Government Housing White Paper due out tomorrow

In the Government's endeavour to fete institutional providers of housing while simultaneously hammering the 'small' landlord, there in an implicit assumption that institutions will be able to ‘take over’ the whole of the rented sector (which seems to be what the Government is aiming at in its attack on our ‘individual’ landlords). Many of my tenants live in terraced houses in the South Wales valleys. They do not want to move down to Cardiff to live in a block of flats – even if the institutions wanted them as tenants and charged the kind of rents they can afford; many of my houses, mostly two-bed terraces, rent out for between £300 and £400 per month (Barwell might like to include this kind of let in his categorisation of ‘affordable’). In Cardiff a room in an institution-owned block is around £300 per week (he might like to categorise these institutional lets as ‘unaffordable’). If I go bankrupt because of Section 24 or I have to evict my tenants on low rents as I need to up the rents to pay the new levy on finance interest, where does the Government think these tenants will go?'

There is only one explanation of why institutions are feted by the Government and it is summed up in one word: corruption.

I think this is a lot more sensible than most of the other things the government has done and doesn't feel so much like an attack on landlords and tenants. Longer tenancies would suit me too although nearly all my tenants have elected for periodic monthly tenancies so I am not convinced there is much of a demand.

I'd happily give 3 year tenancies (or longer) if evicting for not paying rent and anti social behaviour, within a reasonable timescale, were a realistic possibility. No doubt that side of the equation will be overlooked in the white paper.

Reply to the comment left by "Alison King" at "06/02/2017 - 11:54":

As far as I can tell it is Agents endeavouring to ensure repeat commission who keep tenants on short contracts. Statutory periodic tenancies save tenants money and overcome any problems with lenders' restriction on length of contracts. Landlords obviously want to keep good tenants as long as suits both parties. I can see no point meddling with a system which works well for all (except for managing agents' bottom line).

Reply to the comment left by "Dr Rosalind Beck" at "06/02/2017 - 10:16":

Spot on - as always - Dr Ros!
IMHO it is a joke. Of course no mention about scrapping S24! No mention that the big build to Rent companies will have their first responsibility to shareholders! If they removed S24, at least they would have brought some normality to the completely volatile PRS market.
NB - our students DO NOT WANT 3 YEAR TENANCY! They have industrial sandwich courses here. and nobody wants commitment to stay 3 years. ..
I do not see that as a relaxation on renting - it is buying votes now not only of FTB but also of the renters. Baby-face Barwell has as much knowledge of the rental market as pasty-face Osborne had...
Personally we have started notifying tenants that we must increase the rent, sending them link to your report and some other articles, as well as encouraging them to write to our local MP and telling them about The Tenants Tax and Government War on Landlords.
What a sorry state we are in.

Reply to the comment left by "Old Mrs Landlord" at "06/02/2017 - 12:13":

If agents fees are the main driver for short fixed tenancies and landlords are going to have to pay agents fees in the future then a choice between longer tenancies or perodic ones are a win for both landlords and tenants. I don't have a lot of sympathy for those agents who deliberately create extra work for themselves, and the ones who don't will be unaffected anyway.

Alison, no professional landlord in business for the long term has any significant objection to the concept of long term tenancies. However, no judge is able to grant mandatory possession within a fixed term or indeed within the first six months of a tenancy. Herein lies the problem -tenants get the security of tenure they apparently crave but landlords are hung further out to dry when a tenancy goes bad which is does from time to time no matter the due diligence unless you are blessed with extreme good fortune. Furthermore statistics actually show that most tenancies ended by the landlord thus disrupting the tenant are down to rent arrears, damage, anti-social behaviour - not for fun ! Well this was the case until the government started forcing landlords to sell with their sustained attacks. Good reliable tenants did have nothing to fear from a mortgage lender compliant 6/12 month AST as why would the landlord want them to leave ? More meddling which is entirely unnecessary and actually ultimately counter productive.

It will be interesting to see how the Government plan to broaden provision for those who wish to rent whilst at the same time forcing Landlords into Bankruptcy. Perhaps by further incentives to large Corporate investors?

Currently, the big institutional/corporate landlords in the UK charge staggeringly high rents and specialise only in the wealthy young professional or wealthy student market. I very much doubt they will be keen to branch out too much beyond that. They will thus not solve the under-supply problem. It's fine of course to offer a 3 year fixed term tenancy to a young professional with a good and reliable income - they very rarely default. But I don't see the big corporates rushing to grant extended tenancies to people on housing benefit etc.

And of course our current "broken" system is actually achieving average tenancies of 3.9 years with 90% of notices being handed in by the tenant and not the landlord.

Reply to the comment left by "Simon Williams" at "06/02/2017 - 17:52":

Simon, would you be so good as to provide the source of the figures quoted in your final paragraph. In our eleven years of letting six properties we have only given notice to one tenant, all the others have left when they decided the right time had come for them. The statutory periodic is the ideal system as far as we can see. Only Shelter and Generation Rent seem to think three-year or longer tenancies are necessary and that the current system is "broken", It looks like yet another case of ministers listening to those who shout loudest.