£18.49bn of Bounce Back Loans agreed

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HM Tearsury publish management information each Tuesday for each of the three Covid-19 emergency loan schemes schemes (CBILS, CLBILS, BBLS), including: The total number of applications, number of approved applications and the value of loans approved.

The applications figure includes approved applications

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Agreed rents drop steeply in key areas of London, leading agency reveals

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While the property industry has been keen to talk about a surge in pent up demand within the housing market, in reality over supply and the effects of tenants’ financial insecurity are driving agreed rents down in the capital.

An alarming drop in agreed rents in London has been revealed by one of its leading property firms, which also says rents in the capital are unlikely to rise ‘for quite a while’.

Hamptons International says that while rents have dipped by only 1.3% on average during the first four months of the year, this masks reductions in rents achieved of nearly 8% in some areas.

These figures suggest that many landlords have been forced to drop their asking rents to attract tenants during the first five months of the year, no doubt in part due to the Coronavirus crisis, a trend that may spread out of London

Hamptons International says rents dropped by 5% in central London, 6.9% in Zone 2 – such as Fulham, Clapham and Hammersmith – and by nearly 8% in Zone 3 (e.g. Tooting, Tottenham, Golders Green).

Further out into suburbia, Hamptons International says it’s a very different pictures with rents rising in Zone 5 and by 2.2% in Zone 6. But despite the reductions in agreed rents, they continue to vary significantly depending on where you look, from £2,910 per property in Zone 1 to £1,370 in Zone 6.

Hamptons International’s chief housing analyst Aneisha Beveridge says the price falls are down to an imbalance of supply as landlords try to fill vacant properties set against tenants who are reluctant to move, and that many tenants feel financially insecure and unable to afford more expensive properties at the moment.

“I don’t think we understand the hit to people’s affordability yet, so I don’t expect rents to rise again for quite a while,” she says.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Agreed rents drop steeply in key areas of London, leading agency reveals | LandlordZONE.

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Campaigning website accuses Airbnb hosts of flouting London’s 90-day limit

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As Airbnb prepares to recommend whether hosts should face mandatory registration, Inside Airbnb says up to 40% of short-let properties in the capital are being run year-round as professional accommodation.

A campaigning group which monitors Airbnb listings in the UK has claimed that 40% of the platform’s properties in London have been breaking the 90-day rental limit agreed for the city.

Inside Airbnb, which is a privately-funded website that offers landlords and tenants free tools to analyse Airbnb listings in cities throughout the world including London, claims that some 35,250 Airbnb listings in the capital are entire vacant homes that it classes as ‘highly available’ year-round for tourists.

It claims that these ‘could be illegal’ because many landlords use both Airbnb and other platforms to rent their homes out and circumvent the 90-day rule.

Airbnb currently lists 87,235 properties in London, although the platform has been blocking bookings nationally during the Coronavirus crisis.

The Inside Airbnb data is mentioned within a new document published by The House of Commons Library to brief MPs ahead of next month’s expected report from Airbnb following a 10-month tour of the UK by its executives.

This report will recommend the best way forward but is expected to suggest a system of property registration across the UK for short-term rentals and, if they adopt proposals already put forward by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, require property owners to register their properties before they could be rented out.

The government has, effectively, outsourced regulation of Airbnb and its competitors to the Short Term Accommodation Association which it has made the lead body to oversee suppliers in the sector. An attempt by Labour MP Karen Buck to introduce legislation failed after it ran out of time in parliament.

See the data on London.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Campaigning website accuses Airbnb hosts of flouting London’s 90-day limit | LandlordZONE.

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£1bn fund to remove dangerous cladding to support private leaseholders

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Building owners have been urged to act and put the safety of residents first as the government’s £1 billion Building Safety Fund to remove dangerous cladding was launched by Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick.

It comes as the government published the prospectus for the fund which will meet the cost for remediation of unsafe non-ACM cladding systems on residential buildings in the private and social sector that are 18 metres and over and do not comply with building regulations.

