Landlords – what are your suggestions to better the current chaos in the PRS?

Hello, Every landlord, big or small, must by now have felt the effects of repeated changes to legislation and taxation in regards to the PRS.

On any landlord forum you will find lists of landlords giving lists of what is wrong with the system, but I’ve yet to read anybody giving tangible solutions.

So, as a landlord, what are your suggestions to help fix this sh**storm that is the current PRS?

My starter for 1.) Government buys property from landlords who want to sell up at market price minus CGT and any refurb costs. Landlord pays no CGT on the sale, but have the option to refurb (if necessary) to a set habitable condition before sale. Tenants don’t lose their homes, landlords don’t lose money for selling with tenants “in situ”, more housing stock moves back to government ownership, and the revenues lost from the CGT are offset by local council not having to bear the longer-term costs of “rehoming” tenants in hotels/hostels who’ve been evicted by property sales.

2. (This one is bound to be contentious but hear me out)…
Make non-payment of rent a CRIMINAL offence. However altruistic we may wish to be, at the end of the day, in any other sector, if you take something (be it an object or a service) and don’t pay for it that would be classed as THEFT! Most long-term landlords will at some point have to deal with the a**e-tightening ordeal that comes when a tenant stops paying rent. While there will be some genuine cases where circumstances have contrived to put tenants in a desperate hole, in the majority of cases tenants stop paying rent because they know they can get away with it – with little or no comeback. If a tenant owns nothing, doesn’t work, and has no guarantor to answer to, then what do they have of value to lose apart from their liberty? If there is actually a serious consequence (other than 9 months rent-free and moving onto the next sucker) when rent goes into arrears, would this not be more incentive for tenants to pay and landlords not be forced to evict as a consequence? Aside from being fairer to the good tenants who now don’t face eviction (because their landlord has had enough and is selling up), a criminal conviction for rent arrears is a fair reason for automatic eviction (and also future reason for refusal to rent) that could easily be flagged up on a credit check without the costly expense of a “rogue tenant” database. This in turn saves landlords the expenses of s21/s8, and baliffs fees, saves court fees spent on the chancers and time-wasters, and frees up courts for geniune cases where there’s been a valid reason for non-payment.

3. In those cases where tenants believe they have a genuine case against disrepairs/a rogue landlord then rent should still be paid into a holding account with a tenancy dispute company (similar to the deposit companies) until the case is heard. Then if the case is found to be invalid the landlord gets his money due, or money can be taken from the accrued account to pay for necessary repairs etc. None of this unnecessary “rogue landlord” database b****cks, or “no win- no fee” ambulance-chasing lawyers that are springing up.

There’s bound to be holes in my arguments, but what else would you, as a landlord, suggest to make the system better?

Thank you,

Raz