Tenant not leaving after eviction notice?

admin    Uncategorized     agents

Hi all, I am wondering if someone can help me regarding an eviction notice being served to a tenant.

My mortgage rate now leaves me £1,000 out of pocket each month after rent so I am forced to sell my property.

View Full Article: Tenant not leaving after eviction notice?

BLOG: Will the last landlord to leave Scotland please turn out the lights

admin    Uncategorized     agents

With the consistent implementation of draconian legislation over the last year from the Scottish Government, it’s no surprise that more landlords are leaving the private rented sector than ever before.

Although some may cheer at the news, what they fail to realise is that the PRS has been propping up the social rented sector since 69% of council houses were sold off in the 1980s and never replaced. Now there is a shortage in supply right across Scotland – and it’s about to get worse.

Specific circumstances

With a rent freeze in place and a ban on evictions until March 2023, landlords will not be able to pass on any cost increases unless they can clearly demonstrate hardship, plus they cannot evict tenants unless specific circumstances are met and, even then, the Scottish Government have not made this easy at all.

Along comes the increase in tax on a second home purchase to 6% – with the rest of the UK at 3% – and it’s all got too much for the private investor who has consistently propped up and supported the rental sector for the last 20 years. If the private landlord leaves the sector, what are we to replace it with in such a short space of time?

Social housing

It’s all very well blaming the private landlord for buying up properties to rent and keeping them from potential first-time buyers, but where are the tenants currently living in those properties to go? The Scottish Government isn’t building enough social housing to keep up. The only person who will suffer is the tenant through lack of choice and possibly no choice at all, which could see a huge surge in homelessness on the horizon.

Jim Parker has been a private landlord and investor for 30 years and also runs multi-branch East Coast lettings agency Fife Properties.

View Full Article: BLOG: Will the last landlord to leave Scotland please turn out the lights

Secretive landlord ordered to pay £37,000 for exploiting tenants

admin    Uncategorized     agents

A rogue landlord who created false identities and fake letting agencies as part of an elaborate web of misinformation designed to exploit his tenants has been fined £12,000 and ordered to pay £25,000 costs.  

Thomas Flight, who owns flats on Portland Square in Bristol, admitted four consumer protection offences against his tenants at Bristol Crown Court, which heard that he had hidden his identity from them, in order to withhold security deposit money and avoid responsibility for charging banned and hidden fees.

False names

Tenants would receive made-up landlord and letting agent information, including false names and addresses. Flight even had a fictitious person registered as a director of one of his companies. Those who complained were then harassed with demands to withdraw their valid enquiries.

Bristol City Council received numerous complaints between June 2019 until January 2021 about a property management business operating from 21 Portland Square. The business went by various different trading names, meaning no one knew who they were dealing with or who was responsible when problems arose.

Banned fees

The council’s private housing team discovered that Flight had used various companies and trading names to receive rent, fees and deposits. In February 2021, he voluntarily repaid those tenants who had been charged banned fees or whose security deposits had not been returned to them when they should have been.

However, Flight has not been banned from letting properties as these offences are not Banning Order offences under the Housing and Planning Act 2016.

• An annual living rent index will be published, showing what affordable rents would look like in Bristol. The city’s councillors have also agreed that a publicly accessible list will record all enforcement notices issued to landlords in the city.

View Full Article: Secretive landlord ordered to pay £37,000 for exploiting tenants

Housing market will be hit by strike action at Registers of Scotland

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Scotland’s housing market will slow down at a time when it is already facing delays after the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union announced strike action.

That’s the view of DJ Alexander Ltd, the largest lettings and estate agency in Scotland.

View Full Article: Housing market will be hit by strike action at Registers of Scotland

Landlord deals to come under close scrutiny as cost-of-living rises bite

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Tougher checks on lending to buy-to-let investors are on the cards after the Bank of England warned it would scrutinise risky areas more heavily due to rising interest rates and a surge in inflation. 

It has told banks that lending to landlords and small businesses will face greater oversight, as well as borrowing on credit cards as it braces itself for a wave of defaults.

David Bailey, executive director at the Bank’s financial watchdog, the Prudential Regulation Authority, says lenders have already become more careful about their lending, however, he warns these measures were “untested under the current combination of risk factors”.

Robust practices

“Our assessment of firms’ credit risk management will include a focus on traditionally higher risk areas including retail credit card portfolios, unsecured personal loans, leveraged lending, commercial real estate, buy-to-let, and lending to small- and medium-sized enterprises,” explains Bailey.

He ordered lenders to be “ready for a prolonged period of credit stress” in a letter to bank chief executives. Bailey said: “The operating environment for firms remains challenging. The impact of increasing interest rates, inflation and high cost of living, geo-political uncertainty, and supply chain disruptions is expected to pose challenges to firms’ credit portfolios.”

Monthly repayments

The average buy-to-let two-year fixed-rate deal stood at 6% last month, according to the data company Moneyfacts, up from 2.89% a year earlier – adding around £389 to typical monthly repayments.

A growing number of those investing in property are women, according to data from HM Revenue and Customs which reports that they now make up 48% of the UK’s 2.7 million buy-to-let investors, up from 46% in 2016. The number of women who are residential property landlords has now reached 1.3 million, a 14% increase on the 1.1 million in 2016.

View Full Article: Landlord deals to come under close scrutiny as cost-of-living rises bite

Propertymark says banks are still misinterpreting AML rules

admin    Uncategorized     agents

Propertymark says that letting agents still face difficulties maintaining their pooled client accounts from high street banks that are still misinterpreting anti-money laundering (AML) regulations.

The organisation says it is regularly engaging with banks, industry bodies and government officials on behalf of members who have had accounts closed or restricted unnecessarily.

View Full Article: Propertymark says banks are still misinterpreting AML rules

House price crash ‘looks increasingly unlikely’

admin    Uncategorized     agents

After several real estate firms, lenders and property platforms predicted that house prices would fall in 2023 by up to 10%, one organisation says that a steep fall won’t happen for a range of reasons.

The National Association of Property Buyers (NAPB) says that a predicted house price crash for the UK ‘looks increasingly unlikely’

View Full Article: House price crash ‘looks increasingly unlikely’