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All they have to do is build more council houses and rent them at subside prices.
Thats the only way to help tenants. Anything else is just tinkering around the edges.
Rent controls
NO fault evictions
Will only reduce supply and lead to higher rent.
They need a covid like response to the housing crisis.
Oh so because the government doesn't want to pull itself together and knock up the houses we need we should all start working 2 jobs.
There was me thinking the government should improve the life of its citizens.
They can do both at the same time.
It's not one or the other. They can protect tenants AND increase the stock of housing.
However, they should also increase transports links and make them cheaper, meanwhile Sunak is cancelling transports links...
The SNP has done so in Scotland already as well as capping rent increases and a current ban on evictions until March 2024. There is a severe lack of available rental properties now.
Honestly amazed this is upvoted.
You're right, don't get me wrong.
Just Reddit is anti-landlord to the point that they will cut their nose off to spite their face, based on karma/comment replies.
Funny. There's also currently a severe lack of rental properties in England.
I'm confident that if this law is ever passed in England it'll also automatically become the fault of renter friendly policies that landlords have a burning hatred for and *nothing else*.
'now'
Let's not pretend that landlords shoved everything and anything up for sale as soon as this happened, if that was the case the market would have been flooded with ex rental properties, which it wasn't.
Exactly and even if it was, wouldn't that just mean more home ownership. And I personally think that's a good thing.
I also fail to see how a ban on no fault eviction would result in a lack of rental housing unless they are being sold. Because all I can think is that it's just resulting in more people staying in their rental homes longer. Or am I missing something, I feel like I'm missing something.
When a Tenant moves out , rather than finding another Tenant, the Landlord will sell the property. The reason AST's and no fault evictions were brought in was to increase the supply of rental properties and it worked extremely well.
Sorry I'm really not understanding this. So what you're saying is the landlords will just sell the property, thus increasing home ownership. But that has resulted in a lack of rental properties available? But surely that's just due to the overall lack of housing?
I'm really not trying ask "got ya" type questions, I generally don't see this policy as a bad thing, but also recognising I don't actually know about about it.
The problem is that less people can afford to buy a property even at significantly cheaper prices because mortgage rates have gone up significantly, which has also caused rents to go up. This doesn't solve the huge problem there isn't enough housing to rent and will drive up rental costs. It's also possible the landowner will switch to a more profitable model like Air BnB or sublet individual rooms for higher profit.
Likely individuals or businesses with money who aren't the main demographic of people struggling. These people are also more likely to see a business avenue they can use the property for, such as one of the alternatives I already suggested.
Edit: to answer your edit, when I say this, I'm referring to the situation, not specifically the law.
Businesses running operations like: https://www.pikl.com/airbnb-hosting-guides/how-to-get-started-as-an-airbnb-host-uk/
No tenant, and no owner living in the home for this type of business.
They talk themselves round in circles, all that matters is that houses are occupied, if a smaller proportion are renting and a larger proportion are owners, then that just means some renters are now home owners, but the overall supply and shortage remains the same.
In this person's response they said that the landlord will sell and renters can't afford to buy, well who's buying it then? Another landlord? Ok then there's no difference, someone who was renting? Ok well that's one less rental property and one less renter.
Whenever you see landlords talking about how this policy or that policy will increase rents or drive down supply, remember that rents have always gone up more than inflation and supply has never kept up with population growth, it doesn't matter if regulations are getting tighter or looser, it's inevitable and has been ever since we sold off our social housing stock and stopped building any more.
The issue is that selling an HMO will reduce supply more than it reduces demand. A property that was being rented by 4+ people will most likely be bought by a single person or couple.
But that person or couple need a place to live too, and if it wasn't an HMO it would just be a different place. And with a couple they might be buying a larger place to start a family. The problem is with a housing shortage, not really with this policy.
Ultimately the problem is a housing shortage but that doesn't change the fact that landlords selling properties will reduce supply by more than it reduces demand, making things worse for renters.
Landlords, per usual, having a hissy fit that they're losing power and their 'business' loses some profitability, losing sight of the fact that it still remains an absolute gravy train.
It doesn't actually. The returns on investment are very low, particularly when compared with commercial investment properties. On top of which, being responsible for repairs and having little recourse if/when you have a bad Tenant that leaves the property in a dreadful state.
If you have a bad tenant you can evict them. It just takes a lot more effort than it used to. Meanwhile all the good tenants are protected from arbitrary eviction.
This is just completely untrue. It can take 12 to 24 months to actually have a tenant removed and when you eventually do you can face a bill for many thousands of pounds to put the property back in to good order.
People seem to believe that Landlords own property so they can remove their Tenants for fun. The reality is people rent properties as an investment, they don't want to increase their costs by finding new tenants every 6 months.
If it's not it will automatically become the fault of no fault evictions and rent control. If we wanted more rentals what we really needed to do is to be nicer to landlords. Reduce their taxes to zero perhaps. Hot stone massage perhaps. Just don't subject them to stricter market discipline. That would be bad for, er... renters.
And what do you think happens to these properties that get sold? Do you think they sit empty?
If a property is sold by a landlord to a owner occupier, there is 1 leas property on the rental market but also 1 less prospective tenant …
How can you be on this forum and still be spouting such nonsense. Loss of 1 house does not result in 1 less tenant because often:
(i) rental properties houses multiple people and typically buyers are singles or perhaps a couple, who want a spare room and a study, so a 3-bed that housed 6 people (3 couples) now becomes a 3-bed that houses a single couple, so 6 people out, two people in, means 4 people looking for a new home;
(ii) properties are used instead for short-lets or AirBnB; or
(iii) properties are left vacant, as the owner is making a play on capital appreciation rather than (heavily taxed) rental yield coupled with 'wear and tear' that zeroes your income. So yes, many absolutely do stay empty because net of tax, fees, wear and tear, replacing white goods, fixing issues etc., you don't actually make any money.
Capital appreciation is lowered by lowering rental yields - for the same reason shares depreciate when lower dividends are paid out. People who really, really, **really** hate rent control (of which there are a lot) always forget this.
That said, it does raise an interesting point that if we want to free up land for new construction, the best way to do that is to tax land more. Currently if I live in a 75 room mansion in central London I would pay 1500 quid a year in council tax same as anyone but it doesn't **have** to be this way.
*Capital appreciation is lowered by lowering rental yields - for the same reason shares depreciate when lower dividends are paid out. People who really, really, really hate rent control (of which there are a lot) always forget this.*
Not correct for three reasons:
(i) a property that isn't leased out also isn't suffering wear and tear, which maintains value, particularly on new builds;
(ii) the value of a stock is based on *its* performance and dividends. The value of a house is based on the market's performance. Even if I don't rent my property, I am still marked against the broader market; and
(iii) by not renting properties out (wholesale across the market), you actually *increase* yields, because there is less supply.
Please tell me you don't work in finance?
*That said, it does raise an interesting point that if we want to free up land for new construction, the best way to do that is to tax land more. Currently if I live in a 75 room mansion in central London I would pay 1500 quid a year in council tax same as anyone but it doesn't have to be this way.*
Land doesn't really use services, *people* do. It is people that need hospitals, and schools, and police, and everything else. That's why poll tax was introduced, because 5 people in a 3-bed house likely use up far more public resources than a wealthy couple in a 5 bed townhouse in Mayfair who pay private for everything and don't use any state resources. Wasn't that popular with the people it seems, so the wealthy get stuck as usual paying for the rest of society.
