Greens demand rent freeze and eviction ban

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An immediate cap on rent increases and a ban on no-fault evictions until at least the end of March 2023 are being demanded by the Green Party.

The party says the government must urgently bring forward its promised Renters Reform Bill in time to stave off ‘a winter of evictions and homelessness’.

View Full Article: Greens demand rent freeze and eviction ban

Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report Of The Private Rental Sector

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Further to my last piece about the Rise of the Private Rental Sector, I have unearthed this Reform the private rented sector and open up access to home ownership and social housing, says JRF | JRF

One of the things it says is:

“………Setting a strategy for reducing the size of the PRS by rebalancing the position of first-time buyers and landlords in the mortgage market and discouraging property speculation.

View Full Article: Joseph Rowntree Foundation Report Of The Private Rental Sector

£15,00 Insulation grants for middle class earners

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Middle-income households are to be eligible for grants worth up to £15,000 to make their homes more energy efficient says Grant Shapps, the business secretary.

Shapps is to announce the plans next week to help households fund loft insulation, cavity wall insulation and smart heating controls.

The new scheme will be called “eco plus”, and is to be targeted at those families in the middle income band who are unable to pay for measure that would cut their energy consumption and heating bills.

Energy saving campaigning

Meanwhile the Government is to launch a £25m publicity campaign originally killed off by Liz Truss, to encourage households to save energy this winter.

Prime minister Rishi Sunak has now given the go-ahead to fund a UK-wide public information campaign to encourage people to save energy using simple measures including turning down their central heating boilers and switching off all electrical devices when not needed and during the day time.

The campaign is likely to come before Christmas. The exact format is yet to be decided, but it will be designed to encourage people to use less energy. This comes at this time when prices are escalated by the Ukraine war and the government is subsidising costs to the tune of tens of billions of pounds to cap energy prices.

The Government is worried that the energy situation could get far worse depending on what Putin does next.

There is currently a cap of £2,500 a per until the end of March 2023, after which the cap will move to £3,000, thereby limiting the price of energy for households and businesses for another period.

The insulation scheme

The government has allocated £1 billion in funding from its existing budgets over the next three years to provide house insulation grants for those unable to afford insulation upgrades. The money will be made available for households falling into Council Tax bands A to D.

The grants will meet 75 per cent of the cost of upgrades. And are estimated to be available for over 70,000 homes and to save hundreds of pounds a year. This follows on the heals of a green homes grant which was pulled last year after a disastrous start, consequently this time it will be administered by the energy suppliers.

It has been estimated that the upgrades provided by this scheme have the potential to save significant amounts of energy and save householders considerable amounts on their energy bills.

For example, installing loft insulation can costs in the region of £1,000 plus but can save up to £600 per year. Cavity wall insulation costs more at around £2,500 but can potentially £500 per year. Thermostat valves on radiators and other advanced heating system controls costing around £800 can also save in the region of £500 per year.

The Government’s aim is to reduced the average household energy consumption by 15 per cent this winter as the country grapples with the Russian led energy crisis which could escalate further. Jeremy Hunt the Chancellor has said that people will be joining a “national mission” to reduce “energy dependency on what Putin chooses to do”.

Anything for landlords?

So far there is no indication of whether or not this scheme will apply to rental properties, though various scheme have been made available for tenants by county councils across the country.

Insulation Grants are available to the occupiers of privately rented properties as it is they who pay the fuel bills.

For tenants aged 70 or over, or for those on a state pension, or if they receive a qualifying tax credit or benefit, tenants are not likely to have to pay towards the cost of insulation.

If tenants qualify for a partial grant, it is they who should contribute the remainder. However, landlords may feel that the improvement to their property and the resale value will justify them paying the difference, whilst taking advantage of the fact that their current tenants qualify their property for the grant.

As a private landlord or property management company, your requirement is to give written permission prior to works being carried out.

Where flats are concerned it is unlikely they will be able to have cavity wall insulation installed unless all flats in the block, above and below and either side, also agree to have it fitted.

View Full Article: £15,00 Insulation grants for middle class earners

Gove promises rent protections for tenants in 2023

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The long awaited renting reforms first muted in 2019 will be implemented next year, promises Housing Secretary, Michael Gove MP.

