UK: No-fault evictions to be banned in reform of rental sector
bbc.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
All this legislation is going to do is increase risk for landlords and that increased risk will need to be passed on to renters. This will be attributed to "greedy landlords" by some, but it's just the inevitable consequence of adjusting economic incentives.
The issue in reality is simply the supply and demand of housing in the UK. If you don't have enough supply of housing buyers are going to be screwed by high prices and renters are going to be screwed by unfavourable renting conditions. This is true of all markets where supply and demand are imbalanced, those who benefit from that imbalance tend to hold all the power.
I'd personally prefer to see solutions aimed and solving the supply and demand of housing in the UK. If renters had options are were less desperate for housing then landlords wouldn't be so quick to evict people.
That said, I seem to get so much hate whenever I try to discuss solutions to the housing crisis in the UK I understand why legislative hacks like this are realistically the only politically viable option.
The Tories are on net worse, but even past Labour governments did not meet their own targets. "We will build 100 000 homes" sounds great. But a week later, "Not these 60 on a nice old farm in a part of the country where our local MP is at risk" and then "OK, instead of 120 starter home what about 80 larger houses on that ex-industrial estate, so that the developer can make a bit more cash on luxury properties?" - hundreds of these local policy tweaks and before you know it your 100 000 homes are less than half that, but the need for housing didn't change. Demand rises, supply doesn't keep pace, effects predictable.
Not being unreasonable towards your friends but are they responsible with money?
In the UK, the average savings (net financial wealth) at 25 - 29 years old is £3,800, but the typical person in that age range has -£100. The average UK savings for 30 - 34 year old's is around £14,500 of net financial wealth (savings like current and savings accounts, stocks, bonds, etc. less financial liabilities), but the median figure is just £1,000.
That really paints the picture. As a younger person, it really feels like if you don't have wealthy parents to pay your way, you can't ever expect to have financial security in the UK. The island has been bought out by the oligarchs, and a society of indentured slaves in all but name is the eventual outcome. That post WW2 boom, where almost everyone who worked hard could afford a house, car, and a family, feels like a fever dream.
In my current area of Oxford, I'd be looking at minimum 250k for a crap 2 bed flat with furnishings from the 1960s. That's not to even start considering parking, a decent leasehold, and public transport links. Closing on 350k if I dare even consider choosing a freehold house, or a place with a garden. I'd love to get a job Cambridge or London way, as career opportunities are much more abundant, but then I'm looking at nearly 450k for a half decent 2 bed.
Are salaries quite low in semiconductor industry?
It's horrific everywhere if you don't own. Granted, some countries make it difficult to evict someone who isn't paying their rent, but that comes at the cost of landlords explicitly seeking to rent exclusively to people with good jobs or letting the apartment stay empty rather than risking letting someone in who might not be able to pay, with no way of evicting them.
I'm honestly surprised to hear the UK doesn't have all these sorts of protections in place for renters.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2023/may/10/plans-abolish-...
The argument for the Tories to do it is that if they do it then politically that looks better, and they can control exactly how it's done, choosing alternatives that the opposition wouldn't have but which are nonetheless acceptable, normal politics. Of course just because it makes sense for the party strategically doesn't mean individual members who stand to lose out won't fight it.
† Almost all homes that don't occupy their own distinct footprint (e.g. flats/ apartments) and some which do are owned as "Leasehold" which means that you don't own the land in perpetuity, instead you own a "Long Lease" (e.g. 125 years) which can be extended for a fee, and entitles you to occupy the property. Because it's a Lease it can require rent, traditionally such Long Leases specified a rent of "One peppercorn" (if you've never seen it, black pepper is made from tiny dried berries, such a peppercorn is technically something of value, therefore it constitutes a valid rental payment) for the ground - "ground rent". But in recent years new long leases had begun to make the rent real money - I pay £250 per year for example, which isn't much money for a home but it's a lot more than one peppercorn. This made the freehold ownership (and thus right to collect these ground rents) into a valuable investment for offshore property companies.
Tory legislation made it illegal for new Long Leases, including extensions to existing ones, to set rent above one peppercorn, and additionally required that freeholders not demand the actual peppercorns or charge any sort of "fees" (such as to collect and store the peppercorns) to the leaseholder on the rationale that in fact obviously nobody wants peppercorns, they're just a legal device, knock it off. However, the Tories did not reform existing ground rents. Until your lease is renewed, or you give it up, you have to pay. So this nonsense investment doesn't grow but it also didn't vanish.
