HMO and residential property licensing reforms – consultation paper Oct 2016

I am a busy landlady and campaigner for good landlords.  At the moment we are studying this consultation by the DCLG and it is another nightmare of tricks for the compliant HMO operator. We have a chain of HMO’s and it is terrifying.

Please Click Here to download the consultation.

It was published in mid October and will close in mid December.  They are piling on all these changes at once. Our local Landlords Association, SEAL in Southend on Sea, which formed to fight Selective Licensing in 2012, and got it shelved, is meeting to work out a response on Tuesday.

At the moment my objections are : –

1. the unclear language and complete disregard for the market conditions.
2. what is the proposed average fee of £500 for, per owner, property or room…in which case for our 70 rooms we need to remortgage to raise finance just to do what we already do, provide a very good service, employ people, and help keep people off the streets when the councils cannot provide enough housing.
3. Yet again they punish the compliant professionals, more work so rents go up.
4. Room sizes, mandatory regardless of whether tenants want a small cheap room so they can send more money home….evict them, why not.
5. How will we do that when the Councils and the CAB tell the tenants to stay put.

There is a lot about student blocks, we have experience of the shared student houses but not of the blocks so others will comment on that.

So we are experiencing the Universal Credit effect of not taking DSS tenants, so the bottom of the market is restricted to the rougher cheaper properties and their less careful owners.

Then we have the tenant tax and the crushing effect on entrepreneurship and peoples plans for the past decade.

Now we have this HMO Consultation.

All of the above add up to higher rents and restricting the vulnerable bottom of the market to the likely crooks.

I hope to work out an alternative proposal to put to them.  We did that with Selective Licensing to great success according to the Council, the Police and our Members. We plan to rope both our MP’s into regular catch ups with the above as the theme with the promise of not voting for them in a few years time.

Judith