According to Sweet & Maxwell, a leading legal information provider, tenant
evictions are up by 9% since last year. By the end of June 2012, 33,199
landlords had successfully repossessed properties. This figure had risen to
36,177 by the end of June of the current year.

Possible Reasons for Jump in Tenant Evictions

The most likely explanation for a rise in tenant evictions is the government
cuts in welfare payments. Many tenants are now struggling to pay the rent
since the highly criticised ‘bedroom tax’ was introduced. Tenants in receipt
of Housing Benefit have seen their payments slashed if they are deemed to have
a spare bedroom. Because of this, a lot of tenants are finding it hard to make
ends meet.

Soaring Rents and Rising Demand

Another possible reason for the rise in landlord repossessions is the rise in
rents on rental property in the residential sector. Demand for rental property
has soared in the last few years, particularly in London and the South East.
Landlords are no longer prepared to put up with tenants who fail to pay the
rent on time and so they waste no time in evicting them.

Falling Wages

The real value of wages has been falling for a number of years. This affects
low earners the most, so when you look at this trend in conjunction with the
rising rents, it is disastrous for families on the breadline.

Property Repossessions

Landlords can apply for a repossession order from the County Court when a
tenant defaults on the rent. However, they are legally obliged to give notice
to their tenant before doing so.

A report published by the Local Government Information Unit and the Electrical Safety Council has called for local councils to be given greater powers to license and fine landlords in the private sector. The report’s authors believe that this will help to improve the quality of housing in the private sector.

Councils Have Too Little Power

178 councils were interviewed as part of the survey and more than 80% of them were keen to become more involved in the private rented sector. The main things councils said they would like were:

• Better access to data telling them where individual private rented properties were located
• The power to introduce compulsory landlord accreditation schemes
• The power to take back Housing Benefit from landlords found to be letting sub-standard properties

Poor Electrical Safety

Another problem highlighted by the report was the issue of poor electrical safety in many homes in the buy to let rental sector. More than half of all house fires are as a result of electrical problems. Unfortunately, because there is no legal requirement for private landlords to have electrics checked or to give tenants a safety certificate, many bad landlords are putting their tenants’ lives at risk.

Councils Must Play a Bigger Role

The Chief Executive of the Local Government Information Unit and the Electrical Safety Council says local councils need to play a greater role if standards are to be improved in the private rental sector and criminal landlords driven out. Unfortunately, as things stand, local councils have very little authority to intervene.

Buy to let advertising has been under a lot of scrutiny in recent months
following numerous complaints from consumer watchdogs that many tenants were
being ripped off by unfair upfront fees.

Ruling by ASA
Six months ago, the Advertising Standards Commission (ASA) decided that many of
the advertisements being placed for buy to let properties were not transparent
in quoting various fees. As a result, tenants were being hit by ‘hidden’ fees
for all kinds of things, often cloaked under the ambiguous umbrella of ‘admin
charges’. Obviously it is not unreasonable for letting agents and landlords to
charge extra for the cost of producing itineraries and conducting credit
checks, but unless the upfront fees are clear, many tenants are unable to
budget for their move and end up suffering financial difficulties when faced
with an unexpected bill.

Transparent Fees
The ASA has now ruled that all advertisements for buy to let properties must
carry a clear notification of any up front fees being charged. This will help
tenants understand exactly what they are expected to pay before they move into
a property.

A ‘Move In’ Price
In an attempt to make the costs of moving into a rental property completely
transparent, the ASA says landlords and letting agents must give tenants a
‘move in’ price, or in other words state clearly what any extra fees will be
on top of the monthly rent.

Online Advertising
Since it is a lot more difficult to include details in an online
advertisement, landlords can offer fee information via an extra link to an
external page or state it clearly on their website.

A recent study by a major player in the finance market has revealed that the
patterns of renting and owning a home have changed dramatically in the last
decade. Ten years ago, most adults under the age of 35 aspired towards owning
their own home. They saved diligently and looked forward to being able to buy
a house. But thanks to the economic recession, owning a home is beyond the
reach of many young adults and more than half of adults 35 are under are
currently living in rental accommodation.