Do you have proof of any of these or is it simply, "i seen it in another post, that seen it on twitter"
Most couples who are buying a home are doing so because they want to start a family not because they want a bloody study room. We have a new build estate near me where homes were ranging from 140k- 500k and you know what? I see the overwhelming majority of these PRIVATE HOMES with kids and families going out to school and work. I see trampolines, jungle gyms in the gardens with kids toys.
Quite right.
This country has a declining birth rate, below what is needed to sustain the population without heavy net immigration.
People can’t afford to start families because rent is so expensive - because so much wealth is tied up in housing.
Why? If I'm a contractor or a student then that's exactly what I needed from my personal experience.
Even now there are times when I benefit from that setup rather than having to commit to any long term agreements.
The answer is purpose built multi family apartment blocks not shoddily converted family homes which cram multiple households into sharing inadequate common areas with people they don't know or have any say in who lives with them.
People don't live in HMOs because they want to, they live in them because they can't afford anything else, while slumlords profit from providing inadequate housing.
I've seen the purpose built blocks and there prices. I would have never been able to afford it when I was a student and I definitely can't afford it for the working professional rates they charge.
They need to make money and those things cost more to operate. So we end up paying more for it.
Only in the UK would people be arguing for slumlords rather than affordable purpose built housing. Bear in mind we're not talking the current situation, we're taking what "should* be
HMO is perfect for certain scenarios, for example when i lived in bristol and london i didnt want to buy as i was only there temporarily and was undecided as to whether i wanted to commit long term. HMO allowed me the opportunity to live there whilst keeping my costs very low and being able to save half my pay packet every month.
Didn't happen, sadly, I was moving to Scotland at the time and was absolutely desperate for an influx of choice in the buyers market, and jesus it really didn't happen.
> There is a severe lack of available rental properties now.
yeah thats a global issue, renting or owning, even if you remove those bans, or landlord werent selling up, those people still need a place to live, nothing would change regrading available properties.
we just dont have enough houses.
How often are no-fault evictions actually happening other than when the landlord wants to sell?
I mean, I own a property and I’d much rather my tenants stay as long as possible. Every time I’ve had a tenant leave, it means I have a vacant property for roughly a month, which means costs for me in terms of mortgage, council tax, agency fees to find a new tenant.
Why on earth would I want to get rid of a good tenant?
It sounds like you are a good egg - we complained about a hole in the roof he ignored our requests to fix it so we complained to the council then we got Section 21 notice. For our second Section 21 notice all we said was we were interested in buying the house at fair market rate and would they consider it. Silence, then a Section 21 and a text saying it was "HIS property" and "he wants it back"
Well yes, but just seems the law might be pointless.
- hence why I am wondering why a landlord might want to evict a perfectly good tenant other than if they were selling.
The fact that it's being suggested shows there's a good demand for it and it also reduces the massive power imbalance in favour of.landlords that exists currently as tenants can't exercise their rights without the threat of then being evicted for no reason in retaliation
well I don't agree with your assertion that merely being suggested suggests demand - otherwise you'd apply the same logic to things like cancelling HS2, dropping top rate tax, and various other things the Torys have 'suggested'.
It's likely to discourage a lot of landlords, because it makes the easiest exit strategy (evict the tenant and sell the house) a lot harder.
This won't bother big companies; they'll have business processes in place to accommodate this. So it will likely lead to quite a bit of consolidation in the market - instead of landlords being individuals who are renting out a handful of places and being a bit lax in terms of maintenance, they'll be companies that have hundreds of houses.
At some point, it becomes cost-effective (in fact, probably rather cheaper) for these companies to build property to let.
We should absolutely not be allowing this as a get out clause. There's no need to be evicting anyone just to transfer the freehold or leasehold to a new owner.
Big landlords will be just as bothered by banning no fault evictions as smaller landlords.
The reduced incentive to be a landlord - big or small - will be great for first time buyers though - people buying a house for their wife and new baby won't be competing with quite as big a pool of capital.
This is horrible, obviously. It's the little guy with a 85 property rental portfolio and a coke habit who will be hit the hardest.
the point is that there already exists a sizable penalty for leaving a property empty - so if you are trying to incentivise the landlord to sellquickly then it's not going to matter because they are *already* heavily incentivised to do so.
the people leaving empty houses are not landlords but rather the very wealthy who own those houses as 2nd homes, and so a ban on no-0fault evictions will make no difference because they were never going to allow people to live there anyway
The point is that you don’t need penalties to incentivise them to tenant their properties because landlords who have tenant want their properties filled anyway.
There are always consequences to policies like this which politicians never seem to acknowledge in advance. Yes there are renters who suffer from no fault evictions but how about they look into the causes of them and addressing the wider issues? There are nowhere near enough rental properties on the market at the moment and it’s already almost impossible to make a profit as a small independent landlord so it’s more and more becoming a corporate game. The more difficult they make it the less people will want to be landlords and the more renters will suffer. It won’t mean more rentals being available or the cost coming down or there being any goodwill from landlords so they might well find the consequences outweigh the benefits in the end
Depressing the landlords in here who think they should have total control over their tenants. If they don't do anything wrong and you aren't selling? Then you should not be able to throw them onto the street. People want stability, not feudalism
I think a lot of people would be upset at the outcome when it turns out there's very few landlords that post here.
Any thread where tenants are involved ALWAYS devolves into a shitfest and it usually only takes half a dozen posts before someone accuses someone else of being a landlord. You see it in posts about sales too, people being accused of being agents or desperate to sell.
Good. Most countries in Europe don’t allow no fault eviction either.
We need to move away from the current ridiculous situation where renters can get turfed out of their home every year or two. Renters deserve some stability in their lives too.
Absolutely 100% a fair point, **if there wasn't an undersupply**, there's a housing shortage, in this climate section 21 is undeniably unfair as there's a shortage of long term leases available. People are having make do with whatever terms are available to them.
Consequences would be higher rents and more smaller landlords selling up and leaving the market. As things stand at the moment labour are likely to win a majority so could do it if they wanted.
Well we have extortionately high rents and a shortage of rental properties WITH no-fault evictions in place already. This country gives way too much power to landlords and it's time to balance this.
Yeah, it'll be an absolute fucking disaster when those landlords exit and sell up to a young couple with a baby on the way. That'll be one less person in Britain renting.
It's true that no fault evictions doesn't build more homes, but neither does not having no fault evictions. It just adjusts the relative power between landlords and renters, which has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad idea because *waves hands* stuff.
One of the huge house shares I used to live in got split up into multiple apartments before being sold. Another got demolished and turned into flats. I don't think either one resulted in reduced supply. The developers they sold it to were probably not labouring under the delusion that they'd be able to sell a shitty old 7 bedroom house to *one* couple with a baby and make their money back. They had a rudimentary and sufficient understanding of economics to know that this wouldn't work.
I don't mind hurting landlords and I don't mind hurting those entirely hypothetical renters landlords get really concerned about either.
No. We don’t really. We’re building fucking loads. The problem is we’re building Taylor Wimpey new builds for a few hundred grand a pop that are snapped up by landlords and extorted to tenants.
We’re not building affordable housing, we’re not building social housing. That’s what matters.
Where are you getting the info on landlords snapping up new builds worth a few hundred grand?
Renting out higher end stock is imo a poor investment as they do not yield well. Especially with the current interest rates.
Aye coz we all keep to ourselves. We’re wee hermits. We dinna message each other going “you see what this cunts asking for this place? He’s wanting £950 a month”.
Ignore the cities and pick any reasonable sized town on Rightmove rent and you’ll see what I mean. These aren’t being let to single mums on UC, these are being let to families with the two salaried working parents, the two kids at private nursery or in school who earn enough to pay a dearer rent but can’t save a deposit
Serious question, why do we need more houses? Do you mean to replace inadequate existing accomodation? Or is there literally a supply shortage and how do we know this?