Admitting that the Government should have “moved more quickly” on these reforms to protect tenants following the Grenfell Tower tragedy, Mr Gove’s latest comments come in the wake of the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak and a visit to his estate.

Over five years on from the Grenfell Tower fire and an Independent Review of Building Regulations and Fire Safety (The Hackitt Review) among three others, the Government has introduced a whole host of new regulations either enacted or in progress:

The Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, The Fire Safety Act 2021, the Building Safety Act 2022, a Fire Reform White Paper and The Buildings Safety Act 2022, all of which represent a real opportunity to provide fairness for tenants and accountability for those responsible for managing social and private rental housing.

Despite all of this, the family tragedy in a social housing flat highlights issues which still pose risks to life. Earlier this month a coroner in Rochdale, Lancashire found that the toddler, two-years old Awaab Ishak, had died from complications following exposure to mould spores in his social housing home.

The black curse

Black mould in homes is caused by cold, damp and condensation which in turn are usually accompanied by the lack of heating and ventilation, moisture. This is produced by washing, cooking and indoor drying of clothes, the usual cause of black mould.

Moulds produce allergens (substances that cause allergic reactions), irritants and, sometimes even toxic substances. Inhaling or touching these spores can cause serious allergic reactions, sneezing, a runny nose, red eyes and skin rashes, and for those with pre-existing conditions these substances can cause asthma attacks and other serious reactions.

Renting reforms

The English Government’s comprehensive renting reforms first proposed back in 2019 will be in place next year Michael Gove has promised. He’s admitted the Government should have “moved more quickly” to protect tenants after the 2017 Grenfell Tower fire.

Pressure piled on the Housing Secretary this month with the coroner’s verdict on Awaab Ishak’s death and he is now facing urgent calls to strengthen tenants’ rights following that inquest. Awaab was found to have died from a severe respiratory condition caused by exposure to mould in his home.

It came out at the hearing that Ishak’s parents had contacted their social housing landlord, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing, multiple times raising their concerns about the black mould in their flat but were ignored.

Gareth Swarbrick chief executive of Rochdale Boroughwide Housing has since been removed from his post as. His sacking came just four days after the inquest verdict came out into the death of two-year-old Awaab.

On Saturday 19 November, Mr Gove wrote a letter to all English council chief executives and council leaders asking them to provide an assessment of damp and mould issues affecting social and privately rented properties in their area, including the prevalence of category 1 and 2 (HHSRS Rating System) damp and mould hazards, as well as an assessment of action that might need to be taken.

Under the instruction, Local Authorities must provide to The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, their last three 12 monthly reporting periods, detailing how many damp and mould hazards they have sorted out compared to assessments made, how many times enforcement action was taken, how many civil penalty notices were issued, and the number of prosecutions successfully pursued.

A landmark tragedy

Housing charities and campaigning groups have highlighted the Ishak case as being as significant as the Grenfell Tower tragedy in the history of English housing. 72 residents lost their lives in the London tower block after which the inquest and subsequent enquiries have highlighted a long list of deficiencies, a host of safety issues concerning fire protection and building standards.

While the Rochdale incident concerns only one death, the implications are equally far reaching: black mould is a very common issue particularly in rental property both for social and private housing.

While deaths by this cause are extremely rare, nevertheless the effect on people’s health is a serious concern. The NHS has spoken out about the underlying and long-term health issues caused by living in cold and damp conditions, the heath effects of black mould, and the log-term cost to the health service.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday, Mr Gove said:

“I freely admit and acknowledge that in the aftermath of Grenfell we should have moved more quickly to take a particular set of actions to help people in social housing. We’re doing so now.”

“Awaab’s Law”

On a visit to the housing association estate in Rochdale, where the boy died, Mr Gove was said to be clearly shocked at the conditions facing some tenants. Apologising for the conditions people were living in he said, “They haven’t dealt with the fundamental problems.”

After a meeting with the boy’s family they said he had agreed to an amendment to the Social Housing regulation Bill, to adopt “Awaab’s Law”, which would set mandatory deadlines for inspections of damp and mould.

Mr Gove has already cut £1 million from the budget of the Rochdale Boroughwide Housing Association in the wake of the boy’s death, but the family are demanding the resignation of the entire board as well as the already fired chief executive, Gareth Swarbrick.

