Council to buy 300 homes to deal with landlord repossessions

Council to buy 300 homes to deal with landlord repossessions

0:01 AM, 21st March 2023, About A year ago 72

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One council has revealed that it’s going to buy 300 homes, worth up to £600,000 each, in a bid to provide emergency accommodation for those being made homeless.

Councillors at Lewisham Council have been alarmed by the rapid rise in the number of families who are reporting as being homeless – or say they are at immediate risk of losing their home.

The council says that the most common reason given by people for becoming homeless was relatives or friends asking them to leave.

However, a council report also highlights that landlord evictions in the borough are also on the rise.

‘Private landlords choosing to increase their rent’

The report states: “There continues to be an increasing percentage of private landlords choosing to increase their rent in line with market prices or choosing to no longer rent out their properties resulting in them disposing of the properties altogether.”

The report goes on: “In 2019/20, this accounted for 19% of all [homelessness] acceptances which has increased to 26% in 2022/23 (year to date).”

Lewisham is also building 2,000 new homes from 2026 to help reduce waiting lists but now needs specific homeless accommodation.

By purchasing the properties outright, the council says it is hoping to reduce its emergency accommodation bill and deliver ‘consistent living standards’.

Spent more than £143,962 on hotels for homeless families

The council has not yet revealed how much it is setting aside to pay for the property purchases and last year spent more than £143,962 on hotels for homeless families – that was four times higher than was spent on homeless accommodation in 2020/21.

The council says that the number of people approaching it saying they have lost their home has rocketed in two years by 31% to 3,723 – up from 2,833.

In January, Lewisham says it was housing 2,780 families in temporary accommodation – a rise of 60% in seven years.

‘Many landlords report that they intend to sell their properties’

The council’s report also warns: “Many landlords report that they intend to sell their properties due to reduced cash flow caused by higher interest rates.

“Additionally, many landlords took the opportunity of the strong sales market during 2021, supported by the Stamp Duty holidays, to sell their properties.”

The report also highlights that all of London’s boroughs have average rents that are now higher than their pre-pandemic levels – with fewer landlords willing to rent properties at LHA rates.

And it adds: “This creates a funding gap that will only increase the limitation recharge unless new ways of funding and delivering services are put in place.”

New landlord licensing scheme proposed

Meanwhile, Lewisham Council has also decided to push ahead with its new landlord licensing scheme.

If approved by the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, it will cover an extra 20,000 households in the borough.

Lewisham says the scheme will improve the management and quality of privately rented accommodation in an area where one in four households are renting privately.


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Comments

Seething Landlord

19:38 PM, 25th March 2023, About A year ago

Reply to the comment left by Mick Roberts at 25/03/2023 - 16:24
I agree that 200 is 1% of 20,000 but it's 33% of 600 and statisticians would expect that same proportion across the board unless they deliberately selected properties that they already had reason to suspect of being below standard.

Of course it's not acceptable to be paying for inspections that will never take place but what would appear to be a 33% strike rate is an argument for increasing the number of inspections rather than showing that the whole scheme is a waste of time and money.

Mick Roberts

16:36 PM, 26th March 2023, About A year ago

Reply to the comment left by JB at 25/03/2023 - 19:33
Our own houses, they may find faults.

Yes but they choose what the worst they can get. Often look from the outside at gardens & windows.
Like cars driving down the road, the Police pull over the worst looking when fault finding.

Some of the hazards was a Carpet tack loose on the stairs. EVEN IF it's the tenants carpet, but because in Housing law/rules (someone correct me), Landlord is responsible for stair coverings (And bathroom & kitchen coverings), it goes down as the Landlords fault.

Mick Roberts

16:39 PM, 26th March 2023, About A year ago

Reply to the comment left by Seething Landlord at 25/03/2023 - 19:38
Even at 33% skewed in their favour, still means 67% paying for nothing. When some tenants are paying 70% of market rent, something has to give. My houses have got worse cause of Licensing. Less funds to spend on refurbishments.

Seething Landlord

20:16 PM, 26th March 2023, About A year ago

Reply to the comment left by Mick Roberts at 26/03/2023 - 16:39
The trouble is that if they are finding faults in 1 in 3 properties it is difficult to sustain an argument that the inspections are not needed.

