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TODAY'S OTHER NEWS

Rental Sector Reform to be implemented in the coming year

The government has confirmed that reform of the private rental sector will be a priority for the coming session of Parliament.

A brief reference to the commitment was made this morning by the Queen when she opened the latest Parliamentary session. Her Majesty said that her government would help more people to own their own home while “enhancing the rights of those who rent."

Although the Renters Reform Bill was not mentioned by name, it has been suggested in advance by the government that this Bill will be the vehicle for reform. A government White Paper is expected in the autumn ahead of formal legislation starting its route through Parliament.

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The Bill is expected to abolish Section 21 eviction powers for landlords and agents, but to strengthen the Section 8 eviction process. It will also introduce the concept of 'lifetime deposits', allowing deposit payments made in relation to one property to be converted to another; the aim of this is to speed up and reduce the cost of moving rental properties for tenants.

The Queen also said ministers would establish a new Building Safety Regulator to ensure “the tragedies of the past are never repeated” - a reference to the Grenfell Tower disaster.

The concept of the Renters Reform Bill first appeared in the 2019 Conservative General Election manifesto 18 months ago; it was also included in the Queen’s Speech in 2019, with the pledge it would be included in the legislative programme for 2020. However, the government has said its timetable was delayed by the pandemic.

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    not another fecking quango

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    This is an old post/comment - but stil relevant in its content:-

    The NRLA now seemed to recognise and support S21 for student rentals

    SECTION 21 IS VITAL FOR SHARED HMO'S

    Having met my local MP at his surgery I'd encourage all Landlords to do the same - voice your concerns and impact over scrapping section 21!!

    The student and young professional shared HMO rental market needs fixed term tenancies and the vehicle of section 21 to accommodate this, plus give sufficient swift support to deal with antisocial behaviour and other matters if occurring in a HMO. Otherwise the other decent tenants would be continued to be affected and ultimately their safe enjoyment compromised by their antisocial housemate, leading to all sort of other issues.

    Fixed term tenancies and the great benefit they bring to all parties in shared HMO are too long to list here, but fundamentally provide good quality accommodation to young professionals at a competitive price point, allowing them to save and getting on the property ladder themselves.

    S21 is vital for safe and professional management of shared HMO's. Without this a problematic tenant will be able to cause total havoc and destress to their fellow housemates. A lot of anti-social behaviour by problematic tenants would be very difficult to prove in court and it is not fair to the decent housemates that the landlord will not able to deal with matter fairly and swiftly.

    The government need look at the very different rental demographic, all across the UK and not as they have done with the tenant fee ban, role out "one size fits all" changes.

    The proposed changes will again have a detrimental effect on decent tenants in fairly managed shared HMO's and completely go against the governments goal of providing good quality shared and safe rental accommodation as a fair price!

    The recent S21 consultation completely ignored the HMO shared rental sub market and the Ministry of Housing actually advised that it was more targeted at "single household rentals" and HMO shared rental Landlords would be best to use the "other" box to feed back their response.

    In the following government document, there were an estimated 497,000 HMOs in England and Wales at the end of March 2018.

    How is it possible that so many HMO have not been recognised, or their landlords even encouraged to reply to the consultation?

    This is fundamentally a flawed consultation and strongly suspect that the HMO shared rental students and young professional market will not be excluded from the abolition of S21.

    The Ministry of Housing Confirmed the process would be:-

    1) 12 week consultation
    2) Info analyses and report written to government
    3) Government would decide if to raise a bill
    4) As primary legislation, would require a vote my MP's in parliament.

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    I agree about how vital fixed term rentals are for the student market and shared flats generally.

    True to form, the SNP, aided by their little green helpers, totally ignored advice when they brought in their ludicrous prs legislation in December 2017, bringing chaos if one joint tenant wants out of the flat or is kicked out of University or College.

    In theory, in Scotland, one joint tenant could decide to stay in the flat for the rest of their lives and the others would still be liable for their share of rent, utility bills etc. The Scottish legislation has no means of ending a joint tenancy other than by mutual agreement or eviction on a very narrow range of circumstances.

    Purpose built student accommodation is exempt from the 2017 legislation but not shared or HMO flats with a joint tenancy agreement.

    The only bright side is that many landlords decided to avoid flat sharing joint tenancies resulting in a shortage of good quality well located flats and the market rents for those went up by about 30% overnight, with the best 4 bed flats near Glasgow University getting around £25k per annum from early 2018 onwards compared to around £19k in mid 2017.

    Whilst in Glasgow landlords are gaining and students losing because of this ill thought out legislation, in Edinburgh there are NO winners. When fixed term tenancies were allowed, many student rentals were for 8 or 9 months and the flats were quickly refurbished and let to tourists over the summer months. This kept the flats in excellent condition and student rents lower than in Glasgow or Dundee etc. However, because landlords can't plan ahead - and most students don't - these flats can't be booked up well in advance by tourists, so tourists are pushed out to residential areas where many owner occupiers let out rooms or full houses with airbnb at huge rents but no tax is paid and city centre hospitality businesses lose out on evening food and drink revenue. As I said earlier, a lose-lose for practically everyone including HMRC, with only a few tax dodgers winning letting out unlicensed and unregulated potentiality unsafe short term rentals.

    England could study what has happened in Scotland and learn from it, but somehow I doubt that will happen.

    The only glimmer of hope I have is that the SNP hates to have anything the same as England, so the SNP might change our legislation if England copies us!

     
  • George Dawes

    More red tape yay !

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    Queen has lots of empty rooms in her palace ☺️

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    We all knew that sec 21 was going, it'll be interesting to see what they intend to do to sec 8 though, this white paper is going to make interesting reading when it is released. Mean while we need to weed out tenants while we can still use sec 21 and be very very careful when selecting new tenants

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    And again, what are the NRLA actually doing to represent the landlord? Apart from numerous courses, insurance and mortgage offers, absolutely nothing.
    Landlords are being relentlessly hammered over and over again.

    We need a proactive organisation with some balls,.

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    NRLA aka The Capitulation Group. Weak

    PossessionFriendUK PossessionFriend

    They are indeed a ' Farce to be reckoned with '

     
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    NRLA or other LL Associations is all we got so better not knock them too much, although its a shame Mr Richard Lambert didn’t stay on after amalgamation.

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