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TONIGHT’s Baker Street LiveStream: How To Finance Property Deals After Lock Down

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The Baker Street Property Meet Livestream Networking Event is tonight, Wed 27th May at 7pm. Join 1000+ property investors in the UK’s largest online property networking event. Tonight’s theme is ‘How To Finance Property Deals After Lock Down‘

I will host and explore the theme with tonight’s guests:

Evan Maindonald

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LATEST: Competition watchdog says students due rent refunds during Coronavirus

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Competition & Markets Authority confirms to LandlordZONE that student rental contracts are likely to be covered by its guidance that businesses should offer refunds where a consumer isn’t allowed to use a service as a result of lockdown restrictions.

Student renters
could be due refunds if they have to leave accommodation due to the Coronavirus
crisis.

Guidance
on consumer contracts hit by COVID-19 issued by the Competition & Markets
Authority (CMA) – the body responsible for protecting consumers from unfair
trading practices – says in most cases, businesses should offer refunds where a
consumer isn’t allowed to use a service as a result of lockdown restrictions.

The CMA has confirmed to LandlordZONE that its guidance could apply to suppliers of student accommodation. It adds: “In most cases, the CMA would expect a full refund to be offered if a business has cancelled a contract without providing any of the promised goods or services.”

Students
around the country are staging rent strikes where their private landlord has
refused to offer a rent refund for the third term – despite them leaving their
accommodation after courses moved online.

The National Union of Students has written to private landlords with a list of demands to help student renters financially survive the crisis, including rent subsidies, reductions or waivers for six months for those impacted by Coronavirus.

The National
Residential Landlords Association says the Government had made it clear that
tenants remain legally liable for their rents and all aspects of the tenancy
agreement they’ve signed.

Policy director Chris Norris tells LandlordZONE: “Coronavirus doesn’t preclude any tenant from continuing to live in the property they rent. When lockdown restrictions were introduced it was for individuals to choose where that would be. For students, maintenance loans continue to be paid to cover rents and universities are providing hardship loans for those who might need extra support.”

He adds: “We’re sympathetic to the concerns of students who have left their university accommodation to spend lockdown with their family. In such cases, we’re encouraging landlords to be as reasonable as they possibly can and agree a suitable way forward with their tenants.”

Last week students began a rent strike in Preston.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – LATEST: Competition watchdog says students due rent refunds during Coronavirus | LandlordZONE.

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Housing first! Council approves key property licensing schemes, but without start date

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Islington says that because of Coronavirus it does now know when its new HMO and Selective Licensing schemes will come into force but that they will ‘level the playing field’ for landlords.

Islington Council has given
the go-ahead for two new property licensing schemes with the hope of improving
conditions in the private rented sector.

It’s
approved both a borough-wide additional HMO licensing scheme and a selective
licensing scheme to cover all properties in the Finsbury Park ward that aren’t already
covered by a scheme.

A council spokesman tells LandlordZONE that no start date has been agreed due to the COVID-19 crisis. He says: “At this stage the decision has been made by the executive in principle but no start dates have been discussed so any instigation wouldn’t be in the near future.”

HMOs have some of
Islington’s poorest housing standards and many conversions don’t meet fire
safety standards; Finsbury Park ward has the highest number of complaints
about private rented property in the borough and it believes many people there face
higher levels of deprivation, and are at greater risk of being taken advantage
of by rogue landlords.

Islington Council says the schemes
benefit responsible landlords by levelling the playing field, ensuring rogue
landlords who avoid paying out for repairs aren’t saving money by renting
properties in poor condition.

Councillor Diarmaid Ward,
executive member for housing and development, says: “There are a great number
of responsible landlords in the borough, and these licensing schemes will help
the council to ensure that those conscientious landlords are rewarded, while
rogue operators offering poor conditions are more easily
identified.”  

However, the National Residential Landlords Association warns the schemes could lead to rent increases while criminal landlords might simply ignore them, as they do other regulations. In its response to the consultation, the association pointed out that the council already has sufficient enforcement powers to raise standards.