Seismic Shift in Attitudes

A decade ago, if you didn’t own your own home by the time you were 35 there
was something badly wrong. It was the accepted path through life, along with
getting married and having 2.4 kids. However, the study results have shown a
very different pattern of thinking amongst the 35 and under generation.

Renting is the Way Forward

Renting is considered to be normal and many of those questioned said they
preferred to rent rather than buy. Reasons cited included the benefits of not
being tied to one place and the ability to check out a neighbourhood for long
term potential before committing to the financial pressure of a mortgage.

High Property Prices

So the pattern of behaviour would suggest that rather then renting homes
because there is no other option, many under 35s are actively choosing to rent
a home instead of buying one. High property prices and the difficulties
involved in obtaining a mortgage are clearly a factor, but it seems that they
are not the piece of the puzzle.

In what is believed to be the first prosecution of its kind, an Edinburgh
landlord has been ordered to pay a hefty sum to his former tenants for failing
to protect their deposit.

Case Brought Before the Sheriffs Court

The tenants bought their case against the landlord after discovering he had
failed to place their £1,150 deposit into one of three government approved
deposit protections scheme at the beginning of the tenancy. Edinburgh Sheriffs
Court ruled that the landlord must pay the tenants £3,450 for failing to
protect their deposit, which is three times the amount of the original
deposit.

BBC News Report

A leading housing charity, Shelter Scotland, has welcomed the decision from
the court. They say it sends out a warning to other landlords about the perils
of not abiding by the deposit protection law.

In a statement made to the BBC, the Director of Shelter Scotland said:

“The tenancy deposit scheme is a transparent and fair system brought in last
year under a fanfare of publicity and awareness, so there is no reason why any
landlord in Scotland should be failing to protect their tenants’ deposits.
This is a landmark ruling that should inspire confidence in all those tenants
who fear their deposit is not being protected to take action and should act as
a strong warning to all landlords who are not protecting their tenants’
deposits to do so.”

Warning to Landlords

So landlords beware: if you fail to protect your tenants’ deposits, you, too,
could end up on the wrong side of the law!

September means back to school, college and university for the nation’s
students. It’s also a time when student tenants take up their places in
student flats and houses at the start of another academic year. But do
students make good tenants?

Landlords Say Yes to Student Tenants

According to the National Landlords Association (NLA) students make excellent
tenants. This may seem surprising to some landlords, especially those who
remember the iconic programme from the 80s – The Young Ones. A lot of people
view students with suspicion. They think that students will trash the place,
hold wild parties every night, and generally spend much of their time in a
drugged or drunken stupor. But this is not necessarily the case!

3 Reasons to Let to Students

 Fewer rent arrears – students are a lot less likely to default on
their rent. In fact a lot of students pay their rent for the year in advance,
particularly if the property is in a highly desirable area.

 Fewer void periods – students are more likely to keep their rooms for
a full year, even if they are not always there during the holiday periods. It
is also easy to replace a departing student with a new one thanks to word of
mouth recommendations and advertising via the college or university.

 High rental yield – the more reputable the college or university, the
more popular and sought after accommodation in the area will be. This means
rents are higher and therefore investment returns are good—the only exception
being London (thanks to exceptionally high property prices).

With a new series of Strictly Come Dancing just around the corner, the nation
will soon be watching a procession of orange people showing off their dance
moves on the TV every Saturday night. But although being seen with a fetching
orange tan is fairly standard on Strictly, there are lot of student tenants
who also aspire to having bright orange tans all year round, as at least one
landlord has found out to his cost.

Cardiff Students’ Obsession with Fake Tan

A Cardiff landlord has been forced to spend thousands of pounds replacing
mattresses in his student accommodation over the last four years. To begin
with, he had no idea what was causing the strange orange stains on the
mattresses, but eventually he figured out that the unpleasant marks were as a
result of female students using fake tan and then going to bed while the
product was still on their skin.

Ruined Mattresses in Rental Houses

Many of the pocket sprung mattresses in his properties had to be dumped and
replaced with new ones, but the problem persisted. Eventually the landlord
figured out that memory foam mattresses were a better choice because these
have washable covers. He is also trying to educate his student tenants on the
error of their ways—wearing cotton pyjamas overnight helps, as does washing
the sheets.