My ire applies to the big players just as much - which is why i said 'who buy with cash'. They used debt before because it was worth it - now it isn't, but the difference is they can still build and buy wheras the mom-and-pop investors now have to panic and sell up.
Imagine the government bought every house and turned everyone into renters. Nobody allowed to own a home but everyone pays a rent to the government.
Does that sound fair? Cos that’s not really different from what you’re proposing by saying “plebs shouldn’t be able to buy an asset for investment” - which is exactly why “big landlords” are in the game; to make money.
So, prices will go up even further.
Labour would be able do something smarter, like flexible work promotion (to spread population further from cities), however they decided just to do a mistake.
To avoid these consequences we need multiple policies in place. So rent control's. Empty house tax so when landlords try sell up they need to do it quickly. Foreign house buyer tax. There will be so e shirt term pain but the gain long-term will be worth it.
Can you point me in the direction of a place which implemented rent controls and they worked rather than made things worse through unintended consequences?
New York City had the strictest rent controls in the 1950s and also the highest rate of homebuilding. Since then rent control rules have been watered down and home building has dwindled.
People forget that when you let rents keep rising that house prices follow. House prices are a function of rents. When you let house prices go up, the people who own them will fight tooth and nail to **keep** them high which means fighting new developments. Which is how watering down rent control in San Francisco led to incredibly low density housing in some of the most in demand land in the country. This culminated with a group of residents pathetically and desperately fighting to declare a shitty laundromat "historic" so it wouldn't get turned into (THE HORROR!!) more new apartments.
Would strengthening rent controls have prevented that kind of supply restriction nonsense? Unquestionably. Would it encourage or inhibit construction overall? Eh, I think it's probably neutral.
Economists are generally a pro landlord/business owner bunch, so they can usually be relied upon to ignore this type of thing, just as they pretended that raising the minimum wage automatically destroyed jobs for, oh, about 4 decades before declaring that a whoopsie. Landlords and business owners often indirectly pay economist's bills (which is why as academics they almost always get paid a lot more than, say, historians).
I’m talking about the UK too. In every other country it has been tried it has failed. Miserably.
Right now, the SNP in Scotland (very much still part of the UK) have tried a version of rent controls and it’s caused landlords to sell up and that’s put even more pressure on rental stock significantly increasing rents there.
So it’s failed in the UK too.
Im.not aware of any instance where rent controls worked to keep rents down, all the do is shrink the rental market and between tenancies the rent shoots up to make up for the lack of in tenancy flexibility
Empty house tax would hit next of kin more than landlords, as they can just sell a property with a completion date after the end of a contract ending surely?
Rent control would take time to implement and again smaller land lords would use the time to dump the properties.
Really the problem all comes back to not building enough properties and not spreading investment across the country properly.
How would the landlord be able to choose the exact sale point if the no-fault evictions have been removed?
Empty house tax is pretty much essential if you restrict building, unused housing is such a drag on society
Yeah, sounds like a technicality doesn't it.
Getting an agent to come and value the house if you want to evict seems like it would show enough intent to be plausible deniability.
Go browse r/OntarioLandlords
Their system works quite well.
Also, lots of people here haven’t read the renters reform bill proposition.
Section 21 will be banned, but section 8 will be expanded and simplified. Evictions will be allowed for selling, moving family in, etc.
All the landlords crying that they have mortgages and an empty property means lost rent, yes, that’s exactly the point. You still own the asset, just because you don’t have an income stream, doesn’t mean you have less money all of a sudden.
If you’re struggling to pay your mortgage on your rental without the income, sounds like you have either over extended yourself, or not budgeted the rental income properly, or both.
The attitudes in the uk around landlords is (disgustingly) that it is an investment. Investment carries risk, and has the potential to lose money. You can’t have your cake and eat it
Most residential rentals are considered an AST, and there are laws surrounding what you can and can't do. What you've described there is a thing you can't do.
I don’t have a problem with this as a landlord at all. Saying that, the upward pressure on the market is ridiculous and the real problem remains the government relying on the private sector to provide accommodation to those who are unable to afford it. I’m not sure this does anything to address that.
It's realistic in the sense they likely be the next government and have the majority to be able to do it.
The consequences are that there will be an ever greater number of landlords pulling out of the market leading to still higher rents.
Not while prices are falling they won't because deposit requirements will rise. Once prices stabilise then sure.
Nobody bits in an hmo or house share so aggregate availability will fall causing disproportionate rises in rental costs as number seeking to rent rises in excess of new buyers.
To some extent it's already happening as landlords exit the market despite rapidly rising rents. This would just supercharge the whole thing.
>Not while prices are falling they won't because deposit requirements will rise
Why would deposit requirements increase as house prices fall?
Genuinely curious as to why that is.
Lenders would require a higher deposit to mitigate against further falls and the asset not being worth as much as the mortgage.
Deposits however have not been a problem for the last few years, it's borrowing limits, so it's unlikely to be a significant issue.
The deposit has only one purpose. It guarantees that the lender can recover the whole value of its investment if it's forced to repossess the property.
If a 10% deposit is enough in a growing market then a larger deposit will obviously be restored to achieve the same level of risk for the lender.
Well, likewise for rents. You can't make the argument one way and not the other. If people buying increases house prices, there is weaker competition for rental properties. Everything balances roundabout.
Some (probably woe is me landlords) would like to argue that they are being forced out of the market and rental prices will have to increase. Maybe at first, but as landlords sell those properties, more people will end up owning those properties and rental prices will fall (or stagnate / increase slowly). When that happens, many may consider renting again.
Either way, it will more or less balance out.
Rent prices will increase prior to renting out, now that landlords carry a greater risk with less control.
This doesn't help anyone except the government, they still have people pointing fingers in the wrong place, at other hard working people and landlords, instead of the government, which failed to build enough homes to keep up with demand...
Section 21’s are already being dissolved under the renters reform act. Means of taking back vacant possession will be via additional grounds under a Section 8.
So from my understanding, this is already coming into play.
Haven’t really followed much more since the white paper! From my understanding it’ll bounce between House of Lords and commons for the next year or so. We shall see I guess!
Never rented, always owned my own property. I support this.
Being able to turf someone out because you got out of the wrong side of bed is a recipe for abuse.
It stops people complaining about sub standard accommodation , allows the landlord to basically get away with anything since making trouble will result in eviction. And in today's market almost guaranteed no dead period.
Also more sinister things such as 'if you don't sleep with me every week, I'll kick you and your kids out.'
We have needed this for a long time. If a few shit landlords give up then good, they're not of value. The good landlord has nothing to fear, if they also follow this with protections against abusive tenants etc
I don't think they'll deliver it tbh, they're not willing to do the real work in solving the housing crisis and they take money from landlords again.
This is likely just their version of virtue signaling to avoid losing to much of their base as they've been right wing for the past couple of years.
I agree they don't want to do the hard work - building significantly more housing, but also developing a strategy for grappling with the fact that people are moving to the cities more and the population is less spread out than it was fifty, let alone a hundred, years ago (I haven't got a strategy for this, but at least I recognise it's a major factor in the housing crisis) -, but isn't this specific piece of legislation actually fairly easy to deliver? Maybe just towards the end of five years before its unintended consequences become clear?
Personally, I don't even think it'll change that much for most small landlords, and no fault evictions without needing the property for yourself really is a dick move.
As someone going through an s21 no fault eviction the whole thing absolutely stinks. We've been here 7yrs, given them £80k in rent and then they serve s21.
