Need a hoover in a hurry? High-tech kiosk lends renters essentials

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Renters in two of the capital’s build-to-rent apartment blocks can rent out household appliances, games and other essentials in a novel gadget-sharing initiative.

Developer Get Living has partnered with TULU to install its smart rental units which residents at Victory Plaza and Portlands Place in East Village, Stratford, can access via a mobile app. Available items include Bosch cordless vacuum cleaners and robot mops, game consoles, VR headsets, projectors and air mattresses. They can also buy snacks and food staples.

Inspected regularly

TULU believes it’s a good way of promoting responsible consumption and taps into the growing demand for the ‘usage economy’, in which people access products only for the time they are needed rather than owning them, supporting sustainable living. The products on offer are tailored to the needs of the residents and inspected regularly by TULU to make sure they are clean and in good condition.

Growing demand

Ailish Christian-West, chief operating officer at Get Living, says: “We regularly speak to our residents to understand how we can enhance their living experience with us and initiatives such as TULU are a direct response to those conversations. We know that there is growing demand for subscriptions and rentals rather than purchases, whether it’s music, films, or household items, allowing people to live more flexibly, consume less and reduce their outgoing expenditure.”

Get Living has 4,000 homes for rent in London and Manchester and plans to grow its portfolio to 12,500 homes within the next five years.

View Full Article: Need a hoover in a hurry? High-tech kiosk lends renters essentials

Government targets cities and relaxes planning in bid to solve housing crisis

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A new housing plan would allow shops, takeaways and betting shops to be turned into homes while homeowners would have greater freedoms to carry out property extensions and open up lofts.

Housing Secretary Michael Gove says under the proposals, the government’s main focus will be on housing developments in the UK’s major cities where demand is highest and growth is being constrained as it bids to unblock the planning system and build more homes in the right places where there is local consent. The plan also includes regenerating 20 towns and cities across England. 

New homes

He wants to unleash a wave of new homes in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool, using development corporations which councils would bid to set up. Those government-sponsored bodies would then use compulsory purchase orders to buy up land and sell chunks on to developers to build new homes. A new ‘planning super-squad’ called the Action Taskforce for Land Assembly Sites would review permitted development rights and support development in these big sites.

When asked about how it would prevent investors from buying up all the new housing, Gove said: “We need a healthy rental sector. We have taken steps to ensure that it’s more expensive to acquire a second property than a first property – but there’s more that we can do and more will follow.”

Negative impact

Shaun Davies, chair of the Local Government Association, believes premises such as offices, barns, and shops are not always suitable for housing. He adds: “Further expanding permitted development rights risks creating poor quality residential environments that negatively impact people’s health and wellbeing, as well as a lack of affordable housing or suitable infrastructure.”

The proposals come as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced it would meet its manifesto commitment to build one million homes over this Parliament. However, last year the cross-party Levelling Up Committee found that the government was not on target to deliver 300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s.

View Full Article: Government targets cities and relaxes planning in bid to solve housing crisis

Cashback on BTL and Residential Mortgage Product Switches

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Are you one of the 1.8 million property owners who have a fixed rate on their mortgage ending in 2024? If so, I hope you will find the following information useful.

Over the last 15 years, we have been spoilt by historically low-interest rates and have all enjoyed low mortgage repayments on our homes as well as our buy-to-let properties.

View Full Article: Cashback on BTL and Residential Mortgage Product Switches

Government pledges to meet its 1 million new homes plan

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The Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has revealed that the Government will meet its manifesto pledge to build 1 million new homes in this Parliament.

Since 2010, the Government says that more than 2.2 million new homes have been built and millions of people have moved into home ownership.

View Full Article: Government pledges to meet its 1 million new homes plan

Gove calls for EPC deadline reprieve to give landlords a break

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Housing Minister Michael Gove has suggested a delay in bringing in energy efficiency plans for the private renter sector.

Citing financial pressures on landlords, he told The Telegraph that the government should relax the pace of changes to EPC targets which is expected to see them forced to obtain a C grade for their properties by 2028. This could include spending thousands on fitting a heat pump, insulation or solar panels, with a national cap of £10,000.

Relax pace

“My own strong view is that we’re asking too much too quickly,” said Gove. “We do want to move towards greater energy efficiency, but just at this point, when landlords face so much, I think that we should relax the pace that’s been set for people in the private rented sector, particularly because many of them are currently facing a big capital outlay in order to improve that efficiency.”

Ben Beadle, NRLA chief executive, says it is more than two years since the government completed its consultation on energy efficiency standards in rented homes. “As a result of the delay in responding to this, there was never any hope of meeting the originally proposed deadlines, as we told the Minister earlier this month,” he adds.

Needs certainty

“The NRLA wants to see properties as energy efficient as possible, but the sector needs certainty about how and when this will happen. Ministers need to develop a proper plan that includes a fair financial package to support improvements in the private rented sector. We will continue to work with all parties to develop pragmatic and workable proposals.”

