Lettings chief insists Renters Reform Bill is not anti-landlord

Their illustrious boss is..... Sarah Bush....

The woman with a big mouth and a small brain to match!

Some of that is true, homes should be of a decent standard, and the rent increases annually simply require an extra months notice, those are all fair enough, no issues.

The biggest issue is the S21. The benefit of that is that a tenant doesn't HAVE to be in 2 months of arrears in order to be granted the property back, they can be 2, 3, 7.5 weeks in arrears and still get their property back. Late payments are a discretionary reason under S8, so in essence a tenant currently can spend the entire tenancy in 1 month and 27 days of arrears and the landlord is not guaranteed to get their property back. This is unacceptable. IF S8 is tightened where over 3 weeks of rent arrears or more that 3 months of late payments in a 6 month period are guaranteed to get the Landlord THEIR OWN ASSET back, then that would reassure many.

And what about ASB, where a tenant is causing issues with a neighbour, there has been a log of the incident but there has been on Anti-Social Behaviour Order made by the police? And lets not forget, that if a Landlord wants to get details on an incident where the police have been called, they have to jump through hoops and get Court permission etc, whereas a social housing Landlord would get it with no issues. And I know this, as I have just tried to get details of a possible campaign of a hate crime between a couple of houses that the same Landlord owns (neighbouring terraces) so that the Landlord and I can discuss the next steps, and I can't get them!

The aims of improving housing stock and protecting good tenants from bad landlords are admirable. But not enough is being done to protect good landlords from bad tenants, and the overall meddling in the PRS is going to cause many issues in the future.

@Kristjan Byfield - I strongly disagree with you.

For a start I happen to be REALLY and GENUINELY knowledgeable about the Scottish rental market. My 89 year old mother lives in Scotland but has decided to move to England to buy and live in an "assisted living" appartment in a very attractive "retirement villiage"... good for her and very sensible. HOWEVER she has a superb house in the very vibrant city of St Andrews and had for a couple of years been thinking of keeping it and renting it out to pay for (or at least contribute towards) some of her retirement home expenses (there are high service charges to pay for all the special services)... BUT in the Socialist-Republic that Scotland has steadily become, with its appallingly anti-landlord policies that are entirely one-sidedly pro-tenant, plus even higher taxation there, she's very reluctantly decided to simply sell-up and split the money (on my advice, but corroborated by her financial advisor) amongst her grandchildren.

Being a landlord in Scotland is more or less just as bad as trying to be a landlord in Wales - another Socialist-Republic on our doorstep!

AND ITS COMING TO ENGLAND courtesy of the Tories in Labour Clothing!

Of course Kristjan rents are higher in Scotland, driven by a shortage of properties, as for nasty comments people are very frustrated at having been hammered relentlessly since Osborne introduced his immoral reforms and taxation, the constant sniping and plain untruths that have been told in the media about Landlords, the vast majority of whom provide a good standard accommodation. If you think relying on S8 will be any good and vague promises of speeding up the court process is frankly naive, this legislation will put us back 40 years pre AST, if tenants think they have it bad now, its nothing to how it was back then, they will all be living at home until their parents die.

I was in a bit of a rush when hastily tapping in my last comment, and equally in a rush when adding these couple of further points...

Plenty of landlords have already been driven out of the market in Scotland by all the tax changes (worse there with slightly higher rates of income tax too) and over regulation, but the uncertainty and anger caused by the recent on-off rent controls was the final straw and kiss of death for many more...

@KB you say r"rents have never been higher in Scotland"as if that's a good thing... again it shows you either don't know what you're talking about or are being disengenious because higher rents are bad for tenants and in this case bad for the nervous landlords in Scotland trying to recover some of their increased burden of costs as well as trying to anticipate the next round of counter productive rent controls by putting the rent up while they still can.... plus of course it's also an indirect indication of the increasingly Limited supply that an increasingly large (and ever growing) number of tenants are competing for as more and more landlords simpy give up (and some, like my mother and many of her friends, are deterred from even becoming landlords and offering their properties)....

In St Andrews, for example, this has led to an ever increasing crisis both for townsfolk and even more so for students unable to find anywhere at all to rent, even miles out of town (and usually with incredibly limited and inconvenient public transport)....

You seem oblivious to it all, @KB,as well as co#mpletly unable to understand the fundamental difference between s.21 & s.8

Are you a Tory Party sleeper or secret Generation Rent activist or just a well meaning person who tries to believe the world's a better place than it is and that our government actually cares about the PRS, understands it intimately and knows what it's doing?

Finally got around to reading your excellent comment, @RK - you are SO right.... thank you.

B

You oversimplfy it Kristjan. S21 deals with all the minor things some which cannot be proved. I just got rid of a tenant who was always paying the rent late, being rude to neighbours, costantly ignoring block rules, playing music at all hours, few other minor anti social bits, just being a general pain in the a***, a package of annoying stuff. There are no grounds for that mixed bundle and you wont get neighbours going to Court to give evidence, S21 is easy. We dont want tio have to create a 100 page bundle, photographing every incident and spending dozens of hours either.

The pet thing is not sorted either, albeit I dont think much will change, there are a couple of dozen reasons to justifyably reject a large pet. LLS arent going to want to take tenants to court over pet dilaps, so whatever is in the contract doesnt really matter.

Well put Margaret - I totally agree.

We owe everything to The Housing Act 1988, under Mrs Thatcher's government, followed by some useful tweaks to it in the 1996 Act.

The 1988 Act undid all the damage of the utterly disastrous Rent Act 1977 (Labour, of course and as you rightly said) that tenants had initially rejoiced over before gradually having to discover how it was ruining their lives while driving their landlords out of business (and some into bankruptcy, not that the government even cared).

Abolishing s.21 is a huge step back to that and all the lies about "protecting landlords by allowing them to regain possession to allow them to sell" will be exposed for what they are, i.e. NOT some new thing or favour to us but a watered down and screwed up remnant of what Mrs Thatcher's government created for us in the groundbreaking and revolutionary 1988 Act.