Renter’s Rights Bill: A disaster for tenants?

Have you recovered yet? As a landlord, the Renters’ Rights Bill is NOT designed to help renters – it is clearly designed to damage the private rented sector. Potentially, fatally.

If you are a tenant, a politician or work for the likes of Shelter or Generation Rent, then you’ll need to start polishing your excuses for when:

• Evictions don’t fall after Section 21 is abolished
• Rents go up
• There’s nowhere to rent.

I will try to explain why this will happen to those who refuse to listen to the potential consequences of why this law is going to be bad.

Not for fed-up landlords who will sell – hopefully avoiding the disastrous idea of increasing Capital Gains Tax next month – but for tenants who think their rights will be improved.

A public housing service

My first issue is that Labour, Shelter et al think that rental properties are a public housing service we should offer at a loss.

We can’t do that, and neither would you, without tax or financial help.

You may disagree with the fact we worked hard, got the cash together to invest in our future and build wealth for our family. That’s your point of view.

You may disagree with someone paying a landlord’s mortgage for a home but that’s a choice being made.

No one is forcing tenants to live in a landlord’s house, but you choose to punish us and undermine our ambitions.

Let’s face it, we need more social housing, but no one is building. No one has the money to add social housing to new build estates.

London has a plethora of ‘affordable’ homes for social housing providers, but they can’t afford to buy or run them.

Levelling the playing field

With the Renters’ Rights Bill not only are we not levelling the playing field between landlord and tenant, as Labour falsely claims, we are very much slanting the field in favour of renters.

You might think that’s a good thing. That’s your choice.

Landlords, however, will disagree because if we can’t get our property back then it’s pointless renting it out in the first place.

Labour seems to think that tenants should have the right to remain in their homes regardless – even if they aren’t paying rent?

When this law gains Royal Assent, Section 21 evictions will be banned.

I, for one, welcome this because landlords will have to state a reason when evicting.

That means we will finally get the data on how many tenants are being evicted for rent arrears, social misbehaviour or threatening a landlord.

It’s one thing promising a landlord’s database in the Bill but without a similar one for tenants who are evicted for wrongdoing then ALL tenants will pay the price as landlords use a higher bar when selecting a renter.

Difficult to get tenants out

We are stepping back to a time before the 1988 Housing Act when it was difficult to get tenants out. Labour wants those days back.

But the PRS wasn’t as big then and it was only after the law changed that landlords were relied upon to provide the housing that councils and government couldn’t or wouldn’t do.

The lack of investment in social housing is a massive problem but it hasn’t turned up overnight.

We haven’t built enough, we allowed people to buy public housing assets at a massive discount and have let millions of people into the country without investing in infrastructure.

You want to talk about affordable rents and lack of choice? Then discuss it with politicians.

Landlords also suffered when the Conservatives removed full mortgage interest tax relief for landlords with Section 24.

This, if anything, is what has really put the skids under the PRS.

Lots of landlords have had to bail out because they can’t make the numbers work so there are fewer homes to rent.

I know there will be many critics overjoyed at the prospect, but those rental homes are likely to have left the PRS.

Follow more than 160 laws

Increasing regulations – we must follow more than 160 laws (no one seems sure about the exact number!) – so it’s not an easy job.

We don’t just sit back counting the money every month having done nothing.

This is a time-intensive investment and when we get lumbered with bad tenants it becomes an expensive and stressful undertaking.

Not that I’m looking for sympathy but this notion that we need to level the playing field makes me chortle.

It’s already out of kilter – the courts are on the side of tenants because all landlords are grasping exploiters, right?

Critics don’t seem to realise that many small landlords are working class and are striving to put food on the table every day and create a pension pot.

We need to collaborate

The Renters’ Rights Bill underlines everything that is wrong with the perception of the PRS when we really need to collaborate.

We all need to work together instead of penalising landlords for having the ambition and energy to house people.

We need to help landlords to keep people in the PRS while building more social housing.

As usual, we are putting the cart before the horse and forcing landlords out without providing affordable social homes in their place.

I read often of people celebrating the demise of landlords who sell but I’m left wondering why people think like that.

There will, no doubt, be a rush of landlords wanting to sell before the Bill becomes law and I can’t blame them.

If the cards area already stacked against landlords, why would they stay around for this anti-landlord Bill to become law?

Landlords are committed to tenants

Most landlords are committed to their good tenants, but rolling tenancies, the right to keep a pet and more obstacles to possession won’t help.

You will find most landlords agree with tenant protection but then we are decent people – most of us have been renters.

These laws are targeted at criminal landlords who hurt us all, but they will still get away with it.

There won’t be inspections of their properties – and council staff facing hardened criminals won’t want to risk it.

A simple formula to help tenants isn’t to create a new law to force landlords out, we just need housing investment, fairer tax policies and regulations that don’t harm a landlord’s business.

And it is a business. I know critics don’t like to think of housing provision that way, but it’s the only way to describe it.

But most of all, we need collaboration. Just ask what we think for once about how the PRS can be more effective and how rents can be cheaper.

Don’t think that speaking to commercial landlord organisations is the route – let’s have an honest two-way debate about what’s wrong and what we can do to fix it.

Ultimately, we want to provide safe and comfortable homes to rent at a reasonable price. That doesn’t make us bad people.

Forcing landlords out and destroying the PRS will be welcomed by many but ask tenants how they feel with nowhere to rent, and prices are out of reach.

The Renters’ Rights Bill and the ongoing misinformation in the media about the PRS means it is tenants, ordinary people, who will be hurt.

Until next time,

The Landlord Crusader