Short lets landlords give 1,000 properties to new scheme for NHS staff and… MPs!?

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Health workers and Government staff can get discounted short-term stays near their workplace on a new online platform designed to support their fight against COVID-19.

The UK Short Term Accommodation Association (STAA) has replaced its NHS Homes initiative with trustedstays.co.uk, a website for Government and NHS to book discounted accommodation for staff.

At least 1,000 properties in London, Manchester and Edinburgh are now available for bookings through its 11 different short-term rental partners, with a national roll-out planned for later this month.

The STAA’s initial NHS Homes scheme, which launched in March, involved more than 30 property companies donating accommodation worth more than £20m, providing 10,000 nights’ free accommodation.

Chair Merilee Karr (left) says it illustrated that the authorities needed continued support, particularly as the scheme saw a spike in demand in recent weeks as infection rates have risen.

“This offer isn’t just confined to NHS workers,” says Karr.

“We can also support the Government to accommodate people who need to shelter from COVID-19 for health reasons and for other key workers such as MPs, who have to be at their place of work, need flexible accommodation and prefer to stay in a professionally managed home setting.

“By staying in safe and clean accommodation, key workers won’t have the worry of a daily commute on public transport and will be able to protect vulnerable family members by staying in a separate, self-contained property.”

TrustedStays is only open to STAA members who have accreditation from Quality in Tourism’s Safe, Clean and Legal scheme, while all member companies follow the single set of industry cleaning and safety protocols introduced in June.

Read more about landlord initiatives to offer frontline staff accommodation.

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Not again! Labour and Shelter call for another evictions ban as new lockdown looms

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Charities and opposition politicians are putting fresh pressure on the Government to bring back its eviction ban for the entire winter.

As the country starts the next national lockdown, they’re hoping the halt on evictions in Tier 2 and Tier 3 Covid restriction areas might be extended to the rest of the UK.

Labour’s shadow housing secretary Thangam Debbonaire (above, left) and Shelter chief executive Polly Neate (above, right) have both called on the Government to urgently reinstate the ban.

Neate says: “With England set to enter another national lockdown and Covid cases on the rise, the Government needs to move again to make sure no-one is forced out of their home this winter by banning evictions nationwide. It is simply too dangerous to allow more people to become homeless now.”

Refusing to budget

However, so far, the Government is refusing to budge. A spokesperson at The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government told LandlordZONE that it’s already taken unprecedented measures to protect tenants during the pandemic and that these are under constant review.

“Landlords must give six months’ notice for all but the most serious eviction cases – such as those involving domestic abuse – and we’ve taken action to prevent people getting into financial hardship by helping businesses to pay salaries, extending the furlough scheme, and boosting the welfare safety net by over £9 billion,” they said.

Along with the Christmas evictions moratorium already announced by the Government last month, with courts halting proceedings in Tier 2 and 3 areas, landlords there now have to wait until the New Year before they can proceed.

As LandlordZONE recently reported, tenants outside Tier 2 and 3 areas can halt evictions relatively easily by claiming – but not having to prove – that they have Covid.

See Shelter’s advice to tenants on evictions during Covid.

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Landlord’s campaign to dramatically reduce eviction notice period ‘unhelpful during Covid’ say experts

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Two leading eviction experts have rejected recent calls by landlord and property educator Ranjan Bhattacharya to reduce the evictions notice period to 14 days.

His controversial claim, which was made during a YouTube video for his 27,600 subscribers four weeks ago, asked fellow landlords to sign a petition calling on the government to reduce the notice period.

Bhattacharya argues that the existing system – even when the current restrictions are discounted – is unfair to landlords, claiming it can take up to a year in normal times to evict a tenant.

But Tim Frome, legal director at Landlord Action, and John Stewart of the NRLA have rejected this, point out that it is both unlikely to happen politically and also paints landlords in a bad light, however well intentioned.

“I’m afraid that this kind of campaign is not helpful during the Covid crisis and it’s unlikely to have legs when the pandemic is over,” says Stewart (left).

Frome agreed, saying that in normal times two months is a reasonable period of time to give notice to a tenant before seeking to take action in the courts.

“You’ve got to remember that these are people’s homes even though, of course, there has to be a reasonable time period to get the property back if a tenant breaches the terms of their tenancy, and I think two months’ notice strikes that balance.”

