This should be a really simple problem to resolve because any business has to accept there are risk involved in making a profit and minimising any loses and any landlord is a business. Here things seem to go wrong because for most businesses bad debt or issues are resolved in law that can result in the balifs turning up yet for landlords there does seem to be more hoops to jump through. A solution should be clear cut, if a tennant is paying the rent, looking after the property and not causing the landlord any issues then it should be a case of eviction only under exceptional circumstances on the part of the landlord decided in court and not because they think there might be more money if it was an air B&B. If a tenant fails to pay the rent then make it like the process for employment where you get a verbal warning, a written warning and then out without any questions and backed by the law.
Amongst many other targets, if they can hit the old people over winter fuel payments whilst happily claiming thousands for energy bills on there second homes then no one is safe so selling up and getting out is a safer bet.
I agree with some of what you state but there are a few differences between a business and being a landlord. For instance landlords can not offset all their finance costs against their income, thus tax is paid not purely on profit. I am not aware of any other business where this is the case. There are examples of landlords who have made a loss, yet have still been taxed. When a business agrees a contract with a client, it is for a specified time, at the end of that time, the contract is terminated. This is not the case with landlords and ASTs. For the most part, few landlords evict tenants for no reason, even if the form of eviction is classed as no fault, it is done this way because this is the easiest and cheapest way to do so. Evictions are usually for non payment of rent, antisocial behaviour with complaints from neighbours (I had one last month - police called to house as ex boyfriend attempted to climb through window to gain access in the middle of the night, violence erupted, the neighbours were woken and the police called), or for damage to the property (2 years ago a tenants dog cost me a new set of kitchen base cupboards, new lino and a new back door. You state that a landlord should not be able to evict except for mitigating circumstances.
The reality is often that the landlord is the victim of their own kindness. Tenant commences rent at say £750 per month. The landlord in recognition that the tenant pays on time and causes no issues, does not increase the rent, for many years (this is very common). Then some form of political or economic change forces the landlord to look at this more closely. They realise that market rate for said property is now £1100 per month. Their mortgage payments have increased by £300 per month, so is the landlord supposed to allow the tenant to continue to rent at below market rates, and at the same time pay the extra mortgage and just accept the loss in income? Interest rate increases have driven a lot of rent increases. Many landlords are beginning to implement annual rent increases to avoid this situation.
Swapping to a AirB&B - in many cases landlords have done this in response to the increasing legislation that standard rentals require, not necessarily to create extra income as it often does not once increased costs and vacant periods are factored in. Admittedly some do.
Let me pose another scenario, a tenant wants to rent one of my houses. My agent undertakes the requisite pre tenancy checks, I pay the cost of these. The tenant then decides for what ever reason they no longer wish to rent. What come back do I have to cover my costs - nil.
The tenant causes £5k worth of damage to the property, but I am only allowed to charge 4or5 weeks rent as a deposit - what is my come back once they have left - none.
The tenant stops paying the rent, I get a court order for them to leave, my council tells them to ignore this until the bailiffs arrive, otherwise they will be classed as having made themselves homeless, this can continue for 12 months - not rent, my come back - nil.
Businesses can get redress for many commercial risks where landlords cannot.
The courts do not accept an application to evict because a gas certificate from 5 years ago was 2 days late, because the tenant messed the engineer about restricting access - the application is thrown out. Happens weekly.
The courts are anti landlord, councils are anti landlord and an emergence of biased organisations such as Shelter just inflame the rhetoric (and house nobody).
Councils are unable to run their own social housing, which time and again gets worse satisfaction ratings than the private sector, yet they are charged with enforcing the rules within the private sector - a joke. More recently councils have begun to see fines for landlords as a good income stream. Certain councils are merciless in their application of fines, yet when the councils own housing is found to have the same shortcomings, they are not fined.
I could go on, the whole things is a mess and the blame lies with the government and councils. There are rogue landlords, but they are the minority. Sufficient legislation exists to address these, but time and again councils fail to do this.
Time to stop blaming landlords for the inadequacies of government and councils and for the behaviour of a minority of bad tenants.
