That depends on whether those that don't vote are free to do so? Surely, democracy is aimed at governments heeding the wishes of the people. The non-voters may well telling the goverment that it would need to do more before they make the effort to vote. Or, as I think, there will always be those that just don't bother.
No Fault Evictions
- Thread starter Ozi
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Hmm...well, being born into an old property with no bathroom or indoor loo, no washing machine or tumble drier, I can't agree with you. I think ignorance is the main cause of mould and damp. Gone are the days of Domestic Science and Home Economics in schools, at a time when they're need the most.
John Brown
Freeloading Social media influenza
The property you were born in was probably far from airtight. Probably had open fires.
Whether you agree with me or not, I speak from personal experience. We had a mould problem, sorted by installing a PIV unit. Probably could have fixed it by turning the heating up a few degrees, but in this property that would be very costly. I'll wager that the incidence of mould increased in sympathy with the rise in energy prices.
It was, indeed, far from airtight. I suspect that others will remember the cold mornings and frost on the inside of the bedroom windows. Damp can be caused by a damaged, or non-existent, DPC or maybe a roof problem but the vast majority of problems are 'home' made. My neighbour was complaining about damp and mould for a long time. We have identical houses but ours has small top-hung windows in all the rooms, they had none.
Their consultant suggested an extractor in the roof space to vent each room. I suggested new windows.
GweithdyDU
Established Member
Just a quick comment from someone who until very recently was an 'accidental landlord' in Wales, where licences are issued, no fault evictions are no longer an option, standards of properties are tighter than in England, exams need to be passed and landlord licences issued etc.
Personally, I didn't have an issue with a more regulated market. We rented our one house out to people who were previously vulnerably housed/homeless as a matter of course, and being able to provide somewhere that allowed someone to be securely housed was hugely rewarding. For sure, some tenants left us high and dry with rent arrears, sometimes deliberately, but usually not, but equally, others bent over backwards to try and pay the arrears as they could see that we were't extracting the urine and were struggling ourselves (relatively). At the end of the day, despite the arrears, we made money from the house even thought we rented it out for less than a static caravan and well below market rent. For crying out loud, the tenants mostly paid the mortgage for 12 years as the price of the house went up. What's not to be grateful for? I always saw my role as a landlord as partly social. After all, we were lucky enough to own a house (albeit on a mortgage) that we didn't need to live in. For me, despite the fact that many of my tenants on benefits drove nicer cars (slightly anyway) and had holidays etc that I can't afford, that puts me in a privileged position.
I do have a bit of a problem with landlords that complain about the hardship they endure from having to deal with tenants whilst at the same time watching their property portfolios grow in value and welcome the fact that the English government will now follow the Welsh one and introduce legislation to protect tenants and force landlords to provide secure and safe houses. We lost rent but still made money and have come out on top overall.
Personally, I didn't have an issue with a more regulated market. We rented our one house out to people who were previously vulnerably housed/homeless as a matter of course, and being able to provide somewhere that allowed someone to be securely housed was hugely rewarding. For sure, some tenants left us high and dry with rent arrears, sometimes deliberately, but usually not, but equally, others bent over backwards to try and pay the arrears as they could see that we were't extracting the urine and were struggling ourselves (relatively). At the end of the day, despite the arrears, we made money from the house even thought we rented it out for less than a static caravan and well below market rent. For crying out loud, the tenants mostly paid the mortgage for 12 years as the price of the house went up. What's not to be grateful for? I always saw my role as a landlord as partly social. After all, we were lucky enough to own a house (albeit on a mortgage) that we didn't need to live in. For me, despite the fact that many of my tenants on benefits drove nicer cars (slightly anyway) and had holidays etc that I can't afford, that puts me in a privileged position.
I do have a bit of a problem with landlords that complain about the hardship they endure from having to deal with tenants whilst at the same time watching their property portfolios grow in value and welcome the fact that the English government will now follow the Welsh one and introduce legislation to protect tenants and force landlords to provide secure and safe houses. We lost rent but still made money and have come out on top overall.
