated without any financial relief available for us anywhere.

My last tenant left the place in a terrible state, with a lot of hidden damage once furniture and rugs etc were removed. Had a time-consuming process claiming back about £800 damages via the DPS, which was a fraction of the actual repair costs.

Under the new legislation this sort of tenant would be hard to remove. They're bad, but not 'bad enough' to evict under some of the new guidelines. The LL would just be expected to suck up the cost of ongoing damage.

My margins were between 4-5%, and with capital growth having pretty much stalled, it no longer made sense when I could put the money in the bank and earn the same with none of the stress!

Mine is one of three family houses on the same road which were previously rented and now for sale. That's 12-14 people potentially displaced/ made homeless. None of their age/ income bracket could afford to buy in our area, so they're just adding to the rental market pressure.

We're preparing for it to sit empty for a long time while we wait to sell as consumer confidence has been dented by Labour's threats of difficult years ahead.

I sadly think going by the posts some people think yay. Renters will be protected and landlords will have it stuck to them. Forgetting that being a landlord is a choice. no one needs to be a landlord, it’s not some civic duty,if you don’t like it you can walk. And that’s what they are doing, in their droves, and renters are suffering hard due to it.

40 percent of landlords don’t even have a mortgage or any borrowing, And for those that do, unless in negative equity you just get the tenant out before the bill comes in and take your money elsewhere,

We're preparing for it to sit empty for a long time while we wait to sell

Is this something that could be hit by a higher CGT rate?

You might now get a salvo from the BTL hating crowd for being a sinful rentier…

Reading through some of the bills aims:

So 4 months instead of 2, min 12 months tenure at the start, enforcement notice improvements for poor quality housing.... so far all good.

Registration? against that, costs will be passed on to the tenant, they also made registration mandatory or you cannot get your house back.

The market rent stuff will ensure older tenancies, with below market rents will go up via a sect 13, with 2 months notice, its an open door.

Having read through all of this, i think they need to go back to the drawing board.

The time to evict is already that, Labour are not increasing it. Although it should become quicker to evict anti-social tenants.

Rents are not restricted, if you want Y then advertise for Y and not X. All they are asking is that there are no bidding wars. How they would stop that in practice is another matter. You can just put a new ad with a higher price. This is just a gimmick.

But it’s not all good, many people want short term six months, many landlords want the same, if you’ve to give renters a year many will sell up. And four months notice is great for the renter, and due to the complexity of getting people out and the fact the rental market is shrinking and prices rising, no sane landlord would think that’s good, as you will take forever to get your property back,

sure some elements are great for renters, but that’s what’s going to kill the market.

All fair points.

The direction of travel has been evident for sometime though (including under the Tories), so it’s ripe for the institutions to come in.

the proposed renters bill is great if you’ve enough social housing to take the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who are about to become homeless. If you don’t have that, you’re fucking your own economy.

governments have long relied on the private sector due to extreme shortage of social housing, when you kill the private sector without having a decent social sector who can take the overflow, then it’s a disaster.

Agree

There was a woman who had been asked to move around ten times on the radio. With lower amount of rental available and more risk adverse people choosing who to rent to, where will she go next?

Yes i agree, i think overall the bill is several years too early, some aspects i personally am ok with but not all of it at all.

Need SH to be built first.

Vulture capitalists taken over the PRS and pushing the small time LL out is not going to end well.

Check out what happened to Vet bills, care home fees etc.

Re CGT - yes potentially, although the leaks so far suggest that CGT would be brought in line with personal marginal rates, so since I'm a basic rate tax payer may not affect me.

The CGT allowance has already been slashed to £3k, so I guess they could take that away, but that's pretty insignificant now.

There's no chance of me selling before 30 Oct so we'll have to see what comes out of the budget. If it looks really bad I might think about turning it into an externally-managed air BnB instead!

If it takes a year to sell then maybe DS will live in it with some friends instead!

All the sector really needs to for councils to have the funds to enforce action against LLs who keep poorly maintained properties, thats it.

Without this funding, Govt can put in all the regs it wants, councils wont enforce, just as has happened with noise issues, powers taken from Police, to Councils but Councils don't enforce.

The removal of sect 21 is meaningless, LLs can still evict just as they can now and who would make sure LL sells or moves back in? what if their circumstances "changed" ?

You suspect, but the evidence says the opposite.

How much notice have you given them?

Double post!

Totally agree, if my landlord sells I'm screwed.

@DadJoke It wasn't meant to be a 'strong argument'. The OP asked a question, which I answered honestly without making any wider political point. Not everything in life has to be adversarial!

Sorry! I was intending to quote the post before yours - fat phone fingers.

Mortgage long term rate in France is far lower than UK @ 3.7% Germany 60% to purchase price is under 3%, 100% is 3.4%

I believe they also had a pandemic?

Truss caused great harm to the mortgage and pension markets via 10 and 30 year gilts yields.

They do sit empty. My flat did for nearly a year as it wasn't worth the hassle of trying to rent it when I had a small baby to look after (I went to stay with family for my maternity leave)

I worked very hard to be in the fortunate situation to be able to help out a close family relative with secure housing and affordable rent.

I know plenty of LLs mostly trades who have no pension, they call themselves Socialists even though they vote Tory!!! Decent people trying to make ends meet and helping people less fortunate than themselves, the ones i know haven't put rents up for years & fix things quickly... they know how!!!

This bill will force them to sell and then what?

There is no SH ready for their tenants, so they will be forced into temp housing or Govt will have to raise housing support.