Now a date for the General Election has been set, the Renters (Reform) Bill has expired with the proroguing and effective dissolution of parliament.
It could have been passed, but the 12 amendments tabled by the Lords meant the government simply ran out of time in the ‘wash-up’ period. Ironically, the Lords were presenting these amendments as the Prime Minister made his announcement.
Regardless of whoever wins the next election, any Bill will have to start again from the beginning. There is cross party consensus that reform is needed, and all agree that section 21 should be abolished.
The shadow Housing Minister has said she would abolish section 21 of the 1988 Housing Act, so called ‘no fault evictions’, on day one of a Labour administration. If you take that literally, Angela Rayner would be in breach of that pledge on day two of government as there is no mechanism in place to do so. It will require legislation.
We and the vast majority of the industry have tirelessly supported reform and have worked very hard to get the Bill over the line. We support a fairer rented sector for both tenants and landlords as without the latter, there wouldn’t be a private rented sector.
Many agree that the previous Renters (Reform) Bill was poorly drafted and created a lot of unintended consequences so hopefully these issues can be addressed for the benefit of tenants whilst supporting landlord’s interests. Make no mistake, reform is coming and we, as one of the largest letting agency groups in the country, will be at the forefront of influencing policy.
The vast majority of landlords provide excellent quality accommodation, however there is a rogue element who do not. It is these landlords we need to target and not punish the good landlords. This will only be possible through effective enforcement by local authorities and trading standards.
* Eric Walker is managing director of TPFG brand, Martin & Co *
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Not everyone agrees that Section 21 should be abolished as is stated in the piece above. Certainly, the majority of landlords do not think that should be the case; many have ceased letting their properties.
Those on the Left want tenants to have security of tenure and for them to be able to stay for life in a private rental sector property. It is not a Right wing policy or even a centre Right policy. The Reform party does not support more state interference in the private rental sector and it is my understanding that they do not support the abolition of Section 21.
Eric Walker says that they will be at the forefront of influencing policy. Let's have FOR ONCE someone influencing policy who supports the right of landlords to get their property back without the need for court interference. Welsh Labour created legislation which provided for that, retaining the right for landlords to get their properties back without their needing to provide a reason.
Well said, Ellie.
The consensus is among politicians, Shelter, Generation Rant and, let’s not forget, Bungling Boy Beadle.😠 Nobody asked landlords. 😡
This is why I shall be voting REFORM and I was pleased to be able to propose my local candidate.👍
Yeah, Beadle captilated in pathetic fashion. He doesn't represent landlords. Pushing for these reforms knowing what a shambles the court system was, is weak position to take.
As said, not everyone agrees that s21 should go 🤔. Only those following the leftie crowd have jumped on that bandwagon. As soon as we bring in “ discretion “ into any decision whereby a judge can give, or not give., a landlord their property back…. We are in Pandora’s box 📦 territory
Agree, Simon. That it was mandatory, if served correctly, upset a lot of people.😉 That was why they started adding little get out clauses like serving gas and electric certificates, EPC, How to Rent etc. Anything the blood sucking leeches, commonly known as solicitors, could use to get it thrown out so the local council did not have to provide accommodation.🤔
Simon: ‘discretion is a Pandoras Box’ spot on!
There are some 2.4 million private landlords and my feeling is less than a proverbial handful actually support the removal of sec 21. Shame on the NRLA, the entire association should fold. It would be no loss.
What we don’t want is interference from NRLA as they don’t represent the PRS. We also don’t want Generation Rant and Shelter to form
policy. The PRS desperately need proper unbiased representation. We need a PRS that works for everyone.
If Section 21 is abolished the Landlord still needs vacant possession to sell a property. Wanting to sell is a valid reason. If a landlord is found to have abused this reason then he should be penalised.
If tenants are given lifetime tenancies that will kill off the PRS. If a landlord died his/her estate doesn’t want to be saddled with a sitting tenant with the property value severely reduced. The government will have to accept the lower value for inheritance tax purposes.
'The government will have to accept the lower value for inheritance tax purposes'
This is a very good point.
If my children are able to rustle up enough for the IHT, with properties in my estate valued at less that market rate because of sitting tenants, AND no CGT, then maybe they could keep one property each as a useful inheritance for them. (3 children, 8 properties)
All I can say is that if my ownership rights are compromised in anyway I will be out.
There is less than no reason to abolish Sec21. It can very easily be adapted to provide ‘a reason ’. Likewise there’s no good reason to end fixed terms, these can be easily formulated to provide a choice of terms from say 6 months to 15 years.