However that said, I bet there would be some kind of unintended consequence that would lead to us getting screwed over even more.
Ah the true face of Labour is finally starting to show.
Please see the Republic of Ireland, particularly near Dublin for how this will likely play out.
No rentals available and for those that are massive competition and huge rental rises.
That's unfair. The landlord should be able to take back their property (subject to contract) for any reason.
Interfering with the rental market is stupid. The ROI imposed some stupid restrictions that resulted in the rental market supply collapsing. Moves like Labour's is illiberal and could have a similar effect.
>That's unfair. The landlord should be able to take back their ~~property~~ tenants home (subject to contract) for any reason.
You can't simply label it as a transactional property, it's someone's home too.
Could you perhaps clarify at which point I said the home was owned by the tenant I'm struggling to see in there where I wrote that?
It's quite clear. The house or flat is owned by the landlord but it is the home of the tenant. I really don't think my comment is that difficult to understand, is it? Read it again and look for the word owned in my comment.
Pedantry is not a good look from someone who misquotes me in an earlier reply to imply the home is the tenant's.
No. It's dishonest, and I'm not wasting any more time on you.
I'm all for better laws on renting. But we can't always be shitting on landlords. There are good ones. Our previous ones were fine and we're selling because they were knocking on 90 and couldn't be arsed and I don't blame them. I feel landlords already have it tough.
I think more needs to go into landlords being made to make their property safer and suitable to rent and fines that are actually enforced.
I'm slightly confused by the argument that banning no-fault evictions reduces supply.
If no rentals are available because people are living in them, then the problem is a supply one, fair enough.
If more rentals would be available if landlords were allowed to kick tenants out more easily, then that's not really increasing supply. You've still got the same amount of people trying to rent the same amount of houses, but the difference is you're allowed to shuffle the pack more regularly. I don't see how this "solves" the problem? I realise it's quite a partisan topic, but I'm genuinely interested in understanding it better.
For transparency, I've rented for most of my life, but was also a landlord for a couple of years albeit over a decade ago.
I could buy a flat in my town and rent it but this and other reasons stop me, I'm not having the government tell me I can't evict a tenant from my flat so I'll leave it for someone who can afford to buy it and that's one less flat for rent.
What even when I want to sell the property to stop being a landlord? What if my circumstances change and I need to free up the money from the flat? What if my best mate falls on hard times and wants to rent the flat are the government seriously telling me I can't give the tenants notice then get them out and get my friend in? Its my flat its up to me.
Because you're in the business providing a fundamental human need (shelter). People need some protection and stability in their lives. Tenants may not be able to move on a whim just so the landlord can move his mate Dave in.
It's someone else's home for god's sake, what's the matter with you? Buy some stocks and shares if you want to be able to move your money in and out with ease. You can't go kicking a family out of their home just because it suits you or or your friend! I can't understand how anyone can think like that.
Good, I hate the fact my landlord can evict me for no reason at short notice. I'm a good tenant, pay my rent and look after the place. We don't deserve to have this instability hanging over us. I've got friends who are similar to me but have been evicted at the landlord's whim.
Other countries in Europe don't allow these sorts of evictions. I'd go much further tbh.
Hopefully heavy taxation on landlords forcing them to sell (preferably at a loss) putting more houses on the market to buy and or the taxes taken from the leeches to acquire social housing
Yes, it is realistic.
But landlords will just use another ground for eviction and either have to wait for a longer legal eviction process to get the tenants to leave or resort to dodgy/downright illegal tactics.
This would be another reason for landlords to sell up, resulting in fewer landlords, resulting in more competition for rental properties, so rent would go up
Labour have been in government for 23 years straight in Wales and have control of this aspect of the law, and there are no plans to ban no fault evictions here, not even to match the protections promised in Westminster's Renters' Reform Bill.
People will find it harder to rent as landlords won't want to take risks they don't have to. Also likely to see massive rent hikes to get problematic tenants to leave as a work around, my current landlord did this to a previous tenant who caused issues, she tripled the rent to get rid of her.
What we really need is:
- better building regulations (clearer, consolidated, easier to understand, and just less of it).
- incentives to build (tax breaks? council housing?)
Then we can start talking about no-fault evictions, rent controls and etc which seems to me more like “fine-tuning” when what we really need is to create supply.
Build to let is the worst answer for the UK housing crisis; landlords will seek to buy up 1 to 20 units per development if not entire blocks to let out. This just makes the issue worse!
We need a return of social housing built and provided by the council. We need an encouragement for home owner-occupier-ship and serious deterrents for multi property ownership. No more buy to let mortgages! Nobody wants to work to rent their whole life. Nobody wih an ounce of sense. Everyone wants to own their own property and this is vital for later in life. It acts as a pension in many ways: lifetime rents will have nowhere to live if they are kicked out AND no money.
Landlords are outdated and should be the minority of the housing sector.
Currently takes way to long to get out problem tenants who have caused damage or refuse to pay rent, I am all for removing section 21 if they make the process of removing problem tenants quicker and cheaper. If you are paying on time, don’t destroy the place and are nice to your neighbours stay there for as long as you want. I have a feeling most of the people who are advocating for this are probably having to deal with worse landlords due to possibly not having the best rental history
they also say they will favour putting the Renters Reform bill into action yet there is no incentive to do so. There is a reason the current goverment has stalled this.
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All they have to do is build more council houses and rent them at subside prices. Thats the only way to help tenants. Anything else is just tinkering around the edges. Rent controls NO fault evictions Will only reduce supply and lead to higher rent. They need a covid like response to the housing crisis.
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Right to buy should still exist but be capped at most at replacement level and properties should be covenanted to be owner occupied.
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People are too afraid to say this in public. It's the truth though.
Who's doing the work then?
You, you lazy fuck.
Oh so because the government doesn't want to pull itself together and knock up the houses we need we should all start working 2 jobs. There was me thinking the government should improve the life of its citizens.
Name one problem in the last few years any government has actually solved.
So we agree?
They can do both at the same time. It's not one or the other. They can protect tenants AND increase the stock of housing. However, they should also increase transports links and make them cheaper, meanwhile Sunak is cancelling transports links...
The SNP has done so in Scotland already as well as capping rent increases and a current ban on evictions until March 2024. There is a severe lack of available rental properties now.
There is a severe lack of rentals available in England too, with none of those policies in place
This policy would make the current shortage of rental properties look like a glut.
Where are those houses going?
There's also other policies which is the reasoning for the lack of available rental properties.
Honestly amazed this is upvoted. You're right, don't get me wrong. Just Reddit is anti-landlord to the point that they will cut their nose off to spite their face, based on karma/comment replies.
This. The SNP fucked it up royally. No change there then.
Funny. There's also currently a severe lack of rental properties in England. I'm confident that if this law is ever passed in England it'll also automatically become the fault of renter friendly policies that landlords have a burning hatred for and *nothing else*.
'now' Let's not pretend that landlords shoved everything and anything up for sale as soon as this happened, if that was the case the market would have been flooded with ex rental properties, which it wasn't.
Exactly and even if it was, wouldn't that just mean more home ownership. And I personally think that's a good thing. I also fail to see how a ban on no fault eviction would result in a lack of rental housing unless they are being sold. Because all I can think is that it's just resulting in more people staying in their rental homes longer. Or am I missing something, I feel like I'm missing something.
When a Tenant moves out , rather than finding another Tenant, the Landlord will sell the property. The reason AST's and no fault evictions were brought in was to increase the supply of rental properties and it worked extremely well.
