Jan

Banning Section 21 will be a ‘car crash’ unless government listens to landlords’ concerns, leading agents tell LandlordZONE

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Half a dozen landlords gathered at our offices yesterday to discuss what’s keeping them up at night, and one thing rang loud and true from the meeting.

When
LandlordZone yesterday gathered 13 landlords together in one room with a
variety of portfolio sizes, just one key message rang out from the meeting.
Their clarion call was that banning Section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions will be a car
crash of significant proportions.

Many
of the landlords had at least one horror story of a rent-defaulting or
anti-social tenant who had taken them months to evict from a property,
something banning Section 21 evictions will make worse, they claimed.
And yet the government is ploughing ahead with plans to redirect all AST
evictions through the courts system and rely on a modified Section 8 notice
procedure.
But although the meeting was told by Landlord Action Brand Ambassador Paul
Shamplina that his discussions with Ministry of Housing officials were making
headway and that modifications to the Section 8 notice plans had been agreed,
the landlords felt civil servants were not listening on the key issue.
One landlord, who didn’t want to be named, said that unless the government
pumped substantial funds into either the existing court system or the proposed
replacement Housing Court, then abolishing the Section 21 evictions process
would extremely problematic for him.
“Many tenants will either play the game in court to lengthen the period they
can stay for free in a property, as some do already, or overworked courts will
take months to hear cases, resulting in the same outcome,” he said.
Another landlord agreed, pointing out that one effect of the government’s
evictions plans would be that landlords may have to begin bribing tenants to get
them out.
Other issues occupying the minds of the landlords included the possibility of
rent controls, the rise of Airbnb as an alternative to traditional rentals, the
rapid spread of HMO and Selective Licensing controls, the issue of young
offenders being housed by local authorities in private rented accommodation, the
rise illegal sub-letters and the unfair demonising of landlords in the media.

“Being a landlord can be quite a solitary
business so I thought it would be a good idea to start these engagement groups to
enable landlords to meet and talk with each other, discuss what’s worrying
them, where the market’s going and update them on the latest regulatory
developments,” says Shamplina.

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