Mr Gove could not confirm exactly when legislation aimed at strengthening tenants’ formal protections would be introduced to parliament, saying only that the Renters Reform Bill “should come in 2023”.

Ending Section 21

The main thrust of this Bill is to end the so-called “no-fault” evictions, Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988, a mandatory measure that allows landlords to force evictions without giving a reason for requiring it.

Polly Neate, chief executive of housing charity Shelter, told the BBC Today programme that these no-fault evictions make tenants “fearful of complaining” in case they were given notice. Ms Neate added that tenants living in the private rented sector (PRS), as well as those tenants in social housing, such as Awaab Ishak’s family, urgently need stronger protections.

Mr Gove is now to give the social housing regulator new powers, and on Thursday he announced that he would cut funding for RBH and other landlords that failed to protect tenants.

“My message to [RBH] is clear: Awaab’s death was a tragedy which should never have occurred. It occurred because the housing association knowingly failed to maintain their properties in a decent standard, failed to heed complaints.”

View Full Article: Gove promises rent protections for tenants in 2023

‘No protection’: outraged landlord reveals battle to evict nightmare tenants

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A landlord battling to evict his nightmare tenants using a Section 8 order is exasperated that county court bailiffs encouraged them to stay put.

The Cumbrian-based landlord had been granted a possession order, but his tenants – on bail for alleged drug offences and owing £3,000 in rent arrears – were then advised by bailiffs to ask for the application to be delayed.

“When bailiffs arrived at the house, the woman was under the influence of drugs, but her behaviour was such that the bailiffs considered her vulnerable and she said she wasn’t moving,” he tells LandlordZONE.

“Their response was to contact the court and advise her to submit a N244 form asking for further time to stay.” He adds: “I saw the application and it would have been thrown out.” 

The tenant’s housing benefit now only pays for one room in her four/five-bedroom property as her children have been removed. Although the landlord is sympathetic, he’s angry that her response to the notice was to put up Christmas lights, demonstrating she had no intention of leaving.

Wrong form

Unfortunately, following the latest hearing, the landlord has now been told he’d filled in the wrong form for a Section 8 (which the previous judge did not pick up on) which means he’ll have to reapply and probably won’t get the tenant out until the new year, racking up nearly £1,000 in court fees.

However, he remains outraged that tenants are able to stall in this way. “Is it any wonder landlords are unhappy with the way the system treats them and why perhaps so many are selling up? I’ve been a landlord for 32 years and I’m thinking of doing the same.”

A few years ago, former Housing Minister Brandon Lewis issued a notice to councils advising them to stop routinely advising tenants to stay put after a Section 21 notice had been served and the bailiff arrived before they could be accepted as homeless.

Read more about Section 8 evictions.

View Full Article: ‘No protection’: outraged landlord reveals battle to evict nightmare tenants

Major lender to spend £11m offering landlords free EPC upgrade reports

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Skipton Building Society is offering landlords a free EPC report for up to 10 properties to help make them more energy efficient.

The lender is investing £11 million to give all its mortgage customers, including buy-to-let landlords, a free EPC Plus assessment and report. Landlords only need to have one mortgage with Skipton to benefit from the 10 assessments. 

The EPC Plus goes one step further than a traditional EPC report, providing the property’s current energy efficiency as well as its potential EPC rating.

It includes a bespoke guide on how the landlord can achieve this, how much it could reduce their tenant’s energy bills by, and signposts sources of funding. It also estimates the tonnes of carbon produced by the household.  

Each report also details the typical costs associated with making any of the recommended changes and provides access to registered, independent tradespeople who come recommended to carry out any changes.

It says this will help landlords save hundreds of pounds in the run-up to potential new regulation coming into force in 2025, which would mean new tenancies would need an EPC band C.  

For properties in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, Skipton can also help landlords find out if they are eligible for any exemptions under the Minimum Energy Efficiency Regulations and how to enter this on the private rented sector exemptions register.   

 Kris Brewster (pictured), interim chief commercial officer, says home energy efficiency is a huge challenge where everyone needs to play their part.