The previous RRB was an ignorant and really damaging mess.
The next version better be better/fair/balanced!
Unless and until I feel secure in this business I will continue selling off my rentals. My 8th property goes on sale in July.
Seldom comes better when politicians are involved and they may as well scrap entire PRS if they outlaw section 21 because a property owner will need to be a sandwich short of a picnic to consider letting a house, a flat or even a room after.
Why does section 21 have to go. You rent something at some point you have to give it back. We are selling up and sadly for the first time we have served notice on a tenant, she has been in our house 9 years. We gave her 4 months notice and will only charge rent to the day she leaves. She is all sorted now and will leave two and a half months into the notice period. Maybe this would be a better approach in the future. Any new law must recognise that we have a rental agreement not a long term lease.
Make eviction mandatory for non paying tenants then we might be getting some where
I may be wrong but I believe in Australia non-payment can lead to the landlord having them removed by the police.😀 Or is that just wishful thinking? 😀
The Renters Reform was never required and good riddance and still the NLLA are promoting this Anti-Tenant Anti- Landlord Bill and intend to have another go with their new Friend big letting Agent O my GooodL looords go and boil your heads.
Introduce it by all means to increase homelessness and crash the economy.
What good have you done or who have you helped this last 5 years only doubled the homeless. Just reinstate fixed Terms Contracts fully and stop the jack donkey nonsense.
Annoyed Landlord - Anyone who is still a member of NRLA needs their head testing.
The Section 21 was very fair until interfered with by Shelter and subsequently by the De-Regulation Act.
Minimum period six months that suited many but you could also let up to 7 years on one let if both parties wanted it.
Then you could do another Contract and continue which suited single and working people. I have had them six months, six years, 12 years & 18 years so who was evicting all those people. The problems arose with Benefits Tenants living for free or subsidised not wanting to go anywhere but stay forever.
Mr Ben Beadle & Mr Paul Shamplina if you are reading the comments you have clear evidence that you are perusing the wrong Policies.
Just concentrate on supporting landlords business promoting it, instead of bringing it to its knees, you would have 200k members by now instead of stagnating membership.
Stagnating membership? Surely you mean falling membership?
Michael - I think Ben Beadle now he is on the gravy train has conveniently forgotten his core business to represent Landlords. NRLA haven’t fought our corner for sometime. The Corporates will sign up to NRLA when it suits them but once they have a monopoly they will ditch NRLA.
Fault based Section 8 evictions need to be far quicker and more mandatory before any changes are made to Section 21 no reason given evictions. It needs to be remembered there is always a reason and that landlords don't just randomly evict good tenants on a whim. That reason may be:
A) the end of a fixed contract has arrived. Is that actually an eviction or simply the end of a contract? Maybe prior to them signing the initial tenancy far better communication on the likelihood of another fixed term being granted would be useful and help reduce the mismatch in expectations.
B) the landlord wants or needs to sell. Maybe the time has come to retire or the property simply isn't financially viable due to interest rate rises or half baked government ideas on required upgrades.
C) the tenant is a needy, stressful pain in the backside. Not specifically bad enough for a Section 8 but not someone you want in your life longer than necessary.
Only a very small percentage of tenancies end with an eviction. It's surprising hard to get consistent information, presumably due to the different interpretations of eviction.
According to the English Housing Survey 2021-2022 around 4% of tenants were evicted or asked to leave. The Ministry of Justice said there were just under 9500 bailiff evictions in England in 2023. There are around 4.6 million PRS households. Using those figures it looks like only 0.2% of tenancies end with a bailiff eviction. Whether that's a Section 8 or Section 21 eviction isn't stated. Either way it's very small numbers. The overwhelming majority of tenancies end because the tenant chooses to move on when the time is right for them.
Jo, unless the landlord is also a County or High Court Bailiff, they never evict. What they actually do is advise their tenant that they wish to terminate the agreement.
The word EVICT is an emotive description that has been weaponised by Polly Bleat and Generation Rant because it evokes images of parent/s and children thrown out into the wind and rain. ALL good anti-landlord propoganda. As landlords, let's avoid the use of the E-word
Section 21 was rarely used and virtually in all cases it was due to Tenants breach of Contract / end of Contract and they didn’t vacate as agreed otherwise there would be no need for Landlord to seek a Court Order to get his property back.
How difficult is that to understand.