The pair were talking during a live webinar at today’s National Landlord Investment Show, which normally takes place at Olympia but this year is online only.

Stewart also revealed during the webinar that the NRLA has been lobbying the government to give landlords who face unreasonable tenants who change locks, ignore communications and fail to pay their rent to be given an easier access to evictions.

“This needs to transferred to the Section 8 notice process once Section 21 is abolished,” he said.

Read our story about Bhattacharya’s campaign.
Visit Landlord Action or NRLA.

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Get ready! Rent arrears to reach 15% off all tenants by end of 2021

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Tenants and landlords face months of insecurity, mental stress and hardship as a slow burn of evictions continues until at least 2022, according to a hard-hitting new report.

LSE London and Trust for London predicts that even if we return to some sort of normality by the end of next year, the long-term arrears and loss of credit-worthiness among tenants, and loss of income and confidence for landlords will continue to scar both individuals and the private rented sector for years.

As a solution, the report calls on the Government to introduce low-interest loans for tenants, paid directly to landlords – something the NRLA has been campaigning on for months now.

The dire warnings in the Where Now for the Private Rented sector? report include a possible 50,000 formal evictions in the next 12 months – at least three times the number before COVID-19 – leading to a possible extra 30,000 households in temporary accommodation.

700,000 tenants

The LSE believes that assuming the growth in arrears – starting from 6% in July – is closely correlated with unemployment, by mid to late 2021, arrears could be between 12.6% and 15.6% of all tenants – affecting up to 700,000 tenants and their landlords.

Christine Whitehead, emeritus professor of housing economics at LSE, says: “We’re likely to see a slow burn of evictions that will go on at least into 2022.

This will leave more and more tenants – and sometimes their landlords – facing months of insecurity, mental stress and hardship.”

Whitehead (left) adds: “Although so far local authorities have seen little evidence of illegal evictions, there are plenty of lodgers, sofa surfers and others with few rights ‘asked’ to move on.

“The end of furlough, the continuing growth in unemployment in response to a less generous support system, and continuing lockdowns can only make things worse.”

The LSE suggests that to avoid “catastrophic future problems”, the private rented sector needs to remain sustainable and recommends that local authorities continue to use their homelessness prevention powers.

Read the report in full.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Get ready! Rent arrears to reach 15% off all tenants by end of 2021 | LandlordZONE.

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Airbnb to set up £760 million fund to support landlords and hosts

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Airbnb founder Brian Chesky (above) has written to the company’s four million hosts and landlords to reveal that he is to set up a global $1 billion (£760 million) ‘endowment’ fund to support both those who let out property via the platform and the communities they operate within.

Called the Airbnb Host Endowment Fund, his announcement is a reaction to criticism that short lets platforms like Airbnb ‘take’ from communities and housing markets, but rarely ‘give back’.

Chesky says the fund will be used to support hosts and landlords both with local projects to support communities and financial resources for hotst/landlords that will last for ‘generations to come’.

The Host Endowment will be established via 9.2 million shares from Airbnb which, at an estimated IPO prices of $34 (£25) would make the fund worth $312 million (£236 million), so hosts around the world would have some time to wait for the fund to reach a value of $1 billion.

Airbnb says ‘funding decisions’ will be made following input from hosts, who will also be consulted directly on how to make Airbnb better.

The four key areas where the fund will spend money include:

• Emergency funds for hosts in times of crisis.
• Investment in new products to support host success.
• An annual payout to a select group of hosts who most advance the Airbnb mission.
• Grant programs to support education costs for hosts and their families.

“It’s been a difficult year, but I’ve been inspired by how resilient you are, and how quickly you’ve adapted to the changing needs of guests,” Chesky says in an email sent out to all hosts.

“More importantly, I’ve been moved by your compassion. You are some of the kindest people I’ve ever met. You have faith in others and trust them enough to stay in the most personal of spaces – your own home.

Read more about the fund.

Picture credit: Airbnb Inc

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Research into sustainability at lowest end of the Private Rented Sector

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Property118 is no stranger to assisting the Univerisity of York with research.

In 2014 Property118 members’ contributed significantly to this 183 page report.

Dr Julie Rugg and Dr Alison Wallace, both research professors at the Univerisity of York are now seeking your help again.

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Let’s create more first-time buyers by making private tenants homeless!

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The recent policy announced by Boris Johnson that he will turn ‘generation rent’ into ‘generation buy’ by under-writing mortgage deposits for first-time buyers (FTBs) is outrageous and a non-starter for reasons I have outlined today on conservativehome. Click here 

Due to word limits

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Studies show that the majority of tenants prioritise their rent payments

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A new analysis from Freddie Mac, the US Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), using a multifamily research group’s data, examined five major resources capturing rent payment information. It concluded in a new report that overall rental payment performance has remained strong in the face of the pandemic and the economic downturn.

The Freddie Mac studies found that, on average, 93.6% of renters paid full or partial rent in May and 94.2% paid full or partial rent in June. The findings are said to closely align with the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) Rental Payment Tracker, which reported 95.1% and 95.5% respectively.

Steve Guggenmos, vice president of Multifamily Research and Modeling at Freddie Mac says:

“The surveys analysed in this report provide valuable insight into the rental market during this unprecedented time and it is important to consider what each source captures and how that fits into the bigger picture… The data shows that rent payment has remained healthier than some market participants anticipated throughout the crisis because renters are prioritising making their rent payments, even in financially stressed households.”

In the US, “Freddie Mac makes home possible for millions of families and individuals by providing mortgage capital to lenders. Since our creation by Congress in 1970, we’ve made housing more accessible and affordable for homebuyers and renters in communities nationwide. We are building a better housing finance system for homebuyers, renters, lenders and taxpayers.”

An Independent British think tank, The Resolution Foundation, on the other hand, has found that private and social renters are bearing the cost of redundancies during the coronavirus recession. It is warning that more tenants are likely to fall behind with housing costs than people with a mortgage.

Nearly one in eight (12.5%) of private renters cannot now meet their housing costs in full, according to a new report – Coping with housing costs, six months on

This Resolution Foundation report, which is based on a survey of more than 6,000 adults in the UK, argues that some urgent measures are needed to protect households as the country enters a second lock down.

Despite some improvement in the UK labour market since the spring, says the report, housing costs continue to be a serious concern for many as workers struggle to cover rent and mortgage payments.

The report says that around 8% of private renters and 7% of social renters have lost their jobs since the start of the pandemic, compared to just 3% of those paying a mortgage.

Lindsay Judge, the research director at The Resolution Foundation, has said:

“As lockdown measures continue to ramp up around the UK, high housing costs are making the ongoing economic situation even worse for many families.”

The National Residential Landlords Association reports that up to 300,000 renters are still on the chancellor’s furlough scheme, which was set to end on Saturday 31 October, but is new set to be extended. This should bring some welcome relief in the short-term.

The Resolution Foundation is calling for tenants in England to be given interest-free government loans, similar to the schemes introduced in Wales and Scotland.

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New figures reveal rental market bounce back since May but will new lockdown spoil recovery?

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Rental market activity bounced back aggressively during the three months that followed the first lockdown, new analysis has revealed, and continues to do so now.

While market activity slumped by 31% during the March to May lockdown months, from the beginning of June to the end of August the number of new tenancies increased by 22% year-on-year, says deposit replacement scheme Ome.

Its analysis of market activity reveals that there were 125,932 new tenancy deposits protected with the Government authorised scheme mydeposits during June, July and August.

This compares with just 98,412 during the same period last year.

And the bounce-back continues; during September 49,146 new tenancies were taken up, the highest monthly figure so far this year.

Ome co-founder Matthew Hooker says the rental market’s quick return to normal transaction levels is down to both demand bottled up during the lockdown and many renters realising their current homes are too small.

“One of the great benefits of a strong private rented sector is the flexibility it offers to those that have reassessed their living conditions and now want something different,” says Hooker.

“The post-lockdown rebound is encouraging because it shows confidence and willingness from renters to expand their horizons and readjust to their current circumstances.

“This flexibility to adapt and overcome, rather than make do with arrangements they had made prior to the pandemic, highlights just how buoyant, resilient and adaptive the private rented sector can be.

“Ome was born out of the need for renters to have greater financial flexibility and choice.”

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Holiday let, an annex and a narrowboat

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I have a cottage in south York, with the potential to create a small annex with a separate entrance.

I plan to live on my narrowboat most of the year, but with me occasionally staying in the annex

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