“It is only right that the business community steps up to the mark, and as a customer-owned organisation we’re reinvesting some of our profits to help landlords save money and improve the energy efficiency of their properties,” he adds.

Read more stories about EPCs.

View Full Article: Major lender to spend £11m offering landlords free EPC upgrade reports

Why private landlords despise politicians when they target us

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Unlike the Millwall football chant, ‘No one likes us, we don’t care’, I’d just like to say that while no one apparently likes landlords, I do care.

However, I despise the tenant groups who shout from the rooftops about how rubbish we all are.

View Full Article: Why private landlords despise politicians when they target us

UK rents increased by 3.8% in the year to October 2022

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A new index tracking the prices paid for renting property from private landlords in the UK, calculated by the Office of National Statistics (ONS), has just been released.

The main points identified are:

“Private rental prices paid by tenants in the UK rose by 3.8% in the 12 months to October 2022, up from 3.7% in the 12 months to September 2022.

Annual private rental prices increased by 3.7% in England, 3.2% in Wales and 4.2% in Scotland in the 12 months to October 2022.

The East Midlands saw the highest annual percentage change in private rental prices (4.8%), while London saw the lowest (3.0%).”

With landlords leaving the sector and demand for renting still very high, it’s surprising that the average rise has been so small. At an increase of 3.8% in 10 months, more was expected, that’s according to mortgage broker Nick Morrey at Coreco, speaking to Mortgage Introducer.

To qualify this view, Morrey said that because many tenancy agreements are yet to come to the end of their 12 months’ or two years’ terms, he is expecting significant increases later. This is because of the pressure on landlords facing considerably increased costs and mortgage payments that could have doubled or even trebled by next year.

Pressure on interest rates

Morrey thinks mortgage rates will continue to increase through 2023 and into 2024, “as the base rate is expected to top out around 4%,” which will mean that most buy-to-let mortgages will be above that figure, though perhaps slightly lower than they are right now.

The financial shockwaves following Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s “mini budget” sent rates shooting up, so any decline in rates from current levels will come as something of a relief, but this has only been brought about by the calming effect on the money markets by Jeremy Hunt’s Autumn Statement.

Others think there is every expectation that the Bank of England will continue to raise the base rate until it’s above 5 per cent. That’s important because the bank rate influences many other interest rates in the economy. That includes the lending and savings rates offered by high street banks and building societies, and of course mortgage lending rates. The bank rate is currently 3%.

A long recession is looming

The higher the interest rates around the world (largely set by the US FED) the more the Government will have to spend on servicing its £100bn or so of national debt. Its one of the largest elements of public spending not under the direct control of government, but determined by the size of government debt, mostly the legacy of past budget deficits and Covid borrowing.

With GDP growth stagnating, and the prospect of higher interest payments on the Government’s credit card, it’s no wonder the BoE is forecasting one of the longest recessions in prospect on record.

Austerity 2

The country is not in a good place. The latest available Office for National Statistics figures show that the Government’s interest payments were £8.2bn in August, £1.5bn more than a year earlier and the highest August figure since monthly records began in 1997. If anything things have got worse since then.

Many government bonds are linked to the Retail Prices Index measure, which was 12.3% in August, and which resulted in a public sector borrowing amount of £11.82bn, far more than the £8.5bn forecast by economists. And all this before factoring the drastic reckoning of the financial shockwaves following Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s “mini budget”.

Landlords’ reaction

The result will be that landlords with mortgages will do everything possible to minimise their losses: reducing costs wherever possible and that means less spending on maintenance and improvements, and increasing their revenues (rents) as much as they are able.

Tenants under pressure as well

However, tenants will be under large constraints also. With big increases in energy and food prices, wage increases trailing inflation by a good measure, and increasing job insecurity with the onset of a recession, there are limits to the rent increases tenants can afford.

Having emerged from the two-year blight of a Covid pandemic, restrictions on rent increases and evictions, landlords could be forgiven for expecting some respite now, but unfortunately that’s not to be. The Russian invasion of Ukraine saw to that and tenant’s can’t always help them out.

