Activists complain to Rishi Sunak over Renters Reform Bill delays

Agree, if you rent you should be aware that you could be asked to leave at any time. If you want to 'put down roots' you have to buy a property. If it is a high priority for you then you will make the sacrifices and find a way to buy a property. You can even get 100% mortgages now. You could always make an offer to your landlord.

Well said! Especially the unintelligent part.

Precisely, Tricia. And if law is enacted requiring us to provide security of tenure then we will cease providing accommodation to our tenants.

Tricia

It's time those decent potential tenants being blocked from getting a home where rogue tenants are being aided and abetted by Shelter, Generation Rant, Acorn or the Council realised exactly who is to blame for the general shortage of rental properties and the huge time it takes to evict rent dodgers and other rogue tenants.

Decent tenants and landlords are on the same side, the opposite side from Shelter and their cronies.

Agree with what you say Tricia, apart from the bit about not supposed to stay for ever.
Some tenants will want to, and I've had one who only wanted to leave 'in a box'. (I know I'm not the only one.) But she got dementia so that didn't pan out.
Such long-term tenants should look after the place and always pay rent on time. No void periods and little hassle.
As long as a LLD knows what they want, and are okay with that timescale, then there are few problems apart from their eventual decline/demise (which will come to all of us eventually).

For the last forty years I have seen every tenant leave at the end of the fixed term when a section 21 notice has been served two months earlier.

You are very unlucky if you have a tenant who doesn't comply with a Section 21 notice.

Ellie - however many tenants do you need to evict? What do they do to upset you?

I know I am fairly tolerant and work incredibly hard to keep some tenancies sustainable but I would seriously question my whole tenant selection process if I had to routinely evict people.

Or is this just a difference in attitude between fixed terms and SPTs?

Or a location based thing? Are fixed terms more common in somewhere like London while SPTs are more common elsewhere?

I think some people favour fixed term tenancies by default. I do not wish for people to think they can stay forever.

We always selected tenants who did not want to stay indefinitely. The view taken was that providing permanent tenancies was the duty of the council.

We never "evicted" anyone once. The tenants usually left giving a thank you card and a present.

When you have a contract it is necessary for both parties to be in agreement over the terms. And this is where this Government has lost the plot. They want landlords to operate under a form of contract to which the majority of landlords are not in agreement.

Nick has the situation accurately described.

Ellie - isn't that just an expectation difference?
I expect my students to leave at the end of the academic year unless they have already signed up for the following year. They sign an 11 month AST. If they sign up again for the following year they get the intervening August free.

I expect my non student tenants to stay as long as they want so start with a 6 month AST and let it roll onto a SPT. It's far easier to keep a well trained tenant long term than to constantly have new unknown ones.
Due to the mix of letting I do I'm likely to have between 15 and 20 new tenants every year anyway. It's nice to have long term ones who look after their homes and appropriately deal with any repairs or other issues.

I am not sure that expectation is an issue. The issue, for many landlords, I believe, is the loss of control over their properties which comes when you have long indefinite tenancies. We have seen the consequences of that in the past when the Rent Acts were in force - there was virtually no private rental sector. Landlords did not like assured tenancies either - they weren't popular - and it is those types of tenancy to which the government is now seeking to revert.

Ellie - when I say expectation maybe that wasn't quite the right word.

If you have a good tenant do you allow them to sign up for another fixed term?
If so do they have any choice on the length of that fixed term?
Or is it just a blanket ' your time is up, off you go'?

Maybe there's a difference in understanding of eviction.
As far as I'm concerned it doesn't count until you reach the point of applying to the court.
Step one of a S21 is just a bit of paper that may simply be a reminder of the tenancy end date or it may be a warning of some sort for minor breach of tenancy or payment irregularities.

It would be interesting to know at what point activists and the media are classing S21s as counting

If tenants need to stay for longer than they initially anticipate then I do allow them to do that.

I think Section 21 notices are very serious documents which tenants do abide by on the whole.

I don't quite understand why you want to portray it as simply a "bit of paper". Why make things even harder for your fellow landlords who may be experiencing really serious problems with their tenants?

Ellie - so it looks like you use S21s as a reminder of the end of the fixed term and use it as an invitation to have a conversation about extending the tenancy. So not necessarily with any intention of actually evicting them. I just randomly ask them what their plans are if I have any suspicion they may be thinking of leaving.
The difference is you have issued a S21 notice while I haven't. It sounds like neither of us especially want to lose good tenants.

However, if activists are counting S21s from step one rather than step two simply the act of issuing one as a reminder of the end of fixed term is surely giving the activists ammunition.

S21 has it's place and I'm not keen on losing it without a satisfactory replacement but I do question if the activists are getting confused with the subtleties of how we actually use it and how it often doesn't lead to an eviction.

Generally when I have issued a Section 21 notice I have intended it to be abided by.

That's been the case for years.
Only some people want Social Housing though.
A great many people don't want to be on a waiting list and be allocated an inconveniently located house.
They want to live in a location of their choosing for a time period that suits them. While there was an adequate supply of PRS properties things generally trundled along quite smoothly (apart from the Social Housing wannabes needing a Bailiff appointment).
Now it's harder for everyone. When there is an average of 27 applicants per property it's difficult for people to find anywhere in a reasonable timeframe.

The agent to whom I spoke yesterday said that the Scottish hotels were now packed with people being housed by the local authorities. It is a very expensive and poor way of housing people. That is the outcome of alienating landlords in Scotland with the rental legislation there.

And don’t forget that many ‘would be’ landlords who will be put off this investment when they realise that it is just not profitable, and that there is too much red tape, whilst all the time they are being slagged off by a coalition of charities who have their own agenda. The people who will suffer most are those who wish to rent privately. Would be landlords will put their money into other investments.

Shame the NRLA don’t have one.

Beadles about has got a great one for himself though…

Spot on Michael!