Lib Dem 2017 Manifesto for the PRS

Lib Dem 2017 Manifesto for the PRS

12:31 PM, 17th May 2017, About 7 years ago 12

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The Lib Dem 2017 Manifesto ‘Change Britain Future’ decribes the rental market as becoming unaffordable along with house prices and says that young people in particular need help.

The Lib Dem Manifesto says they will change the Private Rental sector by:

  • Promote longer tenancies of three years or more with an inflation-linked annual rent increase built in, to give tenants security and limit rent hikes. (ie. Rent Controls)
  • Give tenants first refusal to buy the home they are renting from a landlord who decides to sell during the tenancy at the market rate according to an independent valuation.
  • Improve protections against rogue landlords through mandatory licensing and allow access for tenants to the database of rogue landlords and property agents.
  • Help young people into the rental market by establishing a new Help to Rent scheme to provide government-backed tenancy deposit loans for all first-time renters under 30.
  • Help people who cannot afford a deposit by introducing a new Rent to Own model where rent payments give tenants an increasing stake in the property, owning it outright after 30 years.
  • Improve renting by banning lettings fees for tenants, capping upfront deposits and increasing minimum standards in rented homes.
  • Give British buyers a fair chance by stopping developers advertising homes abroad before they have been advertised in the UK.
  • End the scandal of rough sleeping by increasing support for homelessness prevention and adequately funding age-appropriate emergency accommodation and supported housing, while ensuring that all local authorities have at least one provider of the Housing First model of provision for long-term, entrenched homeless people.

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Comments

terry sullivan

12:40 PM, 17th May 2017, About 7 years ago

libdims are deranged--make sure you do not let them in anywhere

Cautious Landlord

13:27 PM, 17th May 2017, About 7 years ago

More regulation and meddling = reduced supply

Unlimited immigration = increased demand

Cap all you like in the short to medium term but then homelessness will ulitmately force the removal of caps which will result in rent increases like you have never seen before

Are there no politicians out there including the faux tories that studied basic economics at shool or even uni.?

Pathetic

Ian Narbeth

13:45 PM, 17th May 2017, About 7 years ago

The promise to "Give tenants first refusal to buy the home they are renting from a landlord who decides to sell during the tenancy at the market rate according to an independent valuation." betrays the common misunderstanding of what a right of first refusal is. It has NOTHING to do with an open market valuation (OMV). It means that the person with the benefit of the right can buy AT THE SAME PRICE as a third party is willing to pay.
There is nothing wrong in principle with rights of first refusal - they apply to sales of the freehold reversions of blocks of flats. However, if a landlord receives an offer at a price above what a surveyor may say is the OMV, that is the price the tenants have to match. The landlord should not have to go through the trouble and expense (who will pay for this independent valuation?) of seeing if a lower figure will be given. Will the landlord have to sell at the OMV or can he withdraw in which case there is stalemate?
Don't know why I am wasting pixels on the Lib Dems. They won't get enough MPs to fill their battle bus.

Monty Bodkin

14:44 PM, 17th May 2017, About 7 years ago

Help young people into the rental market by establishing a new Help to Rent scheme to provide government-backed tenancy deposit loans for all first-time renters under 30.

In the highly unlikely event of this coming in, my first question to an under 30's tenant would be, Where is your deposit coming from?
If they answer that they have grafted for it and saved up, backed up with bank statements as proof, I'd be interested. If it was being provided from a government handout, it would be a sorry, no thanks.
One of the main purposes of taking a deposit is the tenant has some skin in the game.

JohnCaversham

15:06 PM, 17th May 2017, About 7 years ago

GOOD GRIEF! You couldn't make it up-any they want to run the country?-Run for the hills...!

Dr Rosalind Beck

17:54 PM, 17th May 2017, About 7 years ago

Why would we bother to do all the work and take all the risks over the 30 year period so that in the end we have to gift it to the tenant? Bearing in mind in many cases there would still be an interest only mortgage on it - which ordinarily would be paid off by the sale proceeds. Luckily these idiots won't be anywhere near the corridors of power.

Gary Dully

18:27 PM, 17th May 2017, About 7 years ago

Liberal Undemocrats = Gimmicky, McGimmick Faces.

Drug Abuse.
Legalize cannabis, but tax fizzy drinks.

That one policy alone should banish them from U.K. Politics forever.
I deal with this scourge on a weekly basis, it is an absolute disaster of an idea.
The cannabis they smoked in the 1980's bears no comparison to the potency of what is sold today.
Brexit
With another referendum promised, if we can reject the deal between the EU and the U.K. cancel Brexit and Heathrow Airport.

Property
First refusal of a rental property?
An army of a couple of million landlords at your disposal, you would think that some bright spark might consider asking us to help the housing situation.

Benefits
An end to the benefits freeze.
I had an application for a tenant arrive this afternoon from a benefit claimant getting £1153 per month on various benefits.
He's been on them since Jan 2008.
That's £1153 x 117 months = £134,901
He could have bought my property with that money.

Who is paying for all of this?

# Vote UKIP

Mark Shine

19:53 PM, 17th May 2017, About 7 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Gary Dully" at "17/05/2017 - 18:27":

@Gary: "The cannabis they smoked in the 1980’s bears no comparison to the potency of what is sold today."

...which is the main reason why they are suggesting decriminalising (but more importantly regulating) this particular product.

Mick Roberts

7:35 AM, 18th May 2017, About 7 years ago

Yeah, so they pay us rent for 30 years, then we give 'em the house?
Yeah right, we work all our life to give it away.
And for the Landlord that still has a mortgage on it after 30 years?

These Politicians are nuts & not got a clue about ground level.

Old Mrs Landlord

9:08 AM, 18th May 2017, About 7 years ago

Reply to the comment left by "Mick Roberts" at "18/05/2017 - 07:35":

Well, from the tenants' point of view they have paid for the house several times over in rent. They don't think the rent has gone to providing their accommodation and the maintenance, repair and improvement of the property, not to mention servicing the interest on the mortgage - they think the landlord has just pocketed the lot.

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