Renters' Rights Bill

Written evidence submitted by Thomas Dove to The Renters’ Rights Public Bill Committee (RRB91).

Summary

The Renters Rights Bill as now written will add costs and risks to landlords, causing many to sell up - including ourselves. It will also increase rents for most tenants.

Regarding specific measures:

· Section 7A eviction on ground of anti-social behaviour should be made on balance of probabilities that there has been anti-social behaviour, not with the currently planned threshold of proof in court

· landlord must be able to gain possession if selling, within 3 months

· court delays mean too much risk & delay for landlords

· there is enough legislation already that is not enforced now against bad landlords; a landlord portal will not help and will cost tenants if there is a charge to landlords

Introduction

My wife and I have been landlords for 20 years of the same 3 properties in Bristol.

We charge less than the market rate so we can pick tenants we like and trust. We look after the properties, we do all the checks on gas/elec etc., smoke alarms. We have upgraded all 3 to EPC C. Just a week ago a cooker failed: we replaced it the next day. In another property the electric shower failed: we replaced it the next day. Every small landlord we know takes pride in looking after the places they own and care about the tenants.

We carefully abide by all the many rules and regulations.

Our tenants stay an average of 4 years; some 8 years.

But due to the Renters Rights Bill as currently written, we will no longer be landlords: we are going to sell all 3 properties as our current tenants leave, possibly in the near term, depending how punitive against landlords the RRB ends up being. Either way, no more will our properties be available to rent.

Every private landlord we know is now considering selling up. Sure, many won't do so right away, but many will over the next 3-5 years. The current housing crisis will be a fond memory compared with the Armageddon that will be the private rented sector by the time of the next election.

Private landlords are being punished for the root cause of the problem: failure to build enough social housing for many years. The RRB will reduce supply, increase rents and do nothing to increase affordable housing – quite the opposite.

I feel this is unfortunate for our tenants and millions of others.

Comments about RRB as now proposed

The RRB is ill-conceived in a number of ways:

1) Impossible to evict if tenant anti-social

Removing Section 21 means it will be impossible to get rid of anti-social tenants as the RRB is now written. We know: our daughter in London had terrible problems with an anti-social neighbour: physical violence, threats to kill her, all-night parties, complaints from many neighbours, 90 police callouts - and still no conviction in court as will be required for a section 7A eviction. We also had bad tenants once who threatened the neighbours either side of the property; the neighbours were too scared to give evidence in court. Fortunately they left, but we knew that we had Section21 to fall back on.

Recommendation: ground 7A be determined on "a balance of probabilities that there had been anti-social behaviour"

This would at least make it possible to remove bad tenants. The threshold as now written for ground 7A is way too high to be achievable in many many cases of anti-social behaviour.

2) Gaining possession to sell a property - must be possible in any circumstance

I look after the tenants and the properties, not my wife. If I died [as has nearly happened twice in the last 6 years, when I had less than 50:50 chance] then my wife would want to sell within a few months. But if we had new tenants then my wife would be prevented from doing so.

And with court delays we cannot take the risk of not being able to get the properties back for many months.

Also will there be discretion about not evicting tenants if you want to sell? There has been talk of the possibility of a judge having the discretion to refuse eviction "if it will make the tenants homeless"? Obviously it will, in the immediate term.

We as owners have to be able to get the property back when we want to: no ifs or buts.

Recommendation: Make the right for a landlord to evict when selling absolute and with say three months notice, whenever the tenancy has started

3) Court delays: possession proceedings now take 6-12 months - this will vastly increase with Section 21 gone

Possession proceedings typically take 6-12 months now. Section 21 does not get to court. With Section 21 gone there will be tens of thousands of such notices which must now go through court. Delays will stretch out well beyond a year, even when a landlord has a 100% valid claim for possession.

We as landlords do not want to be faced with this risk - another prime reason to sell.

Recommendation: do not remove Section 21 until the courts are set up to deal with the many thousands of new proceedings. Or have a special speedy-court system that deals with re-possession orders.

4) Lack of enforcement / landlord portal

The issue now is lack of enforcement where there is a bad landlord, not lack of regulation.

The RRB plan is to have a register of landlords so that bad landlords can be called out. How likely is it that the bad landlords will immediately register, when they have been flouting all the other regulations?

And what about a register of tenants so that the landlord can find out what a tenant is like before renting to them?

Recommendations:

a. Allow landlords to register comments about tenants on the portal. This would allow other landlords to see before renting to someone undesirable, and secondly might deter tenants from behaving badly in the first place.

b. Have no charge to the landlord for registering on this landlord portal: any costs will have to be passed directly on to tenants

c. Make it the portal simple. To rent a property a landlord already is required to provide a tremendous amount of detail on Zoopla / RightMove. The landlord portal does not need to duplicate all this. If it takes a lot of time and effort to enter the data then this has a time cost also.

5) RRB will increase rents with no benefit to most tenants

One always has to consider the costs and the risk versus the reward; clearly the RRB increases landlord costs, increases landlord risks, increases landlord regulation.

We have good tenants and all the time for the last 20 years we have been landlords we have kept our rents below market rate; but with all these increases we can no longer do so.

With reluctance, market rate it will be.

What extra benefit will the tenants get for the increased rent they will be paying? The ‘benefit’ of knowing that we as landlords will now be registered on a government portal, plus the other ‘protections’ of the RRB, which with us as landlords, gains them precisely nothing. Our tenants, like millions of others, will pay a higher price with in practical terms, no benefit in return.

6) Small private landlords like us will sell up

For the reasons above many landlords will sell up over the next 3-5 years, just as we are going to do.

This will increase market rents for everyone – so anyone on benefits will be unable to afford a private rent. Of course you could do rent controls like in Scotland – which pushed up the average rent by 13% in a year.

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We will tell our tenants that we are selling due to the RRB: the local council will be unable to re-house them for many years, after being on an ever-expanding waiting list.

And our tenants may of course write to their MP for ideas on what they are supposed to do and where they can possibly live.

November 2024.