Anyone housed an Afghan or a Ukrainian family via an AST?

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Hello everyone, Isn’t the language barrier the biggest issue at the end of the day?

I’ve taken a single Ukrainian lady on in a one bed flat who was fleeing from the war (via reference from Council and charity sponsor).

View Full Article: Anyone housed an Afghan or a Ukrainian family via an AST?

Landlord and agent fines rocket by 23% to £8m in London

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Fines for landlords and letting agents in London have increased by more than £1.5m in the last year to more than £8 million.

The figure comes from technology firm Kamma who are tracking the Mayor of London’s Rogue London and Agent Checker.

View Full Article: Landlord and agent fines rocket by 23% to £8m in London

Loft Flat Is Uninhabitable at 38 Degrees

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Hello everyone, My London (Clapham) Loft flat has become “uninhabitable” and/or “uncomfortable to live in” says my Tenant.

She further says it is consistently 4 or 5 degrees higher than the outdoors temperature during our present heatwave. She finds an indoor fan ineffective.

View Full Article: Loft Flat Is Uninhabitable at 38 Degrees

Landlords face ‘major post-pandemic rise in enforcement by London councils’

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London’s councils have been clamping down harder on errant landlords over the past 12 months, it has been claimed.

Licensing platform Kamma says landlords and letting agents have paid fines totalling £8 million since it began tracking the market in 2018, including £2 million levied over the past 12 months and £238,000 over the past month.

Therefore approximately 20% of all fines have been recorded in the last 12 months, suggesting a major post-pandemic increase in enforcement from London’s Local Authorities.

This has been driven by greater tenant awareness of rent repayment orders and 13 new licensing schemes launching in the Greater London area so far this year, and 30 in the UK.

Bigger fines

Fines are also getting bigger, says Kamma. Last August the average fine for letting agents was £4,380, but now that figure has increased by 7%, taking the average agent fine to £4,690.

Landlords, in contrast, are fined more frequently but smaller amounts, with an average of £4,304.

Enforcement levels differ across the capital. Camden council tops the league table by number of fines, followed closely by Newham and Southwark.

The London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham is the London borough with the highest average fines of £19,800 per offense, followed by Hillingdon with an average of £13,500, and Hackney with £11,250.

“Local councils are sending a strong message to landlords and agents across the country with fines increasing so agents should see this as an opportunity to take control of their compliance and take action to protect their clients, and themselves against further enforcement efforts and fines,” says Kamma CEO, Orla Shields.

Read more: Do I need a licence for my property?

View Full Article: Landlords face ‘major post-pandemic rise in enforcement by London councils’

Suspended jail sentence for landlord following shocking illegal eviction

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A landlord and former haulage company owner in Warrington has been given a suspended 24-week prison sentence after illegally evicting a tenant.

Adil Lahmer, 38, of no fixed abode was sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court after Warrington council’s Private Sector Housing team and Legal Services team conducted a lengthy investigation.

This was initiated after his tenant at his property on Watkin Street in Warrington, Bin Amani, came to its Homelessness and Housing Advice Service when he was illegally evicted.

The shocking facts of the case are that Lahmer returned from Germany and, claiming he needed to self-isolate due to Covid, ‘booted out’ out his former friend and tenant from the property.

During the trial, the court heard that because of the eviction Amani lost his job, his studies were affected and the company which he had recently set up was subsequently dissolved. 

Personal possessions

There was also an impact upon his relationship with his children. He also lost most of his personal possessions.
Lahmer initially claimed the tenancy was fraudulent but the council’s investigation found this not to be true.

Recorder Richard Leiper QC (RLQC) said that the illegal eviction was a “deliberate act, planned in advance and committed in breach of a written agreement and the day after a rent payment for December had been made by Mr Amani”.

Following the hearing Lahmer was sentenced to 24 weeks in jail suspended for 18 months; 150 hours of unpaid community work; must pay Mr Amani £541; and contribute £1,000 to the council’s prosecution costs.

Cllr Hitesh Patel, cabinet member for environment, housing and public protection, said: “This is a fantastic outcome after the hard work that has been put in by our housing and legal teams. This should also serve as a warning for other unscrupulous landlords that this behaviour is not acceptable.”

