Illegal evictions increasing ‘dramatically’ says leading tenancy group

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Illegal evictions and harassment by rogue landlords are increasing as tenants struggle to pay their rent and some landlords resort to criminal means to remove tenants as the court system falters and some landlords seek to exploit soaring rents, according to Safer Renting.

Figures compiled by the charity from sources including Citizens Advice, Shelter, and local authorities show there were more than 8,000 instances of illegal eviction or harassment during 2022 – an increase on 7,800 cases in 2021 and 6,900 cases in 2020. It says figures are likely to go up again this year.

Safer Renting – a tenancy relations service operating in seven London boroughs – estimates that many more cases go unreported and believes that too often, the police side with the landlord or treat it as a civil dispute, while councils rarely take action because they have lost so many specialist tenancy-relations officers during austerity.

“More data needs to be collected so that there is evidence behind the arguments,” a spokesman tells LandlordZONE, “while the penalties for breaching the law are not high enough.”

DIY evictions

The spokesperson adds that the organisatoin supports the proposed landlord register but that in the meantime, while Section 21 remains and the court system is backed up with cases, it would expect to see an increase in landlords resorting to DIY evictions.

Safer Renting also points to the spate of criminal landlords increasingly turning to private security companies to get tenants to leave their homes without a court order.

“In the past, criminal landlords may have sent heavies to throw tenants out, but this is the first time in 33 years of working in the private rented sector that I’ve seen fake bailiffs kitted out with stab vests, radios and handcuffs,” co-founder Ben Reeve-Lewis (pictured) tells The Guardian. “Some of them even have vans with police-like livery on the side.”

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AGENT: London rental market to be ‘most competitive ever’ this summer

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Prospective tenants flooding into London this summer – along with the continued shrinkage in property numbers – is set to create one of the most competitive rental markets ever seen.

May bank holiday is when many 12-month and 18-month tenancies come to an end, explains Adam Jennings (main picture), regional lettings director for Chestertons’ southwest London area.

He says this time of year also heralds an increase in short-term summer rentals, when students finish exams and begin searching for somewhere to live, and companies start relocating staff to so that children can be ready for the new school term.

Far fewer

“With many landlords having sold their investments over the past few years, and many experienced tenants negotiating in order to extend their tenancies to three years or more, there will be far fewer properties available for all of these new tenants,” he says.

“This will create one of the most competitive markets that we’ve seen and is likely to nudge prices up further.”

Jennings expects there will be about 10% more properties coming onto the market in June, but this will be dwarfed by the number of tenants looking to move.

Uplift

Last year, Chestertons registered 23% more tenants in June compared to May and is expecting a similar uplift this year.

As a result, rents, which have been flattening out since last autumn, could rise by as much as 15-20% over the next few months, which means now is an ideal time for landlords to list their property, he adds.

Landlords with properties in central London saw the highest levels of tenant demand across England and Wales in the last quarter of 2022. Earlier this year, Foxtons reported that 2022 had 32% fewer listings in the capital than 2021 while demand remained high, finishing the year 14% higher.

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LAW: Agent faces £10,000 bill after licencing fine appeal rejected

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A managing agent who failed to licence a property has had his appeal thrown out by a First Tier Property Tribunal.

Taren Lamba tried to convince the judge that he was not in control of the property in Kenwood Road, London (main picture) by insisting that all he did was take in the rents on behalf of his company Smart Move and then pass them onto the freeholder landlord, making an annual charge.

The tribunal heard that Enfield Council had fined him £10,000 after an inspection in December 2021 found the house was occupied by a tenant and family.

Enforcement officers discovered defective front and rear doors as well as no valid licence, despite a selective licence scheme having been introduced three months earlier.

At the hearing, Lamba also argued that the financial penalty was too high and that he hadn’t received several items of correspondence from the council.

Those items he received he had either referred to the freeholder or responded directly to them.

Enfield Council said its scheme was widely publicised to landlords, managing and letting agents within the borough before its introduction and that information was publicised on the authority’s website. 

Failure

The judge ruled that Lamba’s failure to submit any evidence of compliance with the licensing scheme clearly hindered his case and that it was clear he had control of the property because he received the rack rent. The tribunal added: “We consider that the amount set by the respondent in the sum of £10,000 to be a reasonable amount for an offence of this type, since the local authority scored the matrix with care and took into consideration the requirements of their explicit scheme.”

Read the decision in full.

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Skylights repair project?

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Hello, I have a Victorian building that is three storeys and has eight flats and was converted many decades ago.  The building has three skylights on the roof, which is the ceiling (flat roof) for two flats. These are fixed non-vented (not windows per se)

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UK’s rental market soars: Record highs and regional disparities

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Landlords and tenants in the UK have witnessed average rent costs for a new tenancy rocketing by 10% year-on-year, reaching £1,213, research reveals.

The Homelet rental index for May also reveals that the monthly rise in rent last month was 1.2%.

View Full Article: UK’s rental market soars: Record highs and regional disparities