Banning Section 21 is not the answer

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In response to a report from Citizens Advice on private sector tenants being evicted after making a complaint, the leading landlord body has said that it would condemn any landlord who evicted a tenant solely for this reason. The Residential Landlords Association (RLA) say that this is not the practice of the vast majority of […]

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‘Housing Charity’ Shelter – Clearly a Double Misnomer

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Serious questions were raised by my colleague on P118 ‘Free Advice for Shelter‘, concerning the so-called ‘housing’ charity Shelter. As we know, it is clearly a double misnomer to call this multi-million pound organisation a ‘housing’ charity or ‘Shelter,’ as it provides neither.

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Banning Section 21 is not the answer

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Section 21:

In response to a report from the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) on private sector tenants being evicted after making a complaint, the leading landlord body has said that it would condemn any landlord who evicted a tenant solely for this reason.

The Residential Landlords Association (RLA) say that this is not the practice of the vast majority of responsible landlords but that the call for a ban on ‘Section 21’ notices, dubbed ‘no fault’ evictions, is not the answer.

Government statistics show that only 11 per cent of tenancies are ended by the landlord and, of these, nearly two thirds regained their property because they wanted to sell it or use it. In other cases landlords have sought possession because of tenants committing anti-social behaviour or failing to pay their rent. The fact that a tenant may have complained about disrepair is not the reason for the eviction.

In this minority of cases landlords either have to seek a ‘Section 8’ notice which new RLA research shows takes on average six months and costs over £2,500 for landlords to regain possession their property. The alternative is to wait until the end of the contract and use a Section 21 notice without having to give a reason. This has led to section 21 notices being used because Section 8 is not fit for purpose.

The RLA says that what is needed is a new Housing Court to speed up access to justice for both tenants and landlords when things do go wrong. The Government is currently considering this.

Commenting, the RLA’s Policy Director David Smith says:

“No good landlord will want to evict a tenant unless there is a major issue around rent arrears or anti-social behaviour. That’s why the average length of a tenancy is now 4 years.

“But where things do go wrong, landlords need to have confidence that they can regain their property. This is why we believe a new process, a dedicated Housing Court, needs to be established to speed things up and why there needs to be a six month break clause in the proposed three year tenancy.�

The English Housing Survey for 2016/17 can be accessed here – Page 19 notes that “for private renters the average length of residence was 3.9 years.â€�

• The English Housing Survey for 2015/16 can be accessed here – Page 4 notes: “When asked about their most recent move, most private renters said that their last tenancy ended because they wanted it to (73%). A tenth (11%) said that their landlord or agent ended the tenancy.â€�
• The Ministry of Justice’s ‘Mortgage and landlord possession statistics’ for the period January to March 2018 can be accessed here – Page 7 notes: “From claim to repossession by county court bailiff, the median average time taken to progress to possession for all tenure types was 20.3 weeks – Accelerated cases on average took 18.7 weeks, Private landlord took 16.9 weeks, and Social landlord 27.9 weeks.â€�

The RLA represents the interests of landlords in the private rented sector across England and Wales – over 50,000 landlords nationwide, with a combined portfolio of over a quarter of a million properties.

Evicting tenants (England and Wales) – section 21 and section 8

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Free advice for Shelter

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Shelter have supported various initiatives to change the PRS so I wondered if I could do the same for them.  The accounts to March 2018 aren’t online yet, so I looked at the previous year’s figures:

Click Here

The total remuneration received by the six directors during the year was £763,446.

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How to deal with Anti-Social Behaviour

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What is Anti-Social Behaviour?

Anti-social behaviour is a a wide range of unacceptable activity that causes harm or alarm to others or their community or environment, often leaving the person feeling alarmed, harassed or distressed.

Examples of anti-social behaviour may include:

• Excessive noise in quiet hours of the day
• Rowdy behaviour – shouting

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Group celebrate letting of 2,000th Build-to-Rent home

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Build-to-Rent:

Nottingham based Property Management company, SDL Group, have just celebrated the letting of their 2,000^th built-to-rent property, in partnership with Sigma Capital Group plc.

Sigma is a £100m holding company, a property group principally focused on the Private Rented Sector (PRS). The Company’s activities also encompass urban regeneration and property asset management, operating in three business segments: property, venture capital fund management, and holding company activities.

Sigma partners with construction companies to build houses aimed at the rental market. They are built to a high specification and strategically placed to rent out for their proximity to transport links, and good schools.

Sigma is to partner with PRS REIT PLC in the future, a newly formed closed-end real estate investment trust. The Company intends to qualify as a real estate investment trust (REIT) which will seek to invest in completed private rented sector (PRS) sites and PRS development sites. The REIT Group will only invest in private rented homes and apartments located in the UK and predominately in England.

Build-to-rent provision is still small-scale in comparison to the number of houses provided by the many thousands of small-scale buy-to-let landlords, owning just a few properties each, but the BTR sector is growing steadily. With the number of UK residents renting privately doubling over the past decade to 20% of all households (30% in London), there is healthy demand for this new housing.

Growing into the gap between social housing and home ownership, and challenging the small-scale landlord, the build-to-rent model is giving large-scale property developers and professional managers, encouraged by government policy, a new way to profit from Generation Rent.

The build-to-rent market comprises mainly purpose-built blocks of rental homes and single dwellings, built to a high standard, and therefore not suited to every tenant. In 2017 BTR attracted some £2.4bn in investment funding, a figure forecast to grow by 180% over the next six years.

Large pension and insurance funds are providing the capital to develop large blocks of flats to be professionally managed by one single management company, on a long-term basis, rather than being sold off to individual landlords. This, in theory, will provide the institutional investors backing the schemes with a reliable, long-term income stream. The model mirrors those PRS markets operating in the USA and in parts of Europe.

For tenants the attraction is high quality new-build accommodation managed by experienced professionals rather than the varying standards of individual landlords. However, big is not always best, and if the varying standards tenants experience in the social sector – councils and housing associations – some tenants may be disappointed.

The British Property Federation – Build-to-Rent Map of the UK

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