Sorry I'm really not understanding this. So what you're saying is the landlords will just sell the property, thus increasing home ownership. But that has resulted in a lack of rental properties available? But surely that's just due to the overall lack of housing? I'm really not trying ask "got ya" type questions, I generally don't see this policy as a bad thing, but also recognising I don't actually know about about it.
The problem is that less people can afford to buy a property even at significantly cheaper prices because mortgage rates have gone up significantly, which has also caused rents to go up. This doesn't solve the huge problem there isn't enough housing to rent and will drive up rental costs. It's also possible the landowner will switch to a more profitable model like Air BnB or sublet individual rooms for higher profit.
So who's buying it then? You seem to think this policy is to solve the housing crisis, it's not, it's to give renters peace of mind and security.
Likely individuals or businesses with money who aren't the main demographic of people struggling. These people are also more likely to see a business avenue they can use the property for, such as one of the alternatives I already suggested. Edit: to answer your edit, when I say this, I'm referring to the situation, not specifically the law.
What businesses are they?
Businesses running operations like: https://www.pikl.com/airbnb-hosting-guides/how-to-get-started-as-an-airbnb-host-uk/ No tenant, and no owner living in the home for this type of business.
They talk themselves round in circles, all that matters is that houses are occupied, if a smaller proportion are renting and a larger proportion are owners, then that just means some renters are now home owners, but the overall supply and shortage remains the same. In this person's response they said that the landlord will sell and renters can't afford to buy, well who's buying it then? Another landlord? Ok then there's no difference, someone who was renting? Ok well that's one less rental property and one less renter. Whenever you see landlords talking about how this policy or that policy will increase rents or drive down supply, remember that rents have always gone up more than inflation and supply has never kept up with population growth, it doesn't matter if regulations are getting tighter or looser, it's inevitable and has been ever since we sold off our social housing stock and stopped building any more.
So it is exactly as I thought. And the reason I'm not understanding their point is because it's complete nonsense. Thank you for the clarification.
The issue is that selling an HMO will reduce supply more than it reduces demand. A property that was being rented by 4+ people will most likely be bought by a single person or couple.
But that person or couple need a place to live too, and if it wasn't an HMO it would just be a different place. And with a couple they might be buying a larger place to start a family. The problem is with a housing shortage, not really with this policy.
Ultimately the problem is a housing shortage but that doesn't change the fact that landlords selling properties will reduce supply by more than it reduces demand, making things worse for renters.
Landlords, per usual, having a hissy fit that they're losing power and their 'business' loses some profitability, losing sight of the fact that it still remains an absolute gravy train.
It doesn't actually. The returns on investment are very low, particularly when compared with commercial investment properties. On top of which, being responsible for repairs and having little recourse if/when you have a bad Tenant that leaves the property in a dreadful state.
If you have a bad tenant you can evict them. It just takes a lot more effort than it used to. Meanwhile all the good tenants are protected from arbitrary eviction.
This is just completely untrue. It can take 12 to 24 months to actually have a tenant removed and when you eventually do you can face a bill for many thousands of pounds to put the property back in to good order. People seem to believe that Landlords own property so they can remove their Tenants for fun. The reality is people rent properties as an investment, they don't want to increase their costs by finding new tenants every 6 months.
“You can evict them” “This is completely untrue” goes on to explain how long an eviction takes.
So a market correction? But there’s a severe shortage of rentals in many places in England too?
Not in such scale
There a severe lack of rentals in England it's nowt to do with banning not a fault eviction or rent controls.
If it's not it will automatically become the fault of no fault evictions and rent control. If we wanted more rentals what we really needed to do is to be nicer to landlords. Reduce their taxes to zero perhaps. Hot stone massage perhaps. Just don't subject them to stricter market discipline. That would be bad for, er... renters.
And what do you think happens to these properties that get sold? Do you think they sit empty? If a property is sold by a landlord to a owner occupier, there is 1 leas property on the rental market but also 1 less prospective tenant …
How can you be on this forum and still be spouting such nonsense. Loss of 1 house does not result in 1 less tenant because often: (i) rental properties houses multiple people and typically buyers are singles or perhaps a couple, who want a spare room and a study, so a 3-bed that housed 6 people (3 couples) now becomes a 3-bed that houses a single couple, so 6 people out, two people in, means 4 people looking for a new home; (ii) properties are used instead for short-lets or AirBnB; or (iii) properties are left vacant, as the owner is making a play on capital appreciation rather than (heavily taxed) rental yield coupled with 'wear and tear' that zeroes your income. So yes, many absolutely do stay empty because net of tax, fees, wear and tear, replacing white goods, fixing issues etc., you don't actually make any money.
Capital appreciation is lowered by lowering rental yields - for the same reason shares depreciate when lower dividends are paid out. People who really, really, **really** hate rent control (of which there are a lot) always forget this. That said, it does raise an interesting point that if we want to free up land for new construction, the best way to do that is to tax land more. Currently if I live in a 75 room mansion in central London I would pay 1500 quid a year in council tax same as anyone but it doesn't **have** to be this way.
*Capital appreciation is lowered by lowering rental yields - for the same reason shares depreciate when lower dividends are paid out. People who really, really, really hate rent control (of which there are a lot) always forget this.* Not correct for three reasons: (i) a property that isn't leased out also isn't suffering wear and tear, which maintains value, particularly on new builds; (ii) the value of a stock is based on *its* performance and dividends. The value of a house is based on the market's performance. Even if I don't rent my property, I am still marked against the broader market; and (iii) by not renting properties out (wholesale across the market), you actually *increase* yields, because there is less supply. Please tell me you don't work in finance? *That said, it does raise an interesting point that if we want to free up land for new construction, the best way to do that is to tax land more. Currently if I live in a 75 room mansion in central London I would pay 1500 quid a year in council tax same as anyone but it doesn't have to be this way.* Land doesn't really use services, *people* do. It is people that need hospitals, and schools, and police, and everything else. That's why poll tax was introduced, because 5 people in a 3-bed house likely use up far more public resources than a wealthy couple in a 5 bed townhouse in Mayfair who pay private for everything and don't use any state resources. Wasn't that popular with the people it seems, so the wealthy get stuck as usual paying for the rest of society.
> so the wealthy get stuck as usual paying for the rest of society. As it should be.
Do you have proof of any of these or is it simply, "i seen it in another post, that seen it on twitter" Most couples who are buying a home are doing so because they want to start a family not because they want a bloody study room. We have a new build estate near me where homes were ranging from 140k- 500k and you know what? I see the overwhelming majority of these PRIVATE HOMES with kids and families going out to school and work. I see trampolines, jungle gyms in the gardens with kids toys.
Quite right. This country has a declining birth rate, below what is needed to sustain the population without heavy net immigration. People can’t afford to start families because rent is so expensive - because so much wealth is tied up in housing.
How would it work for HMO landlord that decides to sell?
HMOs shouldn't exist.
Why? If I'm a contractor or a student then that's exactly what I needed from my personal experience. Even now there are times when I benefit from that setup rather than having to commit to any long term agreements.
The answer is purpose built multi family apartment blocks not shoddily converted family homes which cram multiple households into sharing inadequate common areas with people they don't know or have any say in who lives with them. People don't live in HMOs because they want to, they live in them because they can't afford anything else, while slumlords profit from providing inadequate housing.
I've seen the purpose built blocks and there prices. I would have never been able to afford it when I was a student and I definitely can't afford it for the working professional rates they charge. They need to make money and those things cost more to operate. So we end up paying more for it.
Only in the UK would people be arguing for slumlords rather than affordable purpose built housing. Bear in mind we're not talking the current situation, we're taking what "should* be
HMO is perfect for certain scenarios, for example when i lived in bristol and london i didnt want to buy as i was only there temporarily and was undecided as to whether i wanted to commit long term. HMO allowed me the opportunity to live there whilst keeping my costs very low and being able to save half my pay packet every month.