In June, Energy Minister Andrew Bowie admitted that landlords would have to wait many more months to find out the details of government proposals to raise the minimum Energy Performance Certificate for rented properties.

View Full Article: Gove calls for EPC deadline reprieve to give landlords a break

House prices to drop by ‘double digits’ in a prolonged slump

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Economists have sounded the alarm over the future of UK house prices by forecasting a significant decline of 12% by the end of next year.

The predictions come amidst growing concerns that the housing market will fail to bounce back from the impending downturn

View Full Article: House prices to drop by ‘double digits’ in a prolonged slump

Landlord with OBE to pay £300,000 fine over ‘appalling conditions’ at properties

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A veteran landlord with an OBE has been handed a whopping £300,000 fine after two decades of managing illegally converted houses.

Nirpaul Riat was given one of the largest ever fines in Hounslow for managing 22 properties where vulnerable tenants lived in appalling conditions.

Isleworth Crown Court heard that Riat also illegally converted a property into eight flats and rented an outbuilding in Osterley where the squalid conditions included damp, cramped rooms with limited natural light, a lack of hot water and heating that only working irregularly.

Previous fine

Riat was previously fined £20,000 in 2009 for illegally converting a property in Hanworth into flats, refusing to reinstate it as a single house or to stop using a static caravan as a separate home to rent out.

Riat now faces being sent to prison if he does not pay the new fine.

Hounslow Council says the rogue landlord treated his tenants as nothing more than a commodity – exploiting residents in need of housing for his own financial gain.

Rogue landlords

Councillor Tom Bruce (pictured), cabinet member for regeneration and development, adds: “While these residents were left to languish in these appalling conditions, Nirapaul grew rich at their expense.

“I hope today’s verdict sends a message that we do not – under any circumstances – tolerate rogue landlords in Hounslow and will use the full force of the law to prosecute them.”

Riat was awarded an OBE in 2011 for services to charity after he raised nearly £50,000 for air ambulance services, Thames Valley Crime Stoppers and Great Ormond Street Hospital.

View Full Article: Landlord with OBE to pay £300,000 fine over ‘appalling conditions’ at properties

Extra stamp duty clobbering Welsh landlords with £92 million extra tax take

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Landlords and holiday homeowners continue to be clobbered by a tax grab from the Welsh Revenue Authority.

The latest figures show revenue from the higher rate of stamp duty – Land Transaction Tax (LTT) – increased by 50% from £61 million in 2020/21 to £92 million in 2022/23 – albeit down from £97 million the previous year.

The Welsh government caused outrage among landlords after it hiked stamp duty by 1% for anyone buying a property that is not their principal residence including second homes and buy-to-let properties in December 2020.

New data reveals a total of 59,560 transactions for LTT from April 2022 to March 2023, which pocketed the authority £287 million for residential transactions. This included £92 million additional revenue raised from higher rates and £95 million tax due for non-residential transactions.

Reduced

Adam Al-Nuaimi (pictured), head of data and analysis, says there was a marginal increase in residential LTT revenues despite lower numbers of transactions towards the end of the financial year, which was likely to have been influenced by wider economic conditions.

He adds: “In the year to March, we have seen reduced activity for residential higher rates in some areas of Wales, particularly in some of the western or northern areas.

“Possible reasons for this could include the impact of wider economic conditions or second homes policies beginning to impact upon transactions.”

The maximum level at which local authorities can set council tax premiums on second homes and long-term empty properties was increased to 300% in April as a way to help people find a home where they grew up.

Read more about LTT rates in Wales.

View Full Article: Extra stamp duty clobbering Welsh landlords with £92 million extra tax take

Is the Private Rented Sector heading back to the 1970s?

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Strikes, rocketing-interest rates and high demand for housing. You would be forgiven for thinking that we were back in the 1970s!

Fashion may have changed drastically since then but with housing affordability at its worst in decades, renters and homeowners now face heading back to the past.

View Full Article: Is the Private Rented Sector heading back to the 1970s?

Will the looming PRS reforms make evicting badly-behaved tenants more difficult?

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After years of campaigning and lobbying by tenant groups the Government has committed to huge changes for landlords when evicting tenants.

This includes most controversially binning Section 21 notice evictions, which enable landlords to give notice to tenants without naming a ‘fault’, commonly known as no-fault evictions.

These are used most often to remove tenants who have stopped paying the rent and built up significant arrears, or who are behaving badly or breaking their rental contracts in other ways.

Rishi’s promise

Rishi Sunak recently promised to ensure that landlords will still have the ability to remove tenants who behave badly as part of his campaign to stop anti-social behaviour in our wider society.

But what will all this mean for private landlords once the Renters (Reform) Bill goes live next year, and will evicting rogue or badly behaved tenants become more difficult?

Answering these questions in the latest ThePropertyCast episode are experts Paul Shamplina and Paul Sowerbutts of Landlord Action, along with HFIS chief executive officer Eddie Hooker. Listen in here or watch them on Youtube below.

View Full Article: Will the looming PRS reforms make evicting badly-behaved tenants more difficult?