Private Landlords Will Need To Be Much More Vigilant if Proposals Go Ahead

By the way it was not because it was disabled - I decided not to reply as the "TROLL" was making it a fruitless exercise if the comments are disabled - Plus I had a tenant on the phone 🙂

Regards

sorry pressed send too soon.

.... that I ALWAYS spread the word when I find a solution that will make a landlords job easier. I give information freely I am not selling anything, I am not on commission and this site is about good services for landlords. This is why I blog here and why other people can also post solutions here.

Thanks Mary, I’m not sure many would agree with that though haha.

This is why I am such a fan of Social Lettings Agencies, these new council teams aimed at forging links with the PRS and finding ways to work together. We have formed one at my council and I am part of the mix (I shall also be putting in for a managers role when it comes up next month so I can direct it more effectively)

This is one of the good things to come out of the way things are developing and is driven like minded people who have seen the writing on the walls early on.

I know that may not have been your experience up to now but it will change, even though many council staff will struggle to get with the programme for a while yet, which I see as my biggest challenge if I do get the managers job.

For me it is like a kid being given the keys to the sweetshop, we can start to make a difference instead of just being enforcement officers all the time. Government is saying “Go for it” and have lifted many restrictions in the way we work. Hopefully this will make up for the other side of the coin.

The way I look at it PRS landlords don’t need us, they get by fine on their own and so if we want them to work with us we need to offer them stuff they couldn’t get without us. We may be restricted in terms of grants we could give etc but we can offer our support in all areas.

I was just asked for my advice on a tenancy agreement that one of our cooperative landlords wants to issue to a tenant we supplied. It wasn’t a good one and had many unfair terms. My colleague asked me what we should do. I said if we insist he cant use that contract he can just say up yours and we lose a landlord. Conversely we shouldn’t be accepting bad contracts for our tenants, who are also our clients. I suggested the best we could do at the moment is to tell the landlord that he can use it but emphasise that he may find a lot of the clauses unenforceable.

Once we are a fully operation social lettings agency with a lot to offer, we can insist on standards, knowing that landlords will play ball with us because we offer them so much in return. That doesn’t go on at the moment.

Ben you are right and, while my concerns on a blog like this are mainly for the landlords who will be unable to cope I do share your worries about vulnerable people. I have always been so proud of England and our caring system but I have seen that system maladministrated and poorly controlled to the point where people who are not in need, but who know the ropes, can take while others who are in genuine need struggle to survive.

I loose sleep over senior citizens who are to dignified to ask for help and who have no one to fight for them. Just the thought that there are many elderly poeple who do not understand why their TV's no longer work makes me really sad. A TV to these people is a life line and many don't have the wherewithall to go out and buy a new one. Its just one of the small indications that we no longer "care".

When I found out that a person I know who earns around £50k a year was getting a winter fuel allowance I began to realise that we have lost the way.

Mark R Please do not give this person the power to kill this debate.

I've never met Paul Routledge or any of his staff personally and there is no commercial connection here, other than the fact that we are fans of each others businesses and choose to cross promote. In many ways we share a lot of characteristics, both in terms of passion for our businesses and our business models. It would be a real shame if comments regarding his business comments were the cause of the trolling. Perhaps it wasn't that at all though? I have also heaped praise on his competitors at TenantID but that's not the post that's been attacked. Who knows who's playing silly games, fortunately everything here is monitored and we have the power to stop it. We are now looking into whether we can track IP Addresses of abusers of the thumbs up/down before we consider the various options available to us.

NP Mary - I actually gave you a thumbs up - and I thought the same as you - it was because I mentioned TenantID - I am not promoting one or the other but like you I like to spread the word when someone creates the service such as they have 🙂

So let me press your thumbs twice given you pressed too early 🙂

I won't its just my day is getting very busy - On that note I am off out - catch you all later 🙂 (I'll stay in touch via iPhone (The wonders of technology 🙂 )

Ben As you know many landlords do not realise the implications of an AST with many unenforceable terms and perhaps pointing them to an organisation like NLA or a web site like Landlord Law where they can get a solid AST would be a good solution. If only landlords realise how vulnerable they are when they use a poor AST they would make certain that the ones they use had been checked out and would cover their backs.

Like you people find me when they are in the doo doo and the amount of poor ASTs that I see are blinding.

Yes but I want to see that kind of information and support being something that we provide. A total one-stop shop, where we can provide a proper plain language tenancy agreement that works, the thing is we cant insist on that just yet as we have no clout or reputation with our local PRS other than a few individuals.

Can you believe the landlord inserted that the tenants had to behave well and that the decision on their behaviour would be decided by the landlord. Hiding to nothing there then haha