Could landlords be incentivised to offer longer term tenancies?

Could landlords be incentivised to offer longer term tenancies?

9:31 AM, 3rd July 2018, About 6 years ago 16

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The new government consultation into making longer term tenancies the default option in England, ‘Overcoming the Barriers to Longer Tenancies in the Private Rented Sector’, is considering financial and tax incentive for landlords.

Please see the specific section from the consultation below:

“80. Alternatively financial incentives could be explored. This could be quicker to implement but would still require legislation and could be administratively burdensome. The landlord would likely need to demonstrate compliance with other legislative requirements such as completing annual gas safety checks and protecting any deposit taken in a Government approved tenancy deposit protection scheme and this would need to be easily verifiable. We would also have to consider ways to ensure that incentives were not subject to abuse.

81. In recent research by the Residential Landlords Association, 63% of landlords reported that tax relief would encourage them to offer a longer tenancy. Any tax incentive would require primary legislation, and need to take into account the interaction between tax, which is partially devolved, and housing, which is fully devolved. There is a further consideration around how any tax incentive would play out in Scotland, where they have recently regulated to introduce indefinite tenancies. Different rules would also be required for individuals and corporate landlords. Cash payments could be considered for landlords who demonstrated that they had offered and delivered a longer tenancy. Such payments could be administered locally by local authorities.”

It has to be said that this is only a very small section and among other options that consider a more compulsory approach.

Please Click Here to read and respond to the full consultation

RLA policy director, David Smith, said: “With landlords having faced a barrage of tax increases we believe that smart taxation, such as that being proposed today, would provide the longer term homes to rent many families and older people want.

“We would warn against making it a statutory requirement to introduce three year tenancies. Many tenants simply do not want to be tied to a property long term. It is vital that the market is able to provide the flexibility that many need in order to swiftly access new work and educational opportunities.”


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Comments

Monty Bodkin

8:40 AM, 9th July 2018, About 6 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Kate Mellor at 07/07/2018 - 19:54
Really Kate?
I'm very open about being a landlord and I've yet to meet any real animosity. I actively seek out anti-landlords as I want to know how to spot them long before they get inside one of my properties.

Rob Crawford

12:26 PM, 9th July 2018, About 6 years ago

...any financial incentive should not be a % refund of costs associated with section 24 loss of mortgagee tax relief. Any such refund would be an acceptance of section 24. We must ring fence section 24 and continue to fight against it in it's totality.

Seething Landlord

13:55 PM, 17th August 2018, About 6 years ago

The only financial incentives that would influence me are relief from CGT and IHT on tenanted properties. I included this in my response to the consultation but expect it to sink without trace.

Whiteskifreak Surrey

14:48 PM, 17th August 2018, About 6 years ago

The only incentive we will have from longer tenancies provision is to evict a decent and well paying family (who really pay well below market rate and have been with us the 4th year on 1-year AST rolled into periodic tenancy). Great tenants, trouble free. We will have to evict them, take in students, and have extra £250 in rent, but more work. Is it that those governmental idiots have in mind? We generally rent to students, and have mortgages allowing that. But not 3 years tenancy. That will be no-go. Current tenants would never sign up to that.

Whiteskifreak Surrey

14:49 PM, 17th August 2018, About 6 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Rob Crawford at 09/07/2018 - 12:26
Well said Rob. We must never acknowledge S24 as being a legitimate one.

philip allen

11:46 AM, 18th August 2018, About 6 years ago

Reply to the comment left by Monty Bodkin at 09/07/2018 - 08:40
I openly tell them I'm a paedophile and the response I get is, "thank God you're not a landlord".

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