It has also transpired that Lahmer is now homeless, because, ‘due to the stress of the court case’ he reduced the number of hours he worked and consequently had been unable to keep up with mortgage payments and the property had now been repossessed.

View Full Article: Suspended jail sentence for landlord following shocking illegal eviction

HMRC rakes in a record amount of CGT

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HMRC has revealed that it collected a ‘staggering’ £14.3 billion in capital gains tax (CGT) from 323,000 taxpayers in the 2020 to 2021 tax year.

The liability was realised on £80 billion of gains.

According to the latest data

View Full Article: HMRC rakes in a record amount of CGT

Short-term rentals account for 7% of total housing in some areas

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Holiday-lets now account for as much as 7% of total homes across 15 of the nation’s most popular staycation destinations, with just one seeing a decline in holiday-let property market prominence, research reveals.

The findings come from the estate agent comparison site

View Full Article: Short-term rentals account for 7% of total housing in some areas

LATEST: Rogue landlord banned from letting properties in England for 15 months

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A landlord in Coventry has been given a national ban from letting property in England after being convicted of multiple and serious contraventions of housing legislation.

Carmelo Borsellino, of Cheveral Avenue, Coventry, has a long history of poor property management and the local council has been chasing him down for several years in a bid to rein in his activities.

His most recent conviction was on 14 July 2021, at Coventry Magistrates’ Court, where he was found guilty of offences relating to the Management of Houses in Multiple Occupation (England) Regulations 2006 at 12-14 Lower Ford Street, Coventry CV1 5QJ (pictured).

Borsellino pleaded guilty and was fined £1,350 for this offence and ordered to pay a victim surcharge of £135.

But, due to the seriousness of these offences, Coventry City Council took the decision to apply to the First Tier Property Tribunal for a banning order, which was heard in June.

The Tribunal has now issued a banning order on Borsellino preventing him letting property in England for a period of 15 months, saying that they were “unimpressed with Mr Borsellino’s attempts to avoid or diminish the seriousness of having been convicted in relation to fire safety breaches”.

Prison sentence

Should he breach the banning order, the landlord could receive a prison sentence of up to 51 weeks or a fine of up to £30,000. His name has been added to the national rogue landlord database.

Read: the complete guide to HMO management.

“Offences of this nature are very serious and have the potential to undermine Coventry City Council’s work to ensure that rented housing within its locality is safe and suitable for tenants,” says Adrian Chowns (pictured), Property Licensing and Housing Enforcement Manager for the city.

“The use of banning orders is just one of the many tools the Council is adopting to tackle rogue landlords and deter them from flouting their responsibilities.”

Read more about Coventry HMOs.

View Full Article: LATEST: Rogue landlord banned from letting properties in England for 15 months

Comment: is Government legislation killing the buy to let landlord?

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For years now, what would appear to have been successive waves of anti-landlord legislation have been bearing down on buy to let, but will this change under a new prime minister?

From George Osborne to Rishi Sunack, the Treasury, it would seem, has been milking the buy to let landlord for all its worth.

Announced in 2015 by George Osborne, and coming into full force in April 2020, Section 24 of the Finance Act 2015 restricts all income tax relief on property finance costs to the basic rate of 20%.

Add to this the 3 per cent stamp duty surcharge and the removal of the 10 per cent depreciation allowance on expenses, and it represents a drastic reduction in the amount of tax relief landlords, and particularly those high rate taxpayers with mortgages, can receive, compared with the previous regime.

Soaring house prices have mean that the Treasury now collects the highest amount of capital gains tax (CGT) on record. Tax paid on capital gains soared over 40 per cent to reach more than £14bn in the 2021-2022 tax year. Ten years ago this tax take was less that £4bn. Over 300,000 landlords paid the tax during the tax year, averaging around £44,000 each.

What’s more, a series of Secretaries of States for Housing – coming under their department’s current incarnation as the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) – have been steadily adding to the legislative load, regulations that govern letting, with the biggest step change yet to come, possibly next year – through the Renters Reform Bill.

Furthermore, the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy imposes yet more serious financial obligations – in some cases it will mean spending up to £15,000 on upgrades – on the private residential landlords with its Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards, MEES regulations in the private rented sector.