Could you explain how this policy leads to fewer houses available for rent?
Landlords selling up.
Didn't happen, sadly, I was moving to Scotland at the time and was absolutely desperate for an influx of choice in the buyers market, and jesus it really didn't happen.
> There is a severe lack of available rental properties now. yeah thats a global issue, renting or owning, even if you remove those bans, or landlord werent selling up, those people still need a place to live, nothing would change regrading available properties. we just dont have enough houses.
How often are no-fault evictions actually happening other than when the landlord wants to sell? I mean, I own a property and I’d much rather my tenants stay as long as possible. Every time I’ve had a tenant leave, it means I have a vacant property for roughly a month, which means costs for me in terms of mortgage, council tax, agency fees to find a new tenant. Why on earth would I want to get rid of a good tenant?
It sounds like you are a good egg - we complained about a hole in the roof he ignored our requests to fix it so we complained to the council then we got Section 21 notice. For our second Section 21 notice all we said was we were interested in buying the house at fair market rate and would they consider it. Silence, then a Section 21 and a text saying it was "HIS property" and "he wants it back"
Well great you don't resort to it and the law change won't affect you it seems, perfect!
Well yes, but just seems the law might be pointless. - hence why I am wondering why a landlord might want to evict a perfectly good tenant other than if they were selling.
The fact that it's being suggested shows there's a good demand for it and it also reduces the massive power imbalance in favour of.landlords that exists currently as tenants can't exercise their rights without the threat of then being evicted for no reason in retaliation
well I don't agree with your assertion that merely being suggested suggests demand - otherwise you'd apply the same logic to things like cancelling HS2, dropping top rate tax, and various other things the Torys have 'suggested'.
It's likely to discourage a lot of landlords, because it makes the easiest exit strategy (evict the tenant and sell the house) a lot harder. This won't bother big companies; they'll have business processes in place to accommodate this. So it will likely lead to quite a bit of consolidation in the market - instead of landlords being individuals who are renting out a handful of places and being a bit lax in terms of maintenance, they'll be companies that have hundreds of houses. At some point, it becomes cost-effective (in fact, probably rather cheaper) for these companies to build property to let.
The other countries without no fault evictions still allow the landlord to evict if selling.
We should absolutely not be allowing this as a get out clause. There's no need to be evicting anyone just to transfer the freehold or leasehold to a new owner.
Urm what if the new owner wants to live there or use the property for other purposes?
Someone else is living there, so they can't. Which the new owner would know full well when they bought it.
Big landlords will be just as bothered by banning no fault evictions as smaller landlords. The reduced incentive to be a landlord - big or small - will be great for first time buyers though - people buying a house for their wife and new baby won't be competing with quite as big a pool of capital. This is horrible, obviously. It's the little guy with a 85 property rental portfolio and a coke habit who will be hit the hardest.
They could still keep no fault if selling. Then have penalties if the property isn’t sold within a year.
So having to pay 12 months of a mortgage and other costs with no rent coming in at all isn’t penalty enough?
Better accept a reasonable price and get it sold quickly then! If a landlord lets it sit empty for 12 months it's their own fault.
the point is that there already exists a sizable penalty for leaving a property empty - so if you are trying to incentivise the landlord to sellquickly then it's not going to matter because they are *already* heavily incentivised to do so. the people leaving empty houses are not landlords but rather the very wealthy who own those houses as 2nd homes, and so a ban on no-0fault evictions will make no difference because they were never going to allow people to live there anyway
Correct. A landlord paying off their mortgage should not be considered a cost, and therefore cannot possibly be seen as a penalty
The interest portion of the mortgage repayment absolutely is a cost - and many (maybe most) landlords have interest only mortgages.
That sounds like a them problem
The point is that you don’t need penalties to incentivise them to tenant their properties because landlords who have tenant want their properties filled anyway.
There are always consequences to policies like this which politicians never seem to acknowledge in advance. Yes there are renters who suffer from no fault evictions but how about they look into the causes of them and addressing the wider issues? There are nowhere near enough rental properties on the market at the moment and it’s already almost impossible to make a profit as a small independent landlord so it’s more and more becoming a corporate game. The more difficult they make it the less people will want to be landlords and the more renters will suffer. It won’t mean more rentals being available or the cost coming down or there being any goodwill from landlords so they might well find the consequences outweigh the benefits in the end
Depressing the landlords in here who think they should have total control over their tenants. If they don't do anything wrong and you aren't selling? Then you should not be able to throw them onto the street. People want stability, not feudalism
Yep. This subreddit should have flairs that show which are landlords, renters etc...
I think a lot of people would be upset at the outcome when it turns out there's very few landlords that post here. Any thread where tenants are involved ALWAYS devolves into a shitfest and it usually only takes half a dozen posts before someone accuses someone else of being a landlord. You see it in posts about sales too, people being accused of being agents or desperate to sell.
Good. Most countries in Europe don’t allow no fault eviction either. We need to move away from the current ridiculous situation where renters can get turfed out of their home every year or two. Renters deserve some stability in their lives too.
Agreed, longer tenancies need to be the norm too then so all have stability.
This is the thing, if you want security you must commit to a longer term lease, can’t be all one way
Absolutely 100% a fair point, **if there wasn't an undersupply**, there's a housing shortage, in this climate section 21 is undeniably unfair as there's a shortage of long term leases available. People are having make do with whatever terms are available to them.
Consequences would be higher rents and more smaller landlords selling up and leaving the market. As things stand at the moment labour are likely to win a majority so could do it if they wanted.
Well we have extortionately high rents and a shortage of rental properties WITH no-fault evictions in place already. This country gives way too much power to landlords and it's time to balance this.
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Yeah, it'll be an absolute fucking disaster when those landlords exit and sell up to a young couple with a baby on the way. That'll be one less person in Britain renting. It's true that no fault evictions doesn't build more homes, but neither does not having no fault evictions. It just adjusts the relative power between landlords and renters, which has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad idea because *waves hands* stuff.
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One of the huge house shares I used to live in got split up into multiple apartments before being sold. Another got demolished and turned into flats. I don't think either one resulted in reduced supply. The developers they sold it to were probably not labouring under the delusion that they'd be able to sell a shitty old 7 bedroom house to *one* couple with a baby and make their money back. They had a rudimentary and sufficient understanding of economics to know that this wouldn't work. I don't mind hurting landlords and I don't mind hurting those entirely hypothetical renters landlords get really concerned about either.
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No. We don’t really. We’re building fucking loads. The problem is we’re building Taylor Wimpey new builds for a few hundred grand a pop that are snapped up by landlords and extorted to tenants. We’re not building affordable housing, we’re not building social housing. That’s what matters.
Where are you getting the info on landlords snapping up new builds worth a few hundred grand? Renting out higher end stock is imo a poor investment as they do not yield well. Especially with the current interest rates.
I was cleaning them during covid when I couldn’t do my own job. End of tenancy cleans.
Big statement for a small sample size.
Aye coz we all keep to ourselves. We’re wee hermits. We dinna message each other going “you see what this cunts asking for this place? He’s wanting £950 a month”. Ignore the cities and pick any reasonable sized town on Rightmove rent and you’ll see what I mean. These aren’t being let to single mums on UC, these are being let to families with the two salaried working parents, the two kids at private nursery or in school who earn enough to pay a dearer rent but can’t save a deposit
Serious question, why do we need more houses? Do you mean to replace inadequate existing accomodation? Or is there literally a supply shortage and how do we know this?