The problem like many others things in modern Britain is that there is now so much legislation and red tape around renting houses, that the costs have become prohibitive for tenants and landlords alike. Much of it is well intentioned, but the result of endless "something must be done" hysteria is the only beneficiaries are the businesses who offer the various bits of tick box paper.
Like many other areas of forum conversation, Jacob likes to bait people and many rise to it. I have to be honest, I find it hard to generate sympathy for boomers who invested in rental property to boost their pension pots, and seem to feel hard done by now they are being cracked down upon - but there also seems to be a trend in our politics to make policy based on spite or jealously which is also counterproductive.
I have recently become a private landlord though - I have owned my own very small one bedroom flat in London for around 8 years. I have a "normal" mortgage and am 35. I recently met a lady and we wanted to try living together but my flat didn't work size wise and I am in the middle of my fixed deal so can't sell - nor do I really feel ready to do that as we've only been together a year and I have no savings beyond my small flat and feel very pissed off with the current system of stamp duty.
So to legally rent a small one bedroom flat in great condition that I've lived in for 8 years:
People like Jacob will probably be the first on here to try and bait me - but I just don't feel the system is fair. I'm all for additional rates of stamp duty for owning second/third/fourth residential properties and a wholesale reform of the stamp duty system - but I don't really feel the current system makes any sense at all and makes starting a family, moving or doing anything else in life an endless pain.
Like many other areas of forum conversation, Jacob likes to bait people and many rise to it. I have to be honest, I find it hard to generate sympathy for boomers who invested in rental property to boost their pension pots, and seem to feel hard done by now they are being cracked down upon - but there also seems to be a trend in our politics to make policy based on spite or jealously which is also counterproductive.
I have recently become a private landlord though - I have owned my own very small one bedroom flat in London for around 8 years. I have a "normal" mortgage and am 35. I recently met a lady and we wanted to try living together but my flat didn't work size wise and I am in the middle of my fixed deal so can't sell - nor do I really feel ready to do that as we've only been together a year and I have no savings beyond my small flat and feel very pissed off with the current system of stamp duty.
So to legally rent a small one bedroom flat in great condition that I've lived in for 8 years:
- Greenwich council are now charging in the region of £1000 for a "license" to rent in my ward. How is this fair?
- My mortgage company wanted to add and additional 1% on my mortgage and charge me £1000 in order to give me "permission to rent". How is this fair? What additional risk is this is the mortgage company really?
- On top of this I will get no tax relief against the new property me and my partner will be renting to try and think about starting a family together? Again, it's just not fair.
- The estate agent will also take 9%.
- Then there are energy certificates, floor plans, electrical safety certificates, gas safety certificates which are required for a tenancy - these can easily set you back £1000.
People like Jacob will probably be the first on here to try and bait me - but I just don't feel the system is fair. I'm all for additional rates of stamp duty for owning second/third/fourth residential properties and a wholesale reform of the stamp duty system - but I don't really feel the current system makes any sense at all and makes starting a family, moving or doing anything else in life an endless pain.
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I had a problem a few years back with a tenant who wouldn’t leave the property. We were trying to sell as my job was at risk. Unfortunately they not able to leave as they couldn’t find somewhere else to rent at the same rent and size. They had been tenants for five years without a rent increase. The issue was if the left they would be making themselves homeless and to get social housing they needed to be evicted. In the end they stayed an extra five months before the council found them something.
Despite the inspections by the letting agents there were many accumulated issues that the tenants had never mentioned, including damp that had rotted skirting boards and sagging gutters causing damp through the front wall, which we would have got addressed if we had known. I spent about £40000 sorting the place out with a new kitchen, bathroom, carpet and decoration. Fixing the problems when they first showed up would have cost much less and the tenants would have benefitted too.
Jacob
What goes around comes around.
