Council advises tenants to break into landlord’s property

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Surrender Notice:

It has been widely reported that in a bid to cope with Britain’s housing shortage, councils often advise tenants facing eviction, and in need of social housing, to stay put in buy-to-let properties when landlords ask them to leave.  This is because, with resources already stretched, councils are reluctant to rehouse tenants until they are legally evicted and ‘technically’ homeless.

Now for the first time, specialist tenant eviction company, Landlord Action, has been instructed by a landlord whose tenant vacated his property only to subsequently break back in, allegedly on the advice of Havering Borough Council.

Mr Lewis Selt, a landlord from Hertfordshire, has owned his two bedroom first-floor flat in the town centre of Romford, Essex, for many years. A little over a year ago, he let his property to a single mother in receipt of housing benefit.

A local letting agent, which manages the property for Mr Selt, confirmed that the tenant and the rent guarantor, in place to ensure the tenant’s ability to fulfil her tenancy obligations, passed all referencing checks. However, after 4-5 months payments became irregular and eventually stopped altogether.

By this point, the twelve month tenancy agreement had come to an end and with £2000 rent arrears accrued, the landlord had no choice but to serve the tenant notice. The tenant surrendered the property and left with her belongings on the agreed date. The agent retrieved the keys from the property on the same day whilst carrying out his check-out report.

However, the next day the tenant along with her guarantor returned to the letting agent to ask if she could have the keys back and return to the property.  She informed them that Havering Council had said they would not rehouse her because she had voluntarily made herself homeless and that she should have remained in the property until she was evicted. When the agent refused, she explained that Havering Council had advised her that if the agent would not give the keys back, she should get a locksmith and break back into the property.

Robert Gordon, Property Manager for Mr Selt said:

“I went to the property the next morning to ensure everything was ok but my keys no longer worked. I could see that furniture had been moved back into the property. In an attempt to resolve the matter, I drove straight to the local council but no-one would speak to me or identify who had issued such ludicrous advice to a tenant who felt she had no choice but to break the law.”

Mr Selt is now faced with a sitting tenant and having to start eviction proceedings. Although he could take legal action against the tenant under a trespassing law, he has decided to serve a Section 21 notice and a Section 8 notice in a bid to get his property back and recover money owed as quickly as possible. It will now take approximately six to eight weeks for a judge to grant a possession order and if the tenant still refuses to leave, which she is likely to do based on advice by Havering Council, bailiffs will be called.

Landlord, Mr Lewis Selt, said:

“Not only am I not receiving rent on my property, I’m now faced with eviction costs and yet I’m powerless to do anything about it. The agent has done everything possible to protect my interests but landlords and agents are facing a losing battle if local authorities are going to issue such ridiculous advice.”

According to National Landlords Association (NLA), nearly half (49%) of tenants who have been served with a section 21 notice by their private landlord say they have been told to ignore it by their local council or an advice agency such as Shelter or the Citizen’s Advice Bureau (CAB).

In March 2016, the former Housing Minister Brandon Lewis wrote to all chief executives of local councils telling them to stop routinely advising tenants to stay put until the bailiff arrives, when they had been issued with a valid possession notice.

Paul Shamplina, Founder of Landlord Action, the company instructed by Mr Selt to evict his tenant, says:

“Local authorities are forcing landlords to go to court to gain possession, running up considerable costs. Landlords are losing confidence in the system and turning away from communities which rely on their private housing to bridge the gap in the chronic shortage of social housing. This advice is exasperating the problem and something needs to be done.”

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HMO Legislation, Mandatory Certificates and Proposed Changes

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Landlords of student and professional house share accommodation all over the UK have a number of legal obligations to fulfill, and depending on the type of property you let or exactly where it is, there may be some additional considerations to take into account.

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Letter to my MP on recent Government meddling in the PRS

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Subject: DCLG Secretary of State misguided Perceptions

Dear Mr Johnson,

Mr Javid was recently quoted at a Conservative party conference about proposals for new laws on the Private rented sector ( as though we haven’t had enough over the past couple of years )

Could I draw the following to The Secretary of State’s attention.

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Council advises tenant to break back into landlord’s property

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It has been widely reported that in a bid to cope with Britain’s housing shortage, councils often advise tenants facing eviction, and in need of social housing, to stay put in buy-to-let properties when landlords ask them to leave.  This is because

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Prop-tech heavyweights launch lettings site HomeRenter

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HomeRenter, an online lettings platform, launches today in London. The platform offers landlords and tenants a one-stop-shop for managing the entire rental process.

HomeRenter aims to create an Airbnb-style marketplace for the UK’s private rental sector, without the traditional estate agent fees. Landlords and tenants are able to collaborate via the platform, which also offers landlords the ability to manage their entire portfolio remotely.

A more fair, equitable marketplace

According to CBRE, the largest commercial real estate services and investment firm in the world (2017), over 25% of homes in London are rented in the private rental sector. That’s 850,000 homes. The demand for housing is at an all-time high and over the next decade, an additional 416,000 London households will be in rental accommodation.

HomeRenter was created in 2016 with the intention to create a fairer, more equitable online marketplace for the UK’s private landlords and renters. It has so far received £780,000 in external investment.

The lettings-only marketplace was founded by property entrepreneurs, Sean Quinn and Jim Thomas. Both currently run Q Developments, a property company with a twenty-year history of delivering development schemes across London. They are joined by Will Handley, a private landlord with a career previously in marketing. Through their own rental portfolios, the three founders have acquired extensive experience of the lettings industry as professional and private landlords.