Lower standards of living for all

The upshot is, we are all going to take a hit, whatever walk of life we’re in. Inflation is running at 11.1 per cent right now, taking a chunk out of cash savings and an immediate increase in the cost of living. Secondly, the fall in the value of the pound increases the cost of imports, putting up the cost of all the goods the UK imports. And as we are largely an importing nation for consumer goods, these cost increases will be considerable.

It means that real household disposable incomes per head (and these affect both landlords and tenants) are predicted to fall by 4.3 per cent in 2022-23 and by another 2.8 per cent in 2023-24. This two-year drop of 7.1 per cent will take our real incomes back to where the country was 8 years ago – 2013-14 – we will have lost almost a decade of income growth!

Without a commensurate increase in productivity growth over the next few years, and the recent tax rises detract from this, we will not see the prosperity we’ve become used to for some considerable time.

A gloomy background

It’s against this gloomy background that we see some landlords leaving the private rented sector. Many have reached an age where they have had enough and want to retire, while others who came into the sector as amateur or accidental landlords, not serious about expanding or becoming more professional. The latter’s something that’s going to be absolutely necessary in future to navigate an increasingly regulated PRS regime.

Headwinds galore

There are also other headwinds on the way: the removal of the Section 21 eviction process scheduled for next year scares some landlords about getting stuck with unruly tenants, while the looming upgrades needed for the latest energy efficiency standards, likely to be EPC rating “C” in the not too distant future, will mean considerable investment and upheaval for some landlords – this could be in the region of £10 to £15 thousand pounds on some older properties.

As landlord leave, and goodness knows, has the Government taken this into account?, even more pressure will be put on rents. Any reduction in the rental housing stock, when first-time buyers can’t afford to buy, will push them up even more.

Morrey believes all these EPC costs could be the ‘final straw’ for some landlords who will decide to sell up, and especially before the ending of section 21 when they can get back possession for a sale with vacant possession.

“If the [EPC] requirements do not make it into law, then this may give a reprieve to some landlords whose properties are not in an energy efficient state, but it would leave many feeling the UK is not doing what it should in yet another area for global warming, especially with energy prices at their current levels,” he concluded.

“In the past many landlords were making enough profit on their property as interest rates were so low, they could afford to allow good tenants some grace when faced with difficult times, but now those landlords are likely to be unable to assist themselves with things like payment holidays or restructured payment schemes,” he said.

Rent arrears and even repossessions are issues that could become a feature of 2023 and with tenants who cannot meet the monthly rent, their landlords are likely to be seek out new tenants who are able to pay regularly.

“The government is in a very cash strapped situation – therefore not really in a position to fund any kind of rent payment holiday scheme beyond Housing Benefits, and you have to be unemployed in order to claim in most circumstances not ‘just a little short for a while’,” says Morrey.

House prices in the recession

Studies of house prices crashes by economics consultancy Oxford Economics show that employment is the key and decisive factor in determining the how severe a downturn will be – a because a spike in joblessness will raise the number of forced sellers.

“History shows that if labour markets can remain strong, then the chances of a more benign correction are higher,” says Innes McFee, chief global economist at Oxford Economics.

Employment levels in many advanced economies have recovered since falling at the start of the pandemic. But there are now early signs that labour markets are starting to cool as weak economic growth hits demand for workers, and some companies, especially those in the tech sector, are starting to see substantial lay-offs.

The UK Office for Budget Responsibility expects unemployment to rise by 505,000 to a peak of 1.7 million — an unemployment rate of 4.9% -— in the third quarter of 2024.

“A decisive increase in unemployment is a very big danger for housing markets,” says Adam Slater of Oxford Economics.

View Full Article: UK rents increased by 3.8% in the year to October 2022

Neighbour wants basement extension – Property at risk?

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It’s actually a friend whose neighbour wants to build the basement. Not only does my friend really not want the months of noise, and disruption of spoil/materials coming in and out of the tiny cul-de-sac; she’s concerned about the risk of damage to her own property

View Full Article: Neighbour wants basement extension – Property at risk?

Housing supply rises by 10% in England

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Housing supply in England for 2021 to 2022 has risen by 10% when compared with the year before, or by 232,820 dwellings, the latest government figures show.

According to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the number of net additional dwellings for 2021 to 2022 are currently 4% below their pre-pandemic peak in 2019 to 2020.

View Full Article: Housing supply rises by 10% in England