I would accept three year tenancies if Section 21 has to go. In all my forty years as a landlord I have only served one Section 21. The tenant stopped paying rent after the first month and my solicitor at the time said it was better to serve Section 21 rather than Section 8 as with the latter the tenant could give a sob story to a sympathetic judge.
Section 21 should be fully reinstated no if ands or buts.the very foundation of all Private letting, that’s why it was introduced, before which there were only a handful usually the only protection you could get was to let to a Company, some of them were dodgy too.
So you couldn’t have served it only once in 40 years it didn’t exist for the first 4 years.
Michael. - Sorry I should have made it clearer. I became a landlord in 1980. Section 21 was introduced in 1988. However since then I have only served one Section 21.
So I make that 39 years to be precise.
Sorry my arithmetic off kilter today - 36 years but one Section 21 since 1988 shows not bad going.
I have an expensive property in the UK that is basically empty. I won't rent it out due to all the uncertainty on gaining possession should I require. I suspect that this is happening a lot these days. Wrt to long term rental agreements. I used to rent a smallish property in Austria. The law there (at the time) stipulated a minimum of 4 years rental contract. It worked well.
I think it is fair to say that Reform will get the vote of a huge number landlords.
I will be one of them.
I’m not having a go at anyone but best be clear and not get the word REFORM mixed up.
Manly we were talking about THE RENTERS REFORM BILL scrapping Section 21. The reason given was to stop mass evictions making people homeless.
The truth has been proved on here many times by landlords Margaret included, it was very seldom use at all relatively and as I said before we didn’t have to use it because we had the security of knowing it was there and the Tenants knew it and behaved.
It was only after Mr Michael Gove started the so called Renter’s Reform Bill wrongly as it didn’t help any Tenant only clogged up the Courts with Landlords making a rush for the door to get to hell away from this mularkey injustice.
Now the other REFORM the Political Party as Sarah says many landlords will vote for it in the coming election becoming a popular alternative,
then we have Mr George Gallloway workers Party I think attacking labour so their majority might get eaten into and not have a landslide victory either. The Tories might be back in a coalition god forbid made some fool out of Nick before.
Those predicting a massive majority for Labour may be in for a shock. Sir Kneel has Galloway and many other pro-Muslim candidates opposing his chosen ones. Add REFORM UK to the mix and the outcome may be quite different. After the D-Day debacle, Sunak and the Tories are toast and can only complain that a vote for REFORM UK will be a vote for Labour. After fourteen failed years, THAT is their best reason to vote for them?😠
We have to remember it is the Tories that started taking away our S.21 causing homeless and making us powerless.
That’s not the only issue affecting landlords The Licensing Schemes removes all Landlords rights completely 100% if you are not Licensed yet or been affected you are in for some shock.
Not the Tories, the CINO party, we don't have a Tory party at present
Completely agree, Andrew. They have forgotten that their full name is Conservative and Unionist party which is why they have treated Northern Ireland as shamefully as they have. Gove is, according to the former treasurer of his local association, largely responsible for this. 😠
Add the RRB to this and you have to wonder if he is a fifth columnist for the Labour Party.🤔
I couldn’t advise anyone on financial matters but thinking of John’s question on tax I can on reflect what happened to others in the past. A few guys bought with their own private money a development and subsequently realised their mistake and borrowed money for their development to replace their own, thinking it would be tax interest allowable but no it failed. They should have borrowed the money in the first place to purchase the development.
So second stepping doesn’t work I think this is similar to your scenario.
Looks like if you owned the Company and the Company buy from you by borrowing up to the hilt, you get your money out but still effectively own it. It seems to me this happened a lot due to Renters Reform Bill as when I check the Public HMO Register a great number have now switched to Company names and can also avail of all the allowance & only 24% tax, did this guy Gove have a clue what he was doing .
I have had a company for buying properties set up about 20 years ago, so most of my properties have been bought in the company name. However, I am not sure there are a lot of advantages. When you sell the whole portfolio, to get the money out of the company means a lot of tax liability. This needs a gradual sell. I am selling a few of them both in the company and personal name within the next 3 to 8 months and some completions at the end of the year. I never felt it had any advantages in selling my personal properties to the company. Paying CGT and stamp duty does not do me any favours.
Tenancy contracts for a minimum of 3 years only work, if tenants understand responsibilities and liabilities and live in a tenant like manner without any anti-social behaviour etc. However, if not, the law should allow 2 months of notice for them to leave within 2 years of tenancy. The 3rd year probably may not be necessary in most case, but if it is, then 3 months notice. But both parties can give notice.
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