Cutting out the middle man

The platform itself caters to four connected audiences – private landlords, tenants, key-holders and service providers.

For landlords, the site operates as a place to advertise, let and manage their rental properties on a subscription model across tenancies. Everything is managed through the site, including e-signature of leases.

To assist with finding tenants, landlords get access to a fledgling community of fully-vetted key-holders, known as HomeViewers, to help conduct viewings. HomeViewers conduct the tenant viewings on behalf of the landlords.

HomeRenter has partnerships with Rightmove, Zoopla and PrimeLocation, meaning landlords can promote their properties on all leading portals with HomeRenter.

Zero tenant fees

For tenants, the site allows them to create a permanent profile where they can manage their tenant history, conduct a rental search and view landlord ratings. The site allows tenants to search for future rentals and put a holding deposit on properties for up to 72 hours. HomeRenter charges no admin fee to tenants.

To deliver property maintenance, HomeRenter has partnered with Central Index, the largest services directory in UK.

Co-founder and CEO Will Handley commented, “As landlords, we believe the rental market works best when you remove the middleman and allow property owners and renters to connect in person. This is why we created HomeRenter and why we’ve set ourselves the aim of creating a fairer, more equitable online marketplace for UK’s private landlords and renters.”

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Prop-tech heavyweights launch lettings site HomeRenter | LandlordZONE.

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Get your question answered by Iain Duncan Smith

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UK Landlords put your questions to Iain Duncan Smith directly.

Dear fellow Property 118 Members,

My name is Tracey Hanbury and I am one of the Directors of the National Landlord Investment Show and also the Editor of Landlord Investor Magazine.

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Pass the Keys and make Airbnb rental hassle-free 

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Pass the Keys – UK’s leading Airbnb management service is based in Greater London and operating in London, Bath, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Manchester, Oxford and just expanded to York and Glasgow.

Pass The Keys overs a hassle-free Host-Service around the globe using the concept of the sharing economy.

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Letting Agents’ Fees Ban

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Letting Fees:

Further news is still awaited from government on the proposed letting fees ban following the House of Commons debate about the much trailed ban last month.

Kevin Hollinrake, MP for Thirsk and Malton, who sits on the Communities and Local Government Committee, and is co-founder of Hunters Estate Agency – so has some direct experience in this field – called for the debate in the House of Commons.

The intention to introduce a fees ban was originally announced in the 2016 Autumn Statement by the Chancellor, and is expected to come into force within the next 12 months, but given the pressure on the legislative programme in the Commons, there is no firm date and the scheduled passage of a bill could easily slip.

The time it is taking has already prompted criticism from proponents, but Alok Sharma MP, Minister of State for Housing and Planning said that with 4,700 responses from the consultation exercise to analyse, the Government needs more time to work through this before drafting a bill.

Despite much evidence indicating the move would result in costs incurred by agents having to be passed on to landlords, and in turn recovered by increasing rents for tenants, the Minister has said, “all fees on tenants need to be banned”.

He did however confirm that ‘holding deposits’ would be exempt from the ban and asserted that the introduction of the ban would lead to a more affordable, transparent and competitive lettings market.

The proposed bill is said to include putting a cap on security deposits at one month’s rent and holding deposits at one week’s rent.

The cap on holding deposits at one week’s rent would not appear to cause landlords and agents a problem, but several industry practitioners have raised concerns about a cap of one month’s rent for a security deposit because:

1. Many landlords currently take six weeks rent to deter tenants from cancelling the last month’s rent and asking for their deposit to be used in lieu, a common occurrence that landlords face, and
2. Tenants with pets are usually charged a higher amount to safeguard landlords from damage and the extra wear and tear that pets often bring, so it is said the move could discourage landlords from taking on tenants with pets.

Mr Hollinrake has said he is in favour of a fees ban, but he warned about the already identified ‘unintended consequences’ of the legislation due to the possibility of rent increases, job cuts in agencies and for independent inventory clerks, and other costs being transferred from agents to landlords.

Hollinrake also called for effective enforcement by a proposed extending of the agency redress schemes, and there could be schemes, it has now been suggested, that would also cover landlords.

Another important point made was the problem of a severe lack of resources and time for local authorities, these being the agencies tasked with enforcement, to adequately deal with the extra work.

The Minister, Alok Sharma, had suggested that the Government is looking at setting up a lead enforcement authority (similar to that for Estate Agents) and that local Trading Standards were “best placed’ to enforce the new policy. However, given that most local authorities claim that they are ‘strapped for cash’, and some are even said to be at financial breaking point and on the verge of technical insolvency, it is hard to see how local government can adequately staff all this extra work.

In the fees debate the Minister acknowledged the potential for rent increases but considered that any potential rent increases would be significantly less than the fees tenants are currently charged. On the other issue of any future deposit caps, Sharma indicated that any such proposal ‘must strike the right balance’ between affordability for tenants and the need for landlords’ protection.

David Cox, chief executive of ARLA Propertymark, has expressed the view that any fees ban will cause “unprecedented damage to the rental sector”, stating that, “independent analysis commissioned by ARLA Propertymark, following the UK government’s announcement of its own ban, revealed that if a full ban was introduced, rents will increase…”

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