Renters’ Rights Bill will create a nightmare for student landlords

The Government (aka the “Establishment”) are beholden to big business who own/run the PBSAs. Guess why PBSAs have an exemption from the changes in the RRB that affect the student lettings market. (it was no different under the last Tory Government who instigated this legislation in the first place).

The golden age of profits from students is over. Universities have ploughed much of their excessive profits into their own student accommodation, the price of which is unregulated. With the numbers of overseas students falling, they will be seeking to close down the private sector competition. The days when family homes are taken out of the housing market in search of profit are over, rightly in my opinion.
If you can’t switch to an HMO for non-students, you should sell now. There is no way a Labour government will do anything other than stick up for lefty students and lefty universities.

The biggest worry I have with student tenancies is that if it is a joint tenancy just one of them needs to give 2 months notice and the tenancy ends. How is that going to work in reality?

Right now the whole household knows they have a home for a fixed period (until the end of the academic year). If they fall out with eachother and one of them decides to move out they are still liable for the rent until the end of the tenancy or whenever they can find a replacement for themselves. The rest of the household still have a home.
Moving forward if they have a tiff and one person decides to give 2 months notice it puts the other tenants and the landlord in a very difficult position. In reality would they all have to move out? How stressful and expensive would it be trying to downsize part way through the academic year? How difficult would it be to find a suitable random student to fill the gap? How many people are willing to sign a joint tenancy with a load of people they don’t know? That’s assuming the landlord allows the changed line up and doesn’t just accept the notice. What happens if the rest of the household decide not to move out at the appointed time? Or can’t afford to cover the extra rent if they stay? Students are supposed to be studying not worrying about homelessness, bailiffs or CCJs.

The ability to regain the property at the end of the academic year is important but it’s also important to retain a viable tenancy throughout the academic year.

Shouldn’t this have been raised months ago when the bill was being “consulted” and the NRLA was busy acquiescing on landlords’ behalf?

“All private rented properties will need to meet EPC C targets by 2030 and by 2028 for new tenancies.” Wrong……nothing has been put into law yet !!!

This may become much worse if council tax gets replaced by property tax in November.

I’m sorry to run against the tide of wailing here, but aren’t student HMO landlords just being asked to share the same world as regular HMO landlords?

There’s no particular reason why students should be able to rent as a group and have guaranteed accommodation in February, say, for a shared September start, or why their landlords should get the summer free for maintenance every year. Regular HMO tenants and their landlords don’t get such convenient arrangements. Surely students and their landlords are just going to have to work out different arrangements, if they really want their cosy world to continue?

So, maybe students will say, when forming a group/partnership to rent a house, that if someone doesn’t move out in July like everyone else, or moves out early, then they are financially liable to pay penalties to their housemates and the landlord, and this will be written into a signed contract between them. Maybe an enterprising insurer will offer students a suitable insurance policy against such upheavals? Or maybe student landlords need to get together and insure themselves via a cheaper group policy?

Either way, this is not an unsolvable situation and I don’t see why student HMOs should have some special status in law, different from regular HMOs. And if landlords choose to leave the sector, so be it. It’s no different from all the other landlords selling up!

It’s also about time students had to pay council tax. Almost every other CT discount has been eliminated, including that for landlords and developers when renovating empty property,. Part-time students have to pay, this hated tax too. So why should full-time students in their hundreds of thousands still be feather-bedded?