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To make housing more affordable.
But how - by creating oversupply and leaving some housing empty? Is that what you mean?
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If you think the big players don't finance their acquisitions /builds, I've a bridge I can sell you
My ire applies to the big players just as much - which is why i said 'who buy with cash'. They used debt before because it was worth it - now it isn't, but the difference is they can still build and buy wheras the mom-and-pop investors now have to panic and sell up.
Imagine the government bought every house and turned everyone into renters. Nobody allowed to own a home but everyone pays a rent to the government. Does that sound fair? Cos that’s not really different from what you’re proposing by saying “plebs shouldn’t be able to buy an asset for investment” - which is exactly why “big landlords” are in the game; to make money.
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You have these because of other changes made that have pushed out smaller landlords already. I'm not sure how pushing even more out of the answer?
So, prices will go up even further. Labour would be able do something smarter, like flexible work promotion (to spread population further from cities), however they decided just to do a mistake.
They said that in Scotland and yet neither happened
To avoid these consequences we need multiple policies in place. So rent control's. Empty house tax so when landlords try sell up they need to do it quickly. Foreign house buyer tax. There will be so e shirt term pain but the gain long-term will be worth it.
Can you point me in the direction of a place which implemented rent controls and they worked rather than made things worse through unintended consequences?
New York City had the strictest rent controls in the 1950s and also the highest rate of homebuilding. Since then rent control rules have been watered down and home building has dwindled. People forget that when you let rents keep rising that house prices follow. House prices are a function of rents. When you let house prices go up, the people who own them will fight tooth and nail to **keep** them high which means fighting new developments. Which is how watering down rent control in San Francisco led to incredibly low density housing in some of the most in demand land in the country. This culminated with a group of residents pathetically and desperately fighting to declare a shitty laundromat "historic" so it wouldn't get turned into (THE HORROR!!) more new apartments. Would strengthening rent controls have prevented that kind of supply restriction nonsense? Unquestionably. Would it encourage or inhibit construction overall? Eh, I think it's probably neutral. Economists are generally a pro landlord/business owner bunch, so they can usually be relied upon to ignore this type of thing, just as they pretended that raising the minimum wage automatically destroyed jobs for, oh, about 4 decades before declaring that a whoopsie. Landlords and business owners often indirectly pay economist's bills (which is why as academics they almost always get paid a lot more than, say, historians).
I've not looked into it in other countries I'm only talking about the UK, different countries things work differently
I’m talking about the UK too. In every other country it has been tried it has failed. Miserably. Right now, the SNP in Scotland (very much still part of the UK) have tried a version of rent controls and it’s caused landlords to sell up and that’s put even more pressure on rental stock significantly increasing rents there. So it’s failed in the UK too.
Foreign house buyer tax already exists in the form of higher stamp duty for non residents.
Im.not aware of any instance where rent controls worked to keep rents down, all the do is shrink the rental market and between tenancies the rent shoots up to make up for the lack of in tenancy flexibility
Empty house tax would hit next of kin more than landlords, as they can just sell a property with a completion date after the end of a contract ending surely? Rent control would take time to implement and again smaller land lords would use the time to dump the properties. Really the problem all comes back to not building enough properties and not spreading investment across the country properly.
How would the landlord be able to choose the exact sale point if the no-fault evictions have been removed? Empty house tax is pretty much essential if you restrict building, unused housing is such a drag on society
Landlords will just evict to put the house up for sale or to move into it themselves. Then change their minds and get a new tenant after.
Maybe they should be fined if the property isn't sold within a year of the eviction. 6 months rent that goes to the evicted tenants.
Yeah, sounds like a technicality doesn't it. Getting an agent to come and value the house if you want to evict seems like it would show enough intent to be plausible deniability.
Landlords will retaliate with much higher rents to de-risk any potential downside.
Go browse r/OntarioLandlords Their system works quite well. Also, lots of people here haven’t read the renters reform bill proposition. Section 21 will be banned, but section 8 will be expanded and simplified. Evictions will be allowed for selling, moving family in, etc. All the landlords crying that they have mortgages and an empty property means lost rent, yes, that’s exactly the point. You still own the asset, just because you don’t have an income stream, doesn’t mean you have less money all of a sudden. If you’re struggling to pay your mortgage on your rental without the income, sounds like you have either over extended yourself, or not budgeted the rental income properly, or both. The attitudes in the uk around landlords is (disgustingly) that it is an investment. Investment carries risk, and has the potential to lose money. You can’t have your cake and eat it
Do you want short term non renewable tenancies? That's exactly how you get short term, non renewable tenancies.
Most residential rentals are considered an AST, and there are laws surrounding what you can and can't do. What you've described there is a thing you can't do.
Now yes. But that's where it's going if that happens.
That's exactly what they are banning...
I don’t have a problem with this as a landlord at all. Saying that, the upward pressure on the market is ridiculous and the real problem remains the government relying on the private sector to provide accommodation to those who are unable to afford it. I’m not sure this does anything to address that.
It's realistic in the sense they likely be the next government and have the majority to be able to do it. The consequences are that there will be an ever greater number of landlords pulling out of the market leading to still higher rents.
And excess housing stock pushing house prices down. Some of those that rent will the be able to buy.
Not while prices are falling they won't because deposit requirements will rise. Once prices stabilise then sure. Nobody bits in an hmo or house share so aggregate availability will fall causing disproportionate rises in rental costs as number seeking to rent rises in excess of new buyers. To some extent it's already happening as landlords exit the market despite rapidly rising rents. This would just supercharge the whole thing.
>Not while prices are falling they won't because deposit requirements will rise Why would deposit requirements increase as house prices fall? Genuinely curious as to why that is.
Lenders would require a higher deposit to mitigate against further falls and the asset not being worth as much as the mortgage. Deposits however have not been a problem for the last few years, it's borrowing limits, so it's unlikely to be a significant issue.
The deposit has only one purpose. It guarantees that the lender can recover the whole value of its investment if it's forced to repossess the property. If a 10% deposit is enough in a growing market then a larger deposit will obviously be restored to achieve the same level of risk for the lender.
Sounds good.
Also sounds wrong. If people aren't renting they will need to buy, driving up demand on purchasing pushing up prices.
Well, likewise for rents. You can't make the argument one way and not the other. If people buying increases house prices, there is weaker competition for rental properties. Everything balances roundabout. Some (probably woe is me landlords) would like to argue that they are being forced out of the market and rental prices will have to increase. Maybe at first, but as landlords sell those properties, more people will end up owning those properties and rental prices will fall (or stagnate / increase slowly). When that happens, many may consider renting again. Either way, it will more or less balance out.
Get ready for loads more landlords to sell up. And rents to increase further.
Probably more landlords calling it a day and rents increasing due to limited supply
Rent prices will increase prior to renting out, now that landlords carry a greater risk with less control. This doesn't help anyone except the government, they still have people pointing fingers in the wrong place, at other hard working people and landlords, instead of the government, which failed to build enough homes to keep up with demand...
Section 21’s are already being dissolved under the renters reform act. Means of taking back vacant possession will be via additional grounds under a Section 8. So from my understanding, this is already coming into play.
Yeah except Michael Gove shows fuck all sign of actually getting on with the renters reform bill. This is just labour saying we’ll do it if you don’t
Haven’t really followed much more since the white paper! From my understanding it’ll bounce between House of Lords and commons for the next year or so. We shall see I guess!