As part of the proposals on energy efficiency there is a target for all residential properties, not just buy to lets, to meet EPC band C by 2035. There is also a target for mortgage lenders to have an average band C across their lending book by 2030, but there are current Government proposals to bring the EPC band C rating requirement forward to 2025.

The pressure is too much for some

All these things considered, with the coming cost of living crisis and increasing interest rates, its hardly surprising that some landlords are finding the pressure on them is too great and they are considering selling-up. The consequence of this is reducing the number of rentals on the market at a time when demand for renting has never been greater.

The net result of all of this in turn is the hiking of rents to a level that becomes unaffordable for many. The surge in capital gains tax payments and a rapid rise in evictions claims are perhaps indicators of the so call “landlord flight”, as experts argue it is all due to landlords who are abandoning the private rented sector.

Not all doom and gloom

It’s not all bad news of course. A buy to let investment still returns, on average, far more that you can get in a building society and most other forms of investment, plus it gives one of the best hedges against inflation – property is a truly valuable and readily available asset class to give you this protection, when you consider inflation is set to hit 13 per cent later this year.

The tax hikes can be off-set to a large extent by incorporating your landlord business, though this does not suite everyone, so get professional tax advice before you enter into this. And landlords can mitigate a large part of the expense by learning to manage their own rental properties – managing tenancies is not by any means rocket science – with a little bit of study and some experience, private landlords are every bit as competent as the average letting agent.

The repair state of the property should be every landlord’s concern and no one should go into the lettings business with inferior or dangerous properties. Making sure your properties meet the latest standards should be a top priority from day one, and by making your property energy efficient, it means your tenants reap the benefit in lower energy bills and you will market your rentals more easily.

But there are still clouds on the horizon

The Renters Reform Bill promises the biggest step change to buy to let in England for 40 years. The removal of section 21, which effectively ends the regime of the short-hold tenancy, removes the changes introduced by the Thatcher government in 1980. Instead of an assured shorthold, tenancies revert to assured tenancies (AT) where the tenant has pretty much full security of tenure, not too far removed from the “Rent Act” regulated tenancies.

That’s not to mention the removal of fixed terms, which means tenancies can run indefinitely unless the tenant seriously breaches the contract, whereas the tenant can leave with a short notice. This will bring turmoil to the student lettings market, where landlords will not be in a position to let to a new academic year of students in advance, not being sure the current cohort will leave.

Is the course set?

The big question for landlords is, under a new premier, and with the architect of the Renters’ Reform Bill Bill having been fired by Boris Johnson, will there be a last minute change of course with the Bill?

View Full Article: Comment: is Government legislation killing the buy to let landlord?

State funding for private tenants to buy their homes? It’s ‘pie in the sky economics’

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The recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) calling for the Government to provide private renters with a right to buy the property they live in is a further example of ‘pie in the sky’ economics says a leading property firm.

DJ Alexander, the largest estate and letting agents in Scotland, says proposals such as this do nothing to help people get on the property ladder and are more likely to exacerbate housing shortages rather than relieve them.

The report suggests the government should be “supporting renters to buy the home they live in, including through a Right to Buy for private renters.”

It also calls for the Government to intervene in the mortgage market and discourage lenders from providing funds to landlords and property investors – something one building society has already taken up.

“This makes no sense at all,” says David Alexander, chief executive of DJ Alexander.

He argues that tax payers should not subsidise renters to purchase the property they live in because then everyone who “wasn’t a renter should also be supported to buy their home. You can’t subsidise one part of the market and not the rest”.

 “Aside from being hugely inflationary it also fails to understand that a lot of people are happy to be in the private rented sector.

“The private rented sector is an essential element of the housing market and any proposals to reduce its scale should be looked at with caution.

Key mistake

“The other key mistake in the logic of this JRF report (pictured) is that they misunderstand the role of landlords.

“These are people who own properties which they rent to tenants. They are not obliged to provide this service but do so as an investment. They can just as easily withdraw from the market and invest their money elsewhere.”

“A tenant buying a property from a landlord doesn’t need government intervention as it can already happen, it just requires a willing landlord and for the tenant to pay the market value. The JRF seem to be assuming that market conditions don’t exist in property but exist in all other aspects of life.”

View Full Article: State funding for private tenants to buy their homes? It’s ‘pie in the sky economics’