Chance to Have your Say About Regulating Landlords

So does this mean all LL will have to join an accredited landlord association like NLA; not that it would be a bad thing.In referring to the govt is it just the Welsh govt proposing this.
If so it will be viewed by Westminster as a wonderful cash cow.
Imagine 1/1/2 million landlords all having to pay an annual fee for registration.
The electorate won't be the slightest bit concerned.
It will just cause landlords unecessary expense and hassle.
I can't see how such registration would drive up standards.
Surely all you need is more EHO's enforcing existing laws.
Also how are all landlords going to be identified to enforce their registration.
Unless sanctions are in place like with deposit regulations why would LL need to concern themselves with such a scheme.
Has anybody worked out how you locate every LL in the UK and enforce registration?
Will lenders be forced to supply all the details of their borrowers to govt officials?
Will insurers be forced to advise of all their policyholders who hold landlord insurance products such as RGI, contents etc?
How does Big Brother identify and register a particular section of the business community?
What about LL who have no mortgage and choose not to insure buildings apart from under residential.
What about all those accidental LLout there; how are they going to be traced?
The govt doesn't have a very good record in registering people......immigration!!
Why would they be better at registering LL.

The RLA on here is NOT working?

Thanks for letting us know, the broken link is now fixed.

Like Paul I fail to see what registration of Landlords will achieve unless you have a means of identifying those poor landlords in the first place. Good landlords will register and poor landlords will not. It is then down to the local authority to find them and fine them, something which they are consistently failing to do already with the powers that they have and registration will do nothing to change this as far as I can see.

Meanwhile all the good landlords will be inspected and licenced taking staff away from their priority role of finding bad landlords and result in increased costs for the good landlord and an extra incentive for the poor landlord to remain underground.

BBC in The One Show and in a documentary highlighted two bad landlords both of which could and should be prosecuted under the current legislation now that they are found. Registration would have  done nothing to identify these poor landlord's properties in the first place and yet they failed to consider this fact.

LA's have it in their own domain to identify illegal HMO's simply by comparing data on LHA payments to addresses of licenced HMO's but very few seem to be able to adopt even this simplest of tracking actions. I bet if they employed a private security company to identify all potential illegal HMO's the difference in results would be amazing. I wonder if any authority would have the courage to do this giving the company a percent of the fines recovered.

Paul suggestion re insurance or lenders might work in some cases but in the majority of cases I doubt these individuals are using normal lenders or insuring their properties properly. In which case these systems fall down as unlike a car ALL properties and their status are not registered on a national database and I doubt if Big Brother can afford turning Land Registry into another DLA for housing.

As it is once again regulation of the good hardworking landlord is seen as the bureaucratic answer leaving the illegal landlords to massively profit from their underground activities. More redtape less effective implementation.

Thanks....it quite a read!!!

I hope that landlords using accredited agents will not have
to get accredited themselves.   However I
would welcome some sort of register that make is easier to find the landlord responsible
for a given property.

A register does not have to be expensive, the DLHA runs the
car ownership register at a low cost – the tax that is collected of the back of
it is a different matter.

If the police were to use the landlords register to inform
landlords when there was an issue with their property or tenant, I think most landlords
will get themselves on the register quickly.

I totally agree Ian, especially that it would not cost much to set up the register. just as soon as we can find a sponsor for it we could have "The GOOD Landlords Campaign" operational within three months.

See http://www.property118.com/index.php/the-good-landlords-campaign/21994/

It's all just a way of stealth taxing landlords the government have no real care about the tenants. If any tenants don't like the property they are in or can see it's not well maintained then they can move out after 2 months notice anyway. All I will do is pass on any costs to the tenant, It's going to make them worse off in my case because the properties I rent out are top quality so its just a waste of time.

NO tenant on a 6 month AST needs to give 2 months notice.
They do NOT need to give any notice, whatsoever, irrrespective of what the AST states.
They can leave ANYTIME they like and there will be NOTHING you can do about it.
Obviously they would leave with a damaged reference as they have breached the AST contract.
What would be the chances of recovering the rent owed from the tenant if you even find him.
And would it be worth the legal costs?
Once the tenancy proceeds onto a SPT the tenant ONLY has to give 1 months notice.
At the end of a 6 month tenancy the keys may be handed back with NO notice required.
The law has primacy here, irrespective of whatever it states in some silly AST.