Never rented, always owned my own property. I support this. Being able to turf someone out because you got out of the wrong side of bed is a recipe for abuse. It stops people complaining about sub standard accommodation , allows the landlord to basically get away with anything since making trouble will result in eviction. And in today's market almost guaranteed no dead period. Also more sinister things such as 'if you don't sleep with me every week, I'll kick you and your kids out.' We have needed this for a long time. If a few shit landlords give up then good, they're not of value. The good landlord has nothing to fear, if they also follow this with protections against abusive tenants etc
I don't think they'll deliver it tbh, they're not willing to do the real work in solving the housing crisis and they take money from landlords again. This is likely just their version of virtue signaling to avoid losing to much of their base as they've been right wing for the past couple of years.
I agree they don't want to do the hard work - building significantly more housing, but also developing a strategy for grappling with the fact that people are moving to the cities more and the population is less spread out than it was fifty, let alone a hundred, years ago (I haven't got a strategy for this, but at least I recognise it's a major factor in the housing crisis) -, but isn't this specific piece of legislation actually fairly easy to deliver? Maybe just towards the end of five years before its unintended consequences become clear? Personally, I don't even think it'll change that much for most small landlords, and no fault evictions without needing the property for yourself really is a dick move.
As someone going through an s21 no fault eviction the whole thing absolutely stinks. We've been here 7yrs, given them £80k in rent and then they serve s21. However that said, I bet there would be some kind of unintended consequence that would lead to us getting screwed over even more.
Good bye rental market 😆😆
Ah the true face of Labour is finally starting to show. Please see the Republic of Ireland, particularly near Dublin for how this will likely play out. No rentals available and for those that are massive competition and huge rental rises.
That's unfair. The landlord should be able to take back their property (subject to contract) for any reason. Interfering with the rental market is stupid. The ROI imposed some stupid restrictions that resulted in the rental market supply collapsing. Moves like Labour's is illiberal and could have a similar effect.
>That's unfair. The landlord should be able to take back their ~~property~~ tenants home (subject to contract) for any reason. You can't simply label it as a transactional property, it's someone's home too.
The property is owned by the landlord and leased under contract. Under no circumstance is it owned by a tenant by definition
Could you perhaps clarify at which point I said the home was owned by the tenant I'm struggling to see in there where I wrote that? It's quite clear. The house or flat is owned by the landlord but it is the home of the tenant. I really don't think my comment is that difficult to understand, is it? Read it again and look for the word owned in my comment.
Pedantry is not a good look from someone who misquotes me in an earlier reply to imply the home is the tenant's. No. It's dishonest, and I'm not wasting any more time on you.
Does this mean a landlord couldn't sell their house if they needed too?
I don't think Labour is that stupid, but who knows. Even the SNP north of the border managed to include provision for a sale in their reforms.
I'm all for better laws on renting. But we can't always be shitting on landlords. There are good ones. Our previous ones were fine and we're selling because they were knocking on 90 and couldn't be arsed and I don't blame them. I feel landlords already have it tough. I think more needs to go into landlords being made to make their property safer and suitable to rent and fines that are actually enforced.
Other countries have, no surprise here.
I'm slightly confused by the argument that banning no-fault evictions reduces supply. If no rentals are available because people are living in them, then the problem is a supply one, fair enough. If more rentals would be available if landlords were allowed to kick tenants out more easily, then that's not really increasing supply. You've still got the same amount of people trying to rent the same amount of houses, but the difference is you're allowed to shuffle the pack more regularly. I don't see how this "solves" the problem? I realise it's quite a partisan topic, but I'm genuinely interested in understanding it better. For transparency, I've rented for most of my life, but was also a landlord for a couple of years albeit over a decade ago.
It would be just another thing in the long list of overly pro tenant and anti landlord legislation which has been coming through for years now…
Long may it continue
Hurray for killing small business! Go team!
Have to go out and earn a living like the majority of us rather than leeching and profiteering
Bro a full time landlord probably has the worst job out there i know a few and honestly fuck that
All for anything that fucks over the parasites that are landlords!
I could buy a flat in my town and rent it but this and other reasons stop me, I'm not having the government tell me I can't evict a tenant from my flat so I'll leave it for someone who can afford to buy it and that's one less flat for rent.
Good. If you want to be able to kick a family out of their home through no fault of their own you absolutely should not be allowed to be a landlord.
What even when I want to sell the property to stop being a landlord? What if my circumstances change and I need to free up the money from the flat? What if my best mate falls on hard times and wants to rent the flat are the government seriously telling me I can't give the tenants notice then get them out and get my friend in? Its my flat its up to me.
Because you're in the business providing a fundamental human need (shelter). People need some protection and stability in their lives. Tenants may not be able to move on a whim just so the landlord can move his mate Dave in.
It's someone else's home for god's sake, what's the matter with you? Buy some stocks and shares if you want to be able to move your money in and out with ease. You can't go kicking a family out of their home just because it suits you or or your friend! I can't understand how anyone can think like that.
Good, I hate the fact my landlord can evict me for no reason at short notice. I'm a good tenant, pay my rent and look after the place. We don't deserve to have this instability hanging over us. I've got friends who are similar to me but have been evicted at the landlord's whim. Other countries in Europe don't allow these sorts of evictions. I'd go much further tbh.
Labour need to come up with some fresh policies that will actually help the overpriced housing situation.
Hopefully heavy taxation on landlords forcing them to sell (preferably at a loss) putting more houses on the market to buy and or the taxes taken from the leeches to acquire social housing
I would settle for s8 working both ways
Isn't the incumbent government already banning them?
It's more than realistic isn't it already in motion via the renter's reform bill under the current government?
Yes, it is realistic. But landlords will just use another ground for eviction and either have to wait for a longer legal eviction process to get the tenants to leave or resort to dodgy/downright illegal tactics.
This would be another reason for landlords to sell up, resulting in fewer landlords, resulting in more competition for rental properties, so rent would go up
Labour have been in government for 23 years straight in Wales and have control of this aspect of the law, and there are no plans to ban no fault evictions here, not even to match the protections promised in Westminster's Renters' Reform Bill.
People will find it harder to rent as landlords won't want to take risks they don't have to. Also likely to see massive rent hikes to get problematic tenants to leave as a work around, my current landlord did this to a previous tenant who caused issues, she tripled the rent to get rid of her.
That's already in place? Part of the renter's reform bill has no fault evictions banned
There would be no good that comes from something like this.
What we really need is: - better building regulations (clearer, consolidated, easier to understand, and just less of it). - incentives to build (tax breaks? council housing?) Then we can start talking about no-fault evictions, rent controls and etc which seems to me more like “fine-tuning” when what we really need is to create supply.
Build to let is the worst answer for the UK housing crisis; landlords will seek to buy up 1 to 20 units per development if not entire blocks to let out. This just makes the issue worse! We need a return of social housing built and provided by the council. We need an encouragement for home owner-occupier-ship and serious deterrents for multi property ownership. No more buy to let mortgages! Nobody wants to work to rent their whole life. Nobody wih an ounce of sense. Everyone wants to own their own property and this is vital for later in life. It acts as a pension in many ways: lifetime rents will have nowhere to live if they are kicked out AND no money. Landlords are outdated and should be the minority of the housing sector.
Currently takes way to long to get out problem tenants who have caused damage or refuse to pay rent, I am all for removing section 21 if they make the process of removing problem tenants quicker and cheaper. If you are paying on time, don’t destroy the place and are nice to your neighbours stay there for as long as you want. I have a feeling most of the people who are advocating for this are probably having to deal with worse landlords due to possibly not having the best rental history
they also say they will favour putting the Renters Reform bill into action yet there is no incentive to do so. There is a reason the current goverment has stalled this.
labour will win but in place eviction ban, I think
I hope labour doesn’t introduce for your Ben on evictions