I forget the term for it, but it's a kind of poaching from Labour. The Conservatives are promoting themselves as "for the working people" as in people who actually work where Labour used to be for the "working class". In both parties we see them shedding past core beliefs, Labour have chosen the middle class and view the working class as vulnerable people with no agency and the Tories have dumped prioritising the rich landlords and big money as they know they are going to be loyal anyhow and are choosing more crowd pleasing things.
I think the time of core values have passed, its all slippery chameleon politics in my view.
In particular Nationalisation. Once upon a time Labour's principles said you should Nationalise industries. The Tories are a "Free Market" party, and over the past decade plus have a lot of policies which can be summarised as "The Free Market didn't work, so we tried the Free Market and that didn't work, then we tried the Free Market and that didn't work, and then we tried the Free Market again and it still didn't work".
The trains are an especially dismal example. Trains are necessary, heavily regulated, and benefit from very long term investment, so periodically when another short term for-profit train franchise collapses, the Government is obliged to run those trains (typically the franchises run trains for some portion of the railway network e.g. the West Coast Mainline), this goes pretty well because governments can do this sort of thing, then (because Free Market) a new franchise is brought in, that's a total shit show, wash and repeat.
The Tory party can't philosophically learn this lesson, it's necessary to the fundamental ethos of their party that the observable facts aren't true, the Free Market must work. So they're never going to fix this, and Labour can just nationalise the railways and tada - things get better. The Tories will say it's worse of course, that's politics - but, if they've any sense, if they get back into power they would decide to maybe run a "consultation" or something in which they never quite get around to undoing the nationalisation and so the much better system continues.
But after lobbying from landlords, he will also “strengthen powers to evict antisocial tenants, broadening the disruptive and harmful activities that can lead to eviction and making it quicker to evict a tenant acting antisocially”, his department said.
It could mean renters being given a two-week notice period for antisocial behaviour evictions and that any behaviour “capable” of “causing nuisance or annoyance” could trigger eviction.
And that will always be, but for landlords there's a difference between difficulty coming from what you choose to do (i.e. let out a property and risk getting a difficult tenant) vs difficulty imposed by the government.
What could possibly go wrong?
"Under the new law, tenants would be given the legal right to request a pet in their home, which the landlord cannot unreasonably refuse."
We had a tenant once who brought in her two cats who peed everywhere so we had to replace the entire wooden floor and repaint all the walls because the cat piss stench was everywhere. Financial damage done out of our pocket was way higher than the one month worth deposit.
Feels reasonable to have a say in that matter.
There were similar issues with social housing tenants where some mortgages or insurances disallowed them until it was made it illegal.
Of course enforcing these laws is hard...
There are no insurances where I live that cover against malicious tenants who's pets destroyed your place. Household insurances here only cover you place against accidents (like a pipe bursting flooding the place) or wraths of nature (like a storm breaking your windows) or against burglars breaking in but that's it. So it's up to the landlord to protect himself from bad tenants or they can financially ruin you.
>he problem is that if a landlord insurance policy (or mortgage, or long term lease) disallows pets, the landlord is going to prohibit pets. If such prohibition is void then pets are more likely to be allowed.
And any such insurances against malicious tenants or pets will be expensive and would only be passed on to the tenants in increased rent prices. There is no free lunch here. Landlords aren't gonna take a loss.
Of course that's an additional cost. As a landlord you can decide whether to take the risk yourself, pass the cost to the tenant at the risk of being less competitive, or eat the cost.
Like I said before, "where I live there's no insurances covering tenant damage". It's great it's a thing in the UK but I don't live there.
I rent and have two cats, they pee in the litter tray so that's not an issue, but they cause all sorts of other damage, mine like sitting on the bannister at the top of the stairs, so there's loads of scratch marks on it because it's too high to jump up to it easily, they're very furry Norwegian forest cats that groom each other a lot, so I wake up frequently to vomited up cat balls on carpets, etcetera.
My deal with the landlord is that I'll just pay for whatever damage is done, even if that's higher than my deposit.
source: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/security-deposit-cap-redu...
No, but the market rate is at one month.
>My deal with the landlord is that I'll just pay for whatever damage is done, even if that's higher than my deposit.
Every tenant claims to your face he's a billionaire and that he will pay for everything, but then bolt it the week before the end of the contