Logistics and industrial property beats retail & leisure by a country mile

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While retail landlords, the likes of Land Securities and Hammerson, have struggled to collect their rents since the outbreak of the pandemic earlier this year, and the collapse in property values and their market capitalisations has been dramatic; logistics is in an entirely different position.

The outlook for retail and leisure was bad enough before the pandemic which brought the British economy to its knees. Over 6,000 stores closed last year. During lockdown and since, with the enforced shutdown of cafes, pubs, restaurants, gyms and hotels is expected to result in thousands more pulling down the shutters for good.

Industrial and logistics landlords, on the other hand, have easily outperformed these other sectors within the commercial property market due to the acceleration in e-commerce. With the likes of with heavyweight LondonMetric its not surprising there’s a big difference. This is, a property development company specialising in industrial and logistics, and with a market capitalisation of around £2bn, it’s reporting a fourth-quarter rent collection rate of 94 per cent.

Not far behind is another big (£11bn) industrial and logistics landlord developer Segro with a UK rent collection rate at 85 per cent of UK rent, ahead of the equivalent date after the second and third-quarter payment deadlines. Its Continental European rents, which are paid monthly, are also tracking ahead of previous quarters. Total rent collection for the second and third quarters stands at 96 and 95 per cent, respectively.

The company is on course to improve further during the fourth quarter, as it continued to deploy £680m in funds raised for expansion in June. The FTSE 100 listed REIT placed 82million shares, representing 7.5% of its issued ordinary share capital, to accelerate pre-let developments as well as acquisitions of land and investment assets, and it is eyeing £1bn worth of deals over the next year and a half.

The group also completed the purchase of Electra Business Park in east London from Schroders the investment fund and invested a further £29m in its own land bank, in line with its target to invest more than £800m in its development pipeline this year.

Increasing rent premiums that can be demanded by logistics properties currently on the market mean the group can invest with confidence, knowing that it can generate higher returns by developing its own assets, even though speculative development comes with more risk.

The company is flying high, but it has not come out entirely unscathed through Covid-19, with rent roll growth from existing space standing at £7.9m, net of space handed back, behind the £10.6m it achieved at the same time last year.

However, investors in the company should take comfort from the fact that the rate at which new headline rents have been agreed on review and renewal, so for this year, have been 10 per cent higher than previous passing rents.

Shares in Segro are trading at or near all time highs, given the prospect of continued rental income and therefore dividend growth.

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Stop chasing rogue landlords, says influential new PRS report

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A new report into the private rented sector in the North of England has panned national and local government efforts to clamp down on ‘rogue landlords’ and called for greater efforts by authorities to ensure the majority of ‘good’ landlords maintain their properties adequately.

“A focus on rogue landlords ignores poor practice and a lack of resilience in the private sector more broadly,” it says.

Many tenants quizzed in the study said their landlords were ‘reasonable and non-exploitative’ and that problems came from a lack of inertia and awareness rather than malice.

Called ‘Lockdown, Rundown, Breakdown’ and backed by a foundation financed by the Nationwide building society and published by the Northern Housing Consortium, it says the problems with housing quality are more acute in the North because of its stock of pre-war, low-value properties.

Covid problems

Based on tenant interview by Huddersfield University researchers, it says: “Many longstanding repair and quality issues were described as worsening throughout lockdown because social distancing measures prohibited contractors from entering the home.

“It was only in extreme cases, such as the breakdown of heating systems, that contractors typically carried out work.”

But the key issue identified is that tenants are under-reporting repairs and maintenance issues because they feel insecure in their tenancies.

“The research points to a need for policy makers to campaign for the reintroduction of the ban on evictions and the need for all organisations to adopt fair-minded and just debt enforcement and debt recovery practices,” the report says.

“It also further supports calls to provide all renters with security of tenure as a necessary step to ensure that renters have confidence to exercise their tenancy rights around repairs and maintenance – this should be a legislative priority.”

Read the full report.
Read more about rogue landlords.

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Guidance to help prevent care leavers becoming homeless

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New guidance for councils to help ensure care leavers have the stable homes they need and prevent them from becoming homeless has been published by Minister for Rough Sleeping and Housing Kelly Tolhurst.

Care leavers can often struggle to cope with the challenges of living independently at a young age without a family network

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Potential Commission Dispute?

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I am seeking some views as to whether I am likely to end up with a commission dispute when selling my house.

The circumstances are that I had my house marketed on a sole agency agreement with an estate agent from January to June.

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Golden Visa Opportunities in the Top 10 Tax Havens

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Confronted with the high income tax rates in the UK, British citizens have been more interested in alternative taxation programs in recent years. One of them is the Non-Habitual Residency (NHR). According to a study by UHY (Urbach Hacker Young International Limited) in 2019

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Deep-clean your HMOs every week to stop Covid, urges Labour chief

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Covid has led to many campaigns to help tenants and landlords survive the pandemic, but Labour has taken the biscuit with its latest effort.

The party is urging HMO landlords to only rent rooms out if they are en-suite, and to under-take weekly deep-cleans of their properties.

The idea has been floated by its Northampton wing, whose leader Danielle Stone (pictured) has raised concerns that HMOs in the city, where tenants live communally sharing both washing, toilet and cooking facilities, are helping spread the virus.

“All HMOs should be en-suites. Strangers sharing bathrooms makes Covid-secure hygiene impossible. It makes social isolation, sheltering, or quarantining next-to impossible,” she said.

“Where different households share an entrance way and communal areas there should be a requirement for landlords to undertake a weekly deep clean.”

Greencore outbreak

Her comments follow the infamous Greencore foodplant ‘super-spreading’ incident which, in part, was blamed on many of its workforce living in the same HMOs, but also car-sharing to work.

The city has some 1,0000 large and small HMOs registered within its mandatory and additional licensing schemes, and Stone has said that some landlords’ sloppy approach to providing hygienic facilities is helping create Covid-spreading traps.

“In this day and age it should be taken for granted that everyone should have access to their own bathrooms,” she told local media.

Her party has also gone a step further and urged local landlords to ‘be responsible’ and only rent out rooms within their HMOs if they have en-suite bathrooms until the pandemic dies down.

“In Northampton we have many families living in overcrowded conditions. This means parents and children are on top of each other, without adequate storage, room to play, room to study,” says Stone.

Discuss: Are HMOs the way forward for the UK rental market?
Read more: Bill that will change the way HMOs are managed.

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LATEST: Greens launch plan to give tenants ‘rent reduction’ rights

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The green party in Scotland has launched an all-out war against landlords and the private rented sector during its online-only national conference over the weekend.

The Scots arm of the Green Party in the UK has six MSPs, and its housing spokesperson Andy Wightman, who is MSP for Lothian, gave a tub-thumping speech to the party’s supporters yesterday, calling for radical measures on housing.

Blaming Scotland’s poverty problems squarely on high rents and landlords’ ability to evict via ‘no fault’ notices, Wightman said it was time for the party to offer a ‘new deal for housing’ to voters.

This is to include rent controls, giving tenants the right to request rent reductions if they are struggling financially, and preventing landlords from evicting tenants when they want to sell their property.

Wightman also heavily criticised the Scottish National Party (SNP) for its approach to the private rental sector during the Covid pandemic.

Landlords

This includes: “Standing up for landlords when the pandemic hit us whilst joining with the Tories to block my proposals for better protection for tenants,” he said.

“In no other country in Europe would a Private Sector Resilience group set up to safeguard tenants during the coronavirus pandemic have no representatives of tenants on it.

“The odds are always stacked in favour of the wealthy, whether they be the big land owners, landlords, or corporates. And As a result, the rich get richer and the poor poorer.

“This is not an accident. It’s a policy choice. Time and time again we’ve seen the SNP choose to side with powerful vested interests rather than the public interest.”

Read more: Stop hitting landlords over the head with a stick, industry urges.

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Covid pressures drive council to make harsh choices over property licensing

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Slough Borough Council has revealed that it is to wage a campaign against rogue and non-compliant landlords over the next six months but de-prioritise inspecting the 1,700 already-licensed properties within its three licensing schemes, and is already preparing to take four persistent offenders to court.

Since July 2019 hundreds of small and large HMOs, and a larger number of properties covered by a two-ward selective scheme, have had to be licenced at a cost of between £400 and £750 per property for five years.

But ‘teething problems’ with its IT system, which landlords are forced to use to apply for a licence, plus problems recruiting staff and the huge financial and logistical challenges of Covid, have led its housing team to focus on chasing up the rogue and non-compliant element of the PRS.

Unprofessional

“The rationale for prioritising unlicensed properties is that unprofessional, negligent and rogue landlords that pose the greatest risk to tenants can often be identified by their absence from the licensing schemes; so it follows that focussing resources on identifying unlicensed properties will have the greatest benefit to residents,” a report submitted to the council says.

Slough says it has therefore decided not to undertake large-scale inspection of licenced properties, although it will continue to react to individual cases where tenants alert it to poorly-managed properties.

The immediate focus for the team in the next six months is to locate as many unlicensed properties as possible and to robustly enforce against those who persistently fail to make a licence application, as it is these landlords who are most likely to put their tenants at risk of harm.”

Read more: How to be compliant with landlord legislation.

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Mortgage Express (Rosinca Mortgages) will not allow transfer of equity?

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Has anyone any advice for the following situation: 3 BTL properties with Mortgage Express (now Rosinca Mortgages) which still have 8 years left on a 25-year interest-only mortgage term.

The properties are jointly owned by myself and my Brother.

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Council HMO guidance – Now more confused than when I started?

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I’ve read Bexley Council and Government guidance but am just more confused than when I started.

I have converted my house into 3 separate living ‘units’, I’m not calling them flats as they don’t meet building regulations (I do have planning permission for the extension and conversion works).

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