Letting Agent in Oxford – Ask Me Anything

Perfect, thanks Mark 🙂

As Mark left a prompt, I will ask this: just had bad is Oxford Council in its treatment of HMO properties and the licensing of landlords? Around 2001-04 I used to own a Victorian house in Southfield Road on the outer edge of the St Clements area, which I let out as a standard unlicensed HMO: 5 professional tenants (a doctor, an engineer, an accountant etc), two storeys, a really nice period property with large bedrooms and unlocked doors, two bathrooms, and plenty of reception space in a 24' x 14' kitchen-cum-lounge at the rear. I was absolutely hammered with demands by an Oxford EHO when I foolishly volunteered to register the property as an HMO - new locks to their approved standard on every external door and window, including first-floor ones, a wired-in smoke detector system, fireproof sheeting installed by a "trained professional" on the underside of every tread of the staircase, fireproofing between the understairs cupboard and kitchen-diner ditto, replace all the Victorian doors with fire doors with intumescent strips and self-closers, locks on all the bedroom doors (thereby invalidating the rear first-floor escape route onto a flat roof via a bedroom's sash window because the door might be locked), pull down and fire-proof the kitchen ceiling (a demand later dropped), a bike and bin store in the small front garden, and the installation of two self-illuminating "green person" fire escape signs and multiple self-adhesive signs on the walls.

Sorry to go on, but the EHO had a mania about fire risks and made it perfectly clear he regarded me as little more than a slum landlord. He basically treated the house as if it were a hotel or set up as separate bedsits, not a houseshare with a single cooking location and multiple escape routes, and a house with a fire-risk and pattern of usage that was little different from a single domestic family with teenage or grownup children still living at home and largely fending for themselves. The character and historical fabric of the house would have been ruined, as would any prospect of letting it to a single family unit one day rather than as an institutionalised houseshare. I've since sold up and steered well clear of investing in Oxford, because I think the council's attitude towards HMOs is aggressive, disrespectful of its own built environment, and way over the top. I've heard nothing to encourage me to believe anything has changed, but am interested to hear your perspective.

Tony, you are not the first person to have expressed problems with an EHO in Oxford......... and probably will not be the last. What we have noticed is that they have mellowed over time; I am assuming your property was a three storey one? Before the housing act, and whilst the East Oxford voluntary scheme was in operation, the only definition of an HMO was the old planning class, and this is what caused confusion. Your professional sharers were from a planning perspective living as a family (especially if they were on a single AST) if you were letting by the room you were vulnerable to the property being defined as in the same class as a property full of bedsits, and all the requirements that went with that.
My phone number is on our website (see profile) if you would like to discus this further please feel free to call.

Thanks Mark - no, the house was an ordinary 2-storey Victorian house with a large flat-roofed kitchen/bathroom extension. There was a single AST, but individual members could leave the houseshare and be replaced on the AST by a new tenant via a Deed of Assignment. I wouldn't say the tenants were all friends who started the tenancy and ended it together, but they knew each other, cooked together on the single oven, shared the same fridge, socialised and so on.

Anyway, my question wasn't about the specifics of my case, but what your experience, good and bad, has been of selective HMO licensing and Article 4 planning restrictions in Oxford. Are they imposing a heavy burden of so-called "improvements" on perfectly normal domestic houses used as HMOs? Are they causing landlords to abandon HMOs in favour of letting to couples or families, leading to even more shortage of supply and rising rents? Are there any signs that the licensing and planning changes are being accompanied by effective use of the existing legislation to improve standards amongst the small percentage of HMOs run by "bad" landlords?

I've no doubt that Oxford Council will adopt its own definition of whether licensing and Article 4 are working, and carefully pitch this definition and adjust its statistics to ensure the schemes will always qualify as a "success". To do otherwise would raise the horrifying possibility that the Council might be capable of being wrong about something. But are the schemes actually having any effects on the ground, besides simply raising revenue from law-abiding landlords?

Tony, your comments are perceptive. There is no doubt that the landlords and properties that every-one would like to remove from the market place are broadly speaking staying below the radar on the matter of licensing. Indeed I have argued to elected members that the current range of policy is serving to drive the PRS further underground........ I could extrapolate but have done so at length on the blog.
http://www.collegeandcounty.biz/news/is-oxfords-housing-policy-on-the-rocks-20121137
The officers of the city are well intentioned, and there is evidence by the way they have recently restructured the department, that they would like to bring more resources to bear on enforcement and tracking down the "rouge landlords" The problem is that the licensing (now to be annually renewed) of six thousand HMOs (their estimate) is absorbing nearly all the resources they have available....... and so it should as there is a legislative requirement within the act itself that the local authority cannot make any money out of the process. There is no doubt that some of my more cynical clients would consider the whole process as "entrepreneurial bureaucracy" and simply a way of protecting EHO jobs against a backdrop of local government cuts.
There have been some prosecutions…….. and it may be that the high profile cases will have some trickle down impact, however, it could be argued that the prosecutions to date have been relatively “soft” targets.
We can always count on Mark to put a counter perspective, and his recent article on the value of licensing is an interesting one. I myself, would like to see Oxford contracting out some of the work, under the localism bill the mechanism would exist; I believe that much of the day-to-day activity of licensing could be most cost efficient in the hands of the private sector, subject of course to some moderation, and then local authority officers could get on with hunting down the real problems.

Hello Mark. I've only recently started to look at investing in further properties, with a view to this replacing my day job. I've what must be an embarrassingly simple question after read these previous question about letting in Oxford. To be sure, is a HMO licence needed for 3 or more unrelated persons living together(?) regardless of how many floors etc. Am I right on these two facts please? Secondly, are you able to advise if a couple who are unmarried count as 'related'. It will be useful for me but my partner is also advertising his two bed flat so wants to stay within the rules if two sets of unmarried couples were to approach him.

Thank you in advance.

@Marilyn Sorry I missed your post........ on my way into the wilderness for a couple of days. Briefly, an HMO is defined in the Housing Act as a house comprising of three or more persons living in two or more households...... a couple (whether married or not) is taken to constitute a household, so three people or more living outside a family unit (to my knowledge no one has been prosecuted for living in a menage a trois or even quatre, or more to the point, I know of no landlord who has been successfully prosecuted for letting an unlicensed property on that premise.
As far as licensing is concerned, not all HMOs in all authorities have to be licensed..... all HMOs with five or more occupants over three or more floors must be licensed by the local authority. Some authorities have introduced selective licensing, in a manner that included consultation with landlords, to extend the requirement for licencing to other C4 residential properties, or HMOs. To find out, you will need to contact the local authority; but you might also be aware that some commentators have observed foul play is afoot. Not only are some authorities deemed to be introducing selective licencing by the back door, but some are accused of doing no more than implementing a much needed tax on property to top off some austerity smitten coffers.

Hope this helps! Mark

Really sorry but I will not be able to pick up posts here for about a week........ really am going away.