Read more about licensing during Coronavirus.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Housing first! Council approves key property licensing schemes, but without start date | LandlordZONE.

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Blog: What will September bring for student landlords?

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As we see the beginning of the end of lockdown, thoughts are starting to turn to what the ‘new normal’ will look like. For student landlords, this includes a fundamental unknown – what will happen in the next academic year?  Universities have been cautious so far about committing to either online or in-person courses. However, last week, Cambridge University announced that all […]

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‘Virtual hearings for duty possession cases are not workable’

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The court system that landlords rely on to evict tenants faces extreme challenges as one- by-one County Courts announce plans to hold possession hearings virtually until at least the Autumn, says The Law Society.

The Law Society has questioned the wisdom of using ‘virtual hearings’ for possessions cases as the court system gets ready to re-start evictions on 25^th June.

In an article published on its in-house website, the professional body for solicitors in England and Wales says it is concerned that plans to hear cases online or via telephone will exclude the normal system of duty solicitors being made available to tenants, and face-to-face horse trading prior to hearings.

Three London courts – Brentwood, Edmonton and Barnet – have all revealed that they are gearing up their processes to handle virtual hearings after the 29^th June, with more expected to follow in the coming days and weeks.

Pre-coronavirus, both tenants, landlords and legal representatives could haggle together before a hearing and often reach an agreement, but the use of virtual viewings means this will be much harder to achieve, and that tenants will have less opportunity to take up or be offered legal aid assistance.

The Law Society quotes one solicitor, Sue James of the Hammersmith & Fulham Law Centre, who claims that because a duty solicitor is an essential component in achieve proper access to justice for those losing their home, taking away this service will lead to more evictions and that the whole system will become unworkable.

“Clients facing possession proceedings often have welfare benefit problems which means they are on very low incomes” she says.

“They may also lack computers to access the court remotely or to have data or credit on their phones. Remote hearings for duty possession cases are not workable.”

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – ‘Virtual hearings for duty possession cases are not workable’ | LandlordZONE.

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‘Lockdown has been a been a kick in the teeth’

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Leading residential HMO landlord, hotel operator and property expert Jimmy London reveals the challenges his businesses have faced during the Coronavirus crisis.

Busy landlord Jimmy London is coping with
a lack of income from his two hotels as well as managing rent losses from his
large property portfolio.

As the owner of House 2 Home, a property management company which sub-lets HMOs to tenants, he also runs online rent-to-rent training courses and is now looking to buy a portfolio of 15 residential properties on lease option for £2.2 million to turn over to HMOs.

He’s £11,000 down from his large portfolio
of 30 HMOs around the South-East where some of his 200 tenants are battling the
effects of Covid-19. London has also been hit hard by cancellations in the
hospitality industry and had to delay the opening of his new hotel above the
famous Bill Nicholson pub next to Tottenham’s ground in the capital.

“My friend bought the freehold, I lease
the pub and transformed the upstairs into 10 serviced rooms,” says London. “The
lockdown has been a been a kick in the teeth.”

London also has run a nine-bed hotel in Leigh-on-Sea in Essex for the last three years which is closed with all staff furloughed and bookings refunded.

Says London: “I run that at 95% occupancy, six days a week, which
I’m really proud of. We had bookings in May and June but I’ve refunded people
as it wasn’t fair to keep their money.”

He adds: “I’m also owed about £11,000 in rent because some of my
tenants have lost their jobs, but I’m working with them – I don’t want the
mickey taken.”

However, he remains positive and feels
confident that the businesses could even survive until Christmas if they had to.

“I’m making sure things are all ticking over at the hotels each week and on the phone a few hours a day working. I’ve got a good team around me and it’s really important to communicate with them all and to make sure everyone’s OK and safe. I won’t let Covid-19 pull down my businesses.”

Read another landlord interview.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – ‘Lockdown has been a been a kick in the teeth’ | LandlordZONE.

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