Mick Roberts

5:54 AM, 27th March 2023, About A year ago

Reply to the comment left by Seething Landlord at 26/03/2023 - 20:16
Yes, many of us are arguing for more inspections. That's the problem, they had about £20 million in & by about Dec 2019 or 2020 (I've got more accurate figures elsewhere), they'd only done 600 Inspections. So to find 200 bad houses, that means about £100,000 to find each bad house. I think the figure was £51,000 per bad house found at one point depending on what date u went to what they had in.
Nottingham Council then PAID Birmingham Inspectors to come inspect Nottingham houses to get the number of inspections up so when they went to the Govt to ask permission to do Selective Licensing again, the Govt didn't say What, u going been 5 years & you've only done that many inspections? I think it was was something like 76 staff & only averaging 3 inspections a year. A MOT garage would go bust at only 3 a day.

And I'll go back again, why are tenants paying £890 in rent increases to pay for this & getting nothing in return....

Here is the Council's OWN Labour Councillors questioning the value of the scheme-They banned from talking to me, so I can't get any more info out them:

https://nottstv.com/doubts-raised-over-whether-scheme-to-stamp-out-rogue-nottingham-landlords-is-good-value-for-money/

Under the previous scheme, 666 improvements were made to a total of 446 properties. The council described it as a success, but some landlords argued otherwise.

It is anticipated the cost of the new licensing scheme would be £820 for five years with a proposed fee of £630 for accredited landlords. The original fee had increased to £670 (accredited) and £890 (non-accredited) in March 2020.

The new proposals would also introduce a higher fee for less compliant landlords of £1,110, as well as a proposed block licence for certain blocks of flats. These fees are £1,840 standard fee, £1,125 accredited fee and a £2,295 less compliant fee.

To run the scheme the council says it will need roughly £22.4m to cover overheads including 94 staff members. No profit would be made.

During a meeting on the plan, Cllr Jane Lakey (Lab), who represents Bulwell, questioned whether the scheme was value for money.

She said: “It’s a very, very crude indicator but if 950-odd properties have been improved and then you are going to double the visits to properties in the next 10 months, and let’s be generous and say the number of properties doubles, that is around 1,800 properties improved, which is nice, in terms of averaging the cost out if you take that measure it would cost about £12,000 a property?”

Cllr Toby Neal (Lab), portfolio holder for housing, replied to say it was a crude estimate but argued if it did work out to roughly £12,000 a property, the scheme stopping injury and making rented-properties safe would be “good value for money”.

Rod

10:08 AM, 27th March 2023, About A year ago

iHowz helped negotiate the licencing scheme at Southampton, which ensures properties are inspected at the start of the licence (rather than unannounced visits several months or years later) and gives landlords the option of using an independent surveyor to inspect their properties to certify compliance.

https://ihowz.uk/southampton-licensing/

This has resulted in Southampton landlords having the ability to schedule several inspections on the same day, giving them certainty that they are compliant from day one. Doing this frees up council resources and has resulted in some of the lowest licencing fees in the country.

https://www.southampton.gov.uk/housing/landlords/houses-multiple-occupation/licence-fees/

It is hoped that the new Property Portal will pull together many of the compliance documents (EPC, gas, electric, deposits, right to rent, how to rent) and allow self certification of things such as furnishings, smoke, heat and CO alarms allowing good landlords to focus on providing homes for their tenants while making it easier for councils to identify those who may not be compliant. This would be a major step in reducing the need for licencing.

Seething Landlord

10:18 AM, 27th March 2023, About A year ago

Reply to the comment left by Mick Roberts at 27/03/2023 - 05:54
Have they ever explained why the inspection rate is so low?

JB

10:18 AM, 27th March 2023, About A year ago

Reply to the comment left by Rod at 27/03/2023 - 10:08
So it seems in Southampton, you pay a reduced license fee if you shell out for an independant surveyor, which doesn't sound to me like it saves the landlord money.

As Rod describes, I question the role of licensing when the 'Renters Reform Bill' comes in. The bill, I understand, will give properties a 'Unique Property Number'' and a new 'Property Portal'

NewYorkie

10:40 AM, 27th March 2023, About A year ago

Reply to the comment left by Mick Roberts at 27/03/2023 - 05:54
Do they say what these 'improvements' were? I suspect most were minor, and definitely not a risk to life or health.

Rod

10:45 AM, 27th March 2023, About A year ago

Reply to the comment left by JB at 27/03/2023 - 10:18
The advantage of appointing the surveyor is that you control the process, and potentially are able to secure a discount for inspecting multiple properties.
The other advantage of inspection on a predefined date is that it allows landlords to inspect their properties and address any issues prior to the inspection, helping reduce the risks of unannounced inspections, where tenants may have either not reported issues or are the source of the issues.

The Unique Property Number (UPN) already exists. You can find it on some sales agents packs if they provide open source data in their sales pack. This accesses things like EPC, council tax band (and cost), flood risk and mobile provider signal strength.

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