But wouldn't they then get tagged as complaining troublesome tenants?
I'd say it was up to the landlord to regularly survey and remedy faults - it's a specialist job anyway and would be beyond the competence of most tenants (and landlords too, unfortunately).
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Jacob
What goes around comes around.
https://www.themortgagecentres.co.uk/news/how-to-get-out-of-a-fixed-rate-mortgage-early/
https://www.moneysupermarket.com/mortgages/early-repayment-charges/
The trouble is the whole issue of housing is largely speculative for many people, so there are winners and losers. "Fairness" just doesn't come in to it!
Your mortgage terms are part of the gamble and favour the lender - if term competed both you and lender happy, if not then the lender makes you pay. It's win win for the money lenders!
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I paid a letting agent to do the inspections. They were incompetent. My current tenants lets me know what needs doing as soon as it’s needed. Water came in the bathroom fan on the last storm and she saw that water was overflowing the guttering at the back of the property. Local builder is installing new guttering and replacing the fan only three weeks later. That’s the way it needs to work. I don’t consider that complaining I consider that taking good care of the property
monster
Established Member
I have just received back a property that had the same tenant in it for the last 14 years. It's a property I built myself and took great pride in building - I built everything myself including the stairs which had several turns in them and was one of my first forays into proper woodworking. Anyway this tenant was a single mother who brought up her kids - 2 boys in the house, they have not cared for the house at all and they also overfilled it with 'stuff' and also counter to the contract sublet rooms to people I never knew. As the boys grew they got involved with drugs and windows got broken as dealers came around for their money and neighbours were disturbed with fighting and drink and drug related behaviour outside the house etc. She was aways late on paying the rent and it usually came in part payments if it came at all, at one point her rent arrears reached around £6000.
I had always been sympathetic to her position, charged her less rent than my other similar properties and gave her many opportunities to catch up on the rental arrears over the years but the only thing that ever really focused her on doing this was when after years of arrears culminating in the £6k I mentioned earlier, I finally server her with a Section 8 Eviction Notice. Section 8 differs from Section 21 in that Section 8 requires a specific 'at fault' situation to be described in order to successfully legally complete the eviction, whereas a Section 21 eviction does not require the landlord to specify any fault (although that doesn't mean there isn't one). In nearly 25 years of letting, this is the only time I have ever served an eviction notice on a tenant, and as it happened I never followed through with it as it focused her sufficiently to agree with me a payment plan to catch up over the next few years which she broadly managed to do.
She was a similar age to me - mid 50's and last month she sadly all of a sudden passed away in the house with a blood clot (no mentions of the vax here please..) and after negotiations with the remaining family, her son and lodger found alternative accommodation and I finally received the property back last week after 14 years. Its in a terrible state and I am out of pocket as she had used her deposit up as rent and there was some small rent arrears although nothing like the £6k from a few years ago. The house will need a complete renovation, new kitchen and bathroom etc - they also flooded the upstairs bathroom on a number of occasions and this has cause significant damage to the floor. Mould is also an issue through lack of ventilation and too much stuff in the house stacked up against the walls internally etc. A lot of rubbish was left behind and I spent last week gathering that up and loading up my truck and visiting the tip 6 times. I have finally got the house empty and can start ripping out the bathroom and kitchen etc. in order to get it back into a nice condition for the next tenants.
One point worth noting on Eviction process's is that regarding the Section 8 Eviction Notice that I mentioned earlier, this requires the tenant to be at actual fault, such as evidence of anti social behaviour which has to be documented over time or rent arrears etc, If using rent arrears under Section 8 to evict tenants, then the arrears have to be in excess of 2 months worth of rent before the Section 8 eviction process can be started. If at any point a tenant manages to get back within 2 months of rent arrears during this process then the Eviction Notice is nullified and a new one would have to be started if they again fall more than 2 months behind in arrears.
