LATEST: Bedford consults on new HMO licensing restrictions

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Landlords in Bedford hoping to convert houses into HMOs are to face a raft of new regulations if the local council gets its way following a consultation that it due to run until 7^th July.

HMOs within the town’s boundaries are to be restricted to no more than 30% of the total number of properties within a 100 metre radius and no more than two HMOs can be next to each other on a street, or sandwich existing family houses.

“The threshold is intended to manage the cumulative impact of large and small HMOs within the immediate and wider area and to ensure that the planning process is able to manage the impacts of piecemeal expansion of HMOs effectively through the addition of extra rooms for additional households,” the consultation document says.

Bedford Borough Council has published the Supplementary Planning Document (SPD), which is now under consultation.

It sets out the new HMO restrictions which include four key ‘pillars’ that landlords will have to follow if they hope to have their plans to establish or extend an HMO approved by the council.

Density rules

As well as the density rules, it sets out minimum quality standards, requirements for car and bicycle parking facilities and requires that planners ensure the development of an HMO isn’t ugly or, as the document more politely puts it, has ‘no harmful visual impacts’.

“HMOs are a key part of the mix of accommodation on offer in Bedford Borough, particularly in the urban areas and immediate surroundings,” says Councillor Henry Vann, Portfolio Holder for Planning.

“It is important that we do everything we can to ensure that they are providing good quality housing for residents and are playing their part in creating balanced communities in our towns. Please do get in touch and have your say.”

In addition to planning permission, before an HMO may operate applicants may be required to gain additional approvals including Building Regulations approval and an appropriate HMO licence before it can legally operate.

Read the full consultation document.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – LATEST: Bedford consults on new HMO licensing restrictions | LandlordZONE.

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‘It’s like the wild west out there’ – huge commercial landlord switches to monthly rent payment

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High profile
commercial landlord Shaftesbury has switched permanently to monthly rent
collections in a series of measures aimed at supporting
tenants and improving its bottom line.

The landlord, which boasts a 15-acre portfolio of restaurants, leisure
and retail in London’s West End, has also suspended paying
dividends to shareholders after revenue from rent dropped 4.9%.

Shaftesbury says it’s had discussions with its 800 commercial tenants to agree tailored solutions on rents and service charges, with the aim of collecting 50% of rents due from April to September 2020 “over time”.

But it’s the permanent switch to collecting monthly rents in advance for all commercial tenants from October that’s the biggest change.

Wild West End

“It’s like the Wild West out there at the moment – there are no rules – every landlord is different,” Adam Diamant, MD at Land Commercial, tells LandlordZONE.

“This is a nice gesture
which will help out tenants rather than the landlord. Most tenants would take
monthly payments over quarterly as it helps cashflow but makes life harder for
a landlord as they have to work out who’s paid every month, while being paid
quarterly makes debt collection and bailiffing easier.”

Shaftesbury
adds that it expects changes in the structure of leases to manage the fall-out
from the crisis, including different lease lengths, incentive packages and
turnover-related rents.

Publishing its half-year report, it explains:
“The collapse in West End footfall, evident from early February in Chinatown,
and then widely across the West End from mid-March, had an immediate impact on
the trading and cash flow of our 607 shops, restaurants, cafés, pubs and bars,
materially reducing the collection of rents in advance due on the March quarter
day.

“Many of our smaller office occupiers were
similarly affected, and we saw an increase in vacancy in our rental apartments,
as overseas tenants returned to their countries of origin.”

Commercial rent collection in the UK fell by 28.7% in March compared to the previous two years, according to Re-Leased, which reports that only 49.7% of rent due had been collected 10 days after the March quarter date, compared to 69.7% during the last two years on a like-for-like basis.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – ‘It’s like the wild west out there’ – huge commercial landlord switches to monthly rent payment | LandlordZONE.

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Emergency Eviction??

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Had a few issues with my current tenant (Mr X), but it has all kicked off tonight. The other tenant nextdoor tells me the Police have been called to flat as Mr X kicked off and threatening to kill himself after a drink and drugs combo mixed with existing meds he has to take for medical issues.

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Is the lockdown a good time for landlords to get new-build deals from developers?

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London developer Galliard is well known to buy-to-let investors as a significant player in the new-build apartment market but the company, and its landlord customer base, have been through difficult times since the Coronavirus lockdown hit.

LandlordZONE talked to its sales boss David Galman to find out how far the company has been prepared to go to secure sales from landlords.

Galman is the first to admit that extraordinary times require extraordinary action, revealing that he’s signed off deals for purchasers that would have not been given the green light before the pandemic. Even before the lockdown, we featured claims that developers like Galliard were offering 20% discounts on properties being sold outside of the Help to Buy scheme.

Before that, he was prepared to do deals at completed developments with properties left unsold, but not the more desirable properties still under construction.