Unfortunately, the nation’s obsession with fake tan is unlikely to be ending
any time soon—a quick look around any town centre will reveal a multitude of
orange people walking around. So if you are a landlord with student
properties, you might want to buy covers for your mattresses.

An interesting side effect of Newham Borough’s buy to let licensing scheme has been a rise in the number of arrests for all kinds of criminal activity, most notably for immigration offences, assault, fraud and theft charges. Enforcing a landlord license scheme has thrown the spotlight on to people who might ordinarily have stayed in the shadows. Now, though, landlords who fail to sign up for the license scheme are investigated and if they are up to no good, they are prosecuted.

Criminal Activities in Rental Homes

The law of averages suggests that the criminal fraternity are going to be using at least some rental homes in a given area. In Newham, the percentage of rented homes used by criminals is 5%. In fact more than 110 landlords have been investigated since the scheme came into force at the beginning of the year. More than half of the investigations were as a result of landlords failing to obtain a landlord license or not managing HMOs correctly.

Warning Letters

More than two thousand properties were sent warning letters advising landlords to sign up for the licensing scheme. More than 50% of those to receive a letter were concerned enough to go off and do exactly that.

Good Landlords Welcome in Newham

Newham’s Mayor, Sir Robin Wales, is pleased with how the landlord license scheme is progressing. He feels that on the whole the scheme has been a big success and that tenants and landlords have benefited.

“This scheme shows that Newham is leading the country when it comes to tackling bad landlords who flout the law,” he said.

New data shows that the number of tenant households in the UK has increased dramatically in the last ten years and there are lots of rental property hot spots across the country. Ten years ago there were only eight areas of the UK with a relatively high percentage of rental properties, but now there are 51, which is a big increase.

New Emerging Rental Hotspots

A decade ago, the main rental hotspots were London, the Southwest, and large parts of west Wales. Today the situation is very different and although London remains a rental property hotspot, there are a number of other areas where there are large concentrations of renters as opposed to owner-occupiers. Several seaside towns along the south coast are very popular with tenants; Hastings, Brighton, Eastbourne and Torbay all have between 20% and 40% of housing in the private rented sector. Other hotspots include Liverpool, Salford, Newmarket, Nottingham and Leicester. In fact there are very few areas of the UK without rental properties, which is a massive change in the last ten years.

Top 5 Rental Property Hotspots

1. Bournemouth
2. Brighton and Hove
3. Hastings
4. Manchester
5. Oxford

The Winds of Change

The current economic conditions are in part to blame for this seismic shift towards renting as opposed to buying property. The younger generation can no longer afford to jump on to the property ladder because of the huge deposits required to secure a mortgage and the older generation are being forced to sell their homes in order to cover the cost of retirement and care.

One social housing landlord has come up with an innovative idea to help their tenants beat the ‘bedroom tax’. In properties with rundown bathrooms and surplus bedrooms, the bathrooms are being moved into the main house to replace a spare bedroom and subsequently renovated. The tenant can then enjoy a nice new bathroom, as well as a sense of relief because they won’t fall foul of the government’s bedroom tax any longer.

Bathroom Renovations

A lot of older properties did not have indoor bathrooms when they were first built. Many only had outside lavatories and when the properties were later modernised, bathrooms were built as an extension at the back of the house, which meant that the quality of the fixtures and fittings is no longer as good as it might be.

Magenta Living, a leading social landlord in the Wirral area of Merseyside, is looking into the prospect of refurbishing many of these dilapidated bathrooms and replacing spare bedrooms with a brand new, modern bathroom. The scheme will only benefit around 200 properties in the area, but it will help a large number of tenants affected by the bedroom tax and has attracted praise from at least one Labour MP.

Much Maligned Bedroom Tax

The so-called ‘bedroom tax’ has proven to be deeply unpopular with tenants in the social housing sector. Many tenants have seen their housing benefit payments cut as a result of living in properties with a spare bedroom. However, if a tenant feels that a bedroom is not a bedroom, they can ask their landlord to redefine the tenancy agreement to reflect this change.