What often happens in this scenario is that the council's do not want the tenants to be evicted as it then become the councils liability to house them, so they advise the tenants not to move out and they often will give them enough money to pay the landlord sufficiently to get them within the 2 month arrears cut off point, this then halts the eviction process and saves the tenants becoming the councils liability.
It is for this reason that landlords usually use a Section 21 Eviction notice where they don't need to specify a fault in order to get rid of problematic tenants, rather than play games with the council over rent payments or have to document antisocial behaviour and risk the country deeming it insufficient etc
'No fault' Section 21 Evictions are rarely used to evict tenants who are not at any fault - except for the instance when a landlord may need his property back to sell or live in himself. Section 21 'no fault' evictions are invariably used to evict bad tenants who are in arrears or who act in an anti social manner etc. The problem is because a 'fault' does not have to be specified this has allowed anti landlord pressure groups like Shelter (who unlike landlords actually shelter no one) to mount a successful campaign against landlords using disingenuous propaganda.
Apologies if you have managed to get this far - I'll stop now
monster
Established Member
The point is that the more regulation there is, the more upwards pressure there is on rents. People like Jacob call for ever more and more regulation and then wonder why rents are going up.....
Blackswanwood
Still Learning
1. It’s arguably fair as the council want to try and ensure bad landlords can be weeded out. Monitoring landlords, responding to complaints and enforcing the regulations comes at a cost. Professional and regulatory fees are part of being in business. You’re running a business now.
2. The risk to the lender is very different. A 1% premium on the rate for a residential mortgage probably looks quite good compared to a buy to let mortgage. The lender is now reliant on you receiving rent to be able to pay the mortgage. If they need to repossess it’s much more complex as your tenant has rights. Your property (their security) could be trashed by your tenant. You could have your licence revoked by the council and be unable to let and be unable to afford the mortgage. The lender has to hold more regulatory capital against buy to let lending.
3. Why do you think you should get tax relief for your new love nest? No one else gets tax relief on the cost of their home.
4. Shop around and negotiate on the fee. Presumably they will provide a service in return for that fee - it’s a cost of running a business.
5. All are there to demonstrate the property is safe and habitable. Again, a cost of running a business.
Jacob
What goes around comes around.
Your properties have increased in value in 25 years by 4 to 5 times so you have little to complain about.I have just received back a property that had the same tenant in it for the last 14 years. It's a property I built myself and took great pride in building - I built everything myself including the stairs which had several turns in them and was one of my first forays into proper woodworking. Anyway this tenant was a single mother who brought up her kids - 2 boys in the house, they have not cared for the house at all and they also overfilled it with 'stuff' and also counter to the contract sublet rooms to people I never knew. As the boys grew they got involved with drugs and windows got broken as dealers came around for their money and neighbours were disturbed with fighting and drink and drug related behaviour outside the house etc. She was aways late on paying the rent and it usually came in part payments if it came at all, at one point her rent arrears reached around £6000.
I had always been sympathetic to her position, charged her less rent than my other similar properties and gave her many opportunities to catch up on the rental arrears over the years but the only thing that ever really focused her on doing this was when after years of arrears culminating in the £6k I mentioned earlier, I finally server her with a Section 8 Eviction Notice. Section 8 differs from Section 21 in that Section 8 requires a specific 'at fault' situation to be described in order to successfully legally complete the eviction, whereas a Section 21 eviction does not require the landlord to specify any fault (although that doesn't mean there isn't one). In nearly 25 years of letting, this is the only time I have ever served an eviction notice on a tenant, and as it happened I never followed through with it as it focused her sufficiently to agree with me a payment plan to catch up over the next few years which she broadly managed to do.
