The Landlords Union “Press Liaison” Questions HMO Minimum Room Size Impact Assessment

We invest in 3 bedroom terraced houses not HMOs, but to give you an idea of box room sizes in our area, of the 304 properties on my spreadsheet where I know the size of the third bedroom, here are the numbers:
Less than 4.6m2 = 116 - unletable (38%)
4.6m2 - 6.51m2 = 90 - Letable to a child under 10 (30%)
6.52 - 10.22m2 = 87 - letable to one adult (28.5%)
over 10.22 = 11 - letable to a couple (3.5%)

Reply to the comment left by Heather G. at 04/07/2018 - 18:23
Good God Heather, that's ASTONISHING, where - how did your spreadsheet get compiled from ?
Imagine if we had about half a dozen of those and extrapolated the stats to cover the county, producing an estimate of lost units of accommodation ? - Would make an interesting Press release ?

Reply to the comment left by Heather G. at 04/07/2018 - 18:23
I like logic and fact

Reply to the comment left by Hamish McBloggs at 05/07/2018 - 11:57
Two 'four letter words' as far as Government is concerned I fear, just ask Esther McVey.

There are many properties in and around Bristol and Bath that will feel the impact of the enforcement of this legislation. Previously local authorities could use some discretion on the room size and take into account other space available to the tenant. As the room size is now law they will loose this discretion. Planned city wide additional licensing in Bath & Bristol and the newly defined mandatory licensing will see all HMO's with 4 or more tenants being affected. Most houses are of an Edwardian or Victorian era and do not readily lend themselves to redesign. Additionally, we have yet to obtain confirmation that the LA's will not increase the size of the minimum standard room (as is permitted in the new legislation), so any advanced rebuild is pointless until this is confirmed. I agree that evictions and penalties will result as will an increase in rent for the remaining tenants!

Reply to the comment left by Chris Daniel at 04/07/2018 - 23:25
Hi Chris,
This spreadsheet is about 18 months old (I have another one for the previous 18 months somewhere). I track all properties that fall within my BTL criteria, listing address, price, price changes, number of rooms, size of property, £pm2, condition and, for 3 beds, the size of the 3rd bedroom. This enables me to compare similar properties/streets and track prices in my catchment area. Fortunately I rent to families (which is due to mortgage restrictions and it limits my tenant pool) so the HMO room sizes don't affect me - yet. Who knows if they'll roll it out to all PRS!

Reply to the comment left by Heather G. at 05/07/2018 - 17:04
When I say "18 months old" I mean I've been working on it/updating it for the past 18 months.

BEDROOM TAX
noun
(in the UK) an informal name for a measure introduced in the Welfare Reform Act 2012, by which the amount of housing benefit paid to a claimant is reduced if the property they are renting is judged to have more bedrooms than necessary.

I was driving along today and remembered all the hysteria about the bedroom tax.
If they had a council house with a room they weren’t using they would cut their benefits pushing the tenants to down size to allow for bigger families to use a larger property, My wife’s Nan had a 3 bedroomed council house in Redruth, an old school one so you can imagine it was a big house. She was elderly and only used the bottom floor never went upstairs for years. They wanted the house back ideally and she should of had a small flat or apartment, she died and they naturally had the house back.
My point is they wanted tenants to utilise the spare rooms in council houses. Size probably wasn’t an issue but with my two properties alone I’ll be evicting two tenants and leaving two perfectly clean, warm and safe rooms empty albeit small, but the tenants are happy with the cost and the facilities.
An older guy was at the landlords meeting last night I attended and asked the question if the government had done an assessment on how many tenants will be evicted due to the new room size, the guy from the council said no I don’t think so.
I find it annoying that that they want council tenants to utilise smaller rooms and private landlords aren’t allowed to rent a small room.
I don’t want to hear again the government saying there is a housing crisis when they are going to force me to evict a perfectly happy tenant because the room is to small for their criteria. THE TENANTS HAPPY!!!
Nothing I can do about it thou.
Just a whinge that’s all. 😢

Reply to the comment left by Andrew at 05/07/2018 - 17:46
Best of all Andrew, Social Housing will continue to rent under-sized rooms as they aren’t included in the legislation.
Not that I’m saying there’s any bias by the govt. - like Forcing Landlords to give a 3 year option to stay at a property, where Landlord Can’t ask them to Leave BUT. Tenants can decide to end the Tenancy. Such ‘encouragement’ will only Reduce the Housing accomodation even further. I can see a lot of Homeless sleeping on Shelter Gen R and MHCLG’s door steps - Because they certainly won’t be providing them with any Housing lol. !

Reply to the comment left by Chris Daniel at 05/07/2018 - 18:45Fear not the government will introduce a minimum size for shop doorways used for sleeping.