Landlords Rental Property database – is it a Witch Hunt? Please read and decide

Recently, after an agreed market research conversation online, with researchers from the Ministry of Housing, I was left shocked and reeling at the maliciousness of what was being suggested. At the moment, what I saw was research, the information in the databases was only suggested, but, please read on …

The idea of opening online interfaces for tenants to research to check the legal compliance of a property with regard to safety certificates and what was for rent and rental cost range for properties in the same area, was very similar to what one finds on any letting agents’ websites. I did object to the landlord’s home address being added due to safety concerns, but a landlord’s contact details, e.g. email, and whatsapp, number of years lettings experience seems ok to me.

BUT, and here’s the beginning of the scary parts : Why would anyone in their right mind suggest putting a rental property on the website when it was not compliant with the basic regulations? – again with the landlords’ personal contact details included? What a twisted mind thought of that!!!? Surely, if a potential tenant was checking a property, if the property wasn’t listed, then they should know it’s not fit for renting. Simple isn’t it?

In my opinion, all that is going to do is open up the black market in rental property the government is supposed to be trying to stop!!! Surely, if a property for let is not a safe, legally compliant let, why should it be visible, with the landlords’ personal details on a government backed website? I say it’s ludicrous thinking, it’s a nonsense, it is malicious and twisted!

Next, almost an obsession with regard to an online floorplan of the let? Why would anyone want a floorplan to their property, unless it is to help the local burglar know their way around? Surely renters will visit a property before they rent anyway, and will experience the layout in person? …….. Or is this a sneaky way of exposing internal changes from 2 to 3 bedroom properties for increased LHA, or claiming for more bedrooms than exist? If that’s the case, then to me, this is becoming less a landlord’s register and more of ‘big brother is watching you’. I suppose if someone is trying to let a corridor as a flat, this would expose it, but then again, if it’s not compliant, then don’t list it !

It got worse…. an open to the public , landlord’s personal lettings record database, lead by the landlord’s name, listing all the ‘misdemeanours’ the landlord may have experienced… e.g. rent disputes, and also in the example I saw, was the landlord being banned from letting until a certain date, but without any legal documents or evidence to back this linked into the database. And of course, no equivalent ‘register’ or database for the tenants who have trashed lettings, destroyed homes and left landlords in debt and despair???

This, to me, is a witch hunt. If the property owner is a company, is it the Managing Director’s name who will be on the register? Or will a company name hide the individuals concerned? I am beginning to feel frightened and menaced – … after all violent criminals are being released from prison early, while a landlord who had a rent dispute, or an improvement order or perhaps forgot to send a document out, is publicly humiliated and accused, dissed for ever? Will Ms Reeves inattention to a letting licence or Ms Raynor’s inattention to stamp duty be included in their landlord’s register. And what if the landlords stop being a landlord? When will the names be removed from the landlord’s register? We didn’t have time to get to that point.

All I am left with is a sense of malice, some form of twisted hatred, against PRS landlords and of controlling the PRS and the people in it by fear, rather than by actually identifying the ‘rotten’ properties, rotten landlords and just improving them or closing them down and informing people they have been closed down.

Justice must be seen to be done. For example, how many lets have Derby City Council employees inspected, and closed down since they were allowed to? I don’t need to know the names of the landlords, but I need to know what decent landlords are being put through now, will actually succeed in removing criminal landlords and rotten lets, clean up the mess governments have allowed to happen.

Let successive governments be reminded, the PR sector only developed to the extent it has, is because government and local authorities left people homeless by taking money from Right to Buy, and not putting that money back into social housing, while allowing immigration increase to a level never seen before . This whole situation has become poisoned, ridiculous, and to me, very frightening. Why do I feel blamed and punished for housing people when our governmental institutions did not?

So there you have it. What do you think?