She was a similar age to me - mid 50's and last month she sadly all of a sudden passed away in the house with a blood clot (no mentions of the vax here please..) and after negotiations with the remaining family, her son and lodger found alternative accommodation and I finally received the property back last week after 14 years. Its in a terrible state and I am out of pocket as she had used her deposit up as rent and there was some small rent arrears although nothing like the £6k from a few years ago. The house will need a complete renovation, new kitchen and bathroom etc - they also flooded the upstairs bathroom on a number of occasions and this has cause significant damage to the floor. Mould is also an issue through lack of ventilation and too much stuff in the house stacked up against the walls internally etc. A lot of rubbish was left behind and I spent last week gathering that up and loading up my truck and visiting the tip 6 times. I have finally got the house empty and can start ripping out the bathroom and kitchen etc. in order to get it back into a nice condition for the next tenants.
One point worth noting on Eviction process's is that regarding the Section 8 Eviction Notice that I mentioned earlier, this requires the tenant to be at actual fault, such as evidence of anti social behaviour which has to be documented over time or rent arrears etc, If using rent arrears under Section 8 to evict tenants, then the arrears have to be in excess of 2 months worth of rent before the Section 8 eviction process can be started. If at any point a tenant manages to get back within 2 months of rent arrears during this process then the Eviction Notice is nullified and a new one would have to be started if they again fall more than 2 months behind in arrears.
What often happens in this scenario is that the council's do not want the tenants to be evicted as it then become the councils liability to house them, so they advise the tenants not to move out and they often will give them enough money to pay the landlord sufficiently to get them within the 2 month arrears cut off point, this then halts the eviction process and saves the tenants becoming the councils liability.
It is for this reason that landlords usually use a Section 21 Eviction notice where they don't need to specify a fault in order to get rid of problematic tenants, rather than play games with the council over rent payments or have to document antisocial behaviour and risk the country deeming it insufficient etc
'No fault' Section 21 Evictions are rarely used to evict tenants who are not at any fault - except for the instance when a landlord may need his property back to sell or live in himself. Section 21 'no fault' evictions are invariably used to evict bad tenants who are in arrears or who act in an anti social manner etc. The problem is because a 'fault' does not have to be specified this has allowed anti landlord pressure groups like Shelter (who unlike landlords actually shelter no one) to mount a successful campaign against landlords using disingenuous propaganda.
Apologies if you have managed to get this far - I'll stop now
The point is - the private sector can't provide all* the housing the UK needs. Thatchers "property owning democracy" was always a delusion - home ownership has decreased over the last 25 years.
Tenants and landlords are heavily subsidised by the back door of "housing benefits" for the less well off (including low paid in full time work).
It's a broken system.
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Blackswanwood
Still Learning
It’s a bit of a circular argument as the regulation also seeks to ensure properties are safe and fit for purpose. Which regulation would you undo?
Blackswanwood
Still Learning
I’d agree with that if it said “all the housing the UK needs”. More and better social housing alongside a well regulated private rental sector is in my view the best way to do it.
Property value would have increased without a tenant in it so I don’t see how that is relevant to the discussion. The cost to rectify damage and neglect from the tenants is a direct cost attributable to the tenant.
Fortunately for me I have no mortgages but the whole idea that it was a tax relieve drives me mad. It was a business cost on a loan secured against a property. Any other cost is tax deductible, other businesses borrow money and subtract the cost from there income, this was an attack by a Tory government on small landlords after their attempt to limit the increase on stamp duty to those of us with less than 15 units (protecting their mates with far more) was defeated by Mrs Blare. They don't like small landlords anymore than Jacob.
monster
Established Member
Not really - I ensured my properties were safe and fit for purpose long before the regulations came along that now exist.
I have a property next door to one of mine that runs as a HMO and its an absolute tip, rat riddled death trap with rubbish piled up outside and the whole house is a visual eyesore - yet the council still happily license it every inspection and take the license fee.
Over the years I have witnessed lots of new regulations and financial burdens aimed at landlords and all I have seen is this add to the risk and cost of doing business for those who cared anyway - the decent law abiding landlords - whilst the rogue landlords on the whole just continue to operate regardless and are rarely held to account, the councils seem more interested in licensing - and ever further extending their licensing regimes merely as a revenue generator.
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