Lockdown

This kind of approach has had to be set aside to get sales during the lockdown, even if it means cutting margin. But for buyers who had already reserved but not completed on newbuild properties it was a different story.

“With our landlord buyers, we had completions happening at our developments in Canary Wharf and Romford – spanning both ends of the market – and the investors there obviously tried not to complete because they wanted to utilise the situation to their advantage,” he says.

“And who can blame them. But we got the letting agents on the case to persuade them that, despite the lockdown, there were tenants waiting to rent their apartments and that if they waited, they’d all be competing for tenants en masse once the lockdown ended.”

“We found that tenants were prepared to commit to a brand new furnished property after only a virtual viewing.”

Galman also tells LandlordZONE that his company has for the first time become a landlord itself at a site in the London Borough of Havering where all 98 flats are to be rented out directly, which he says is a PRS first or the company.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Is the lockdown a good time for landlords to get new-build deals from developers? | LandlordZONE.

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Dramatic increase in use of prosecutions, civil penalty fines and Rent Repayment Orders

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Over the past year we have seen Mandatory HMO licensing increased in scope to include all properties with 5 or more occupants, where they belong to two or more households. Since this we have seen a dramatic increase in the use of prosecutions

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MP kicks urges landlords to welcome foreign students as racism row erupts

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The chair of the UK’s
All-Party Parliamentary University Group has accused private landlords in
Cambridge of being unwelcoming to international students.

The city’s Labour MP Daniel
Zeichner, who is also shadow minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries, has
been reported as saying that issues with student
accommodation risked sending the wrong message to those thinking of studying in
the city.

He told local media that there had been examples of racism directed at Chinese students and that international students had also faced issues with private landlords. 

Said Zeichner: “What we don’t want is a
message going back to people that Britain is anything other than a welcoming,
helpful place, not least given that some international students, of course, are
paying a lot of money in a lot of cases. It’s in everybody’s interest.”

While universities have behaved
well during the pandemic, Zeichner claims, problems have arisen for students in the private sector accommodation.

He said: “You’ve got a whole
range of landlords, from the professional national providers who can take a
policy position, some smaller local providers who are perhaps a bit harder to
deal with and then, of course, a whole plethora of individual private
landlords, and there it has been very, very patchy.” 

Chris Norris, policy director for the
National Residential Landlords Association, says: “There is no place for racism
of any kind and we strongly condemn any landlords who might be engaging in such
activity.

“In view of the comments from Mr Zeichner we
are seeking clarification about the concerns that he has so that we might work
with him to address them.”

LandlordZONE
has not yet had a response from Zeichner’s office.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – MP kicks urges landlords to welcome foreign students as racism row erupts | LandlordZONE.

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Property guru slammed over ‘satirical’ TikTok video

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A landlord and self-styled #makemoney property investment guru has stepped into a social media furore after posting a message on TikTok egging on investors to maximise their profits by running overcrowded HMOs.

Irish landlord Joe Doyle, pictured above, who is also a spokesperson for the country’s Residential Landlords Association, posted the 40-second TikTok video earlier this week, and was subsequently watched by 23,400.

Titled ‘How I get rent of €5,000 a month from one house’, Doyle was deluged by criticism on TikTok and other social media platforms after suggesting that landlords should buy council houses and then pack them with eight people – he suggests by having two families live in it – and “pack them in and then collect the money”.

Doyle has today posted another video revealing that the original TikTok post was a satirical attempt to lure in more followers to his account, and that he wasn’t serious about any of the advice given.

Readers can decide themselves of course and watch the video, but his presentation style makes it hard to tell.

And many of the 600+ commentators on his video have not been forgiving, one calling him a ‘landlord leech’.“The trouble is Joe is that your video isn’t outrageous enough to be satire, and [this kind of HMO] is a reality for some people,” said TikTok user @guieireann.

“Even though this is probably a joke, there are landlords that think like this. No wonder there’s a housing crisis,” added @pipfanpage.

Doyle is not the first person to get into trouble for a ‘jokey’ TikTok post about being a landlord. Last month a New York landlady had to quit the platform after making jokes about stealing tenants’ mail when they got into rent arrears.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Property guru slammed over ‘satirical’ TikTok video | LandlordZONE.

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Appeal to Scottish Government on energy efficiency improvement works

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Landlords of private rented homes and their agents are urging the Scottish Government to consider the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on Scotland’s ongoing efforts to improve the energy efficiency of Scotland’s private rented homes.

Four membership organisations representing the private rented sector have joined forces and written an open letter to Kevin Stewart

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Still working on the new claim form N5B – give me strength?

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Okay so we are working through the new extended claim form for possession of property (tenant wants to be evicted…… so she can get her council house). Doing very well, but stumped at Question 14 which appears initially to be a very simple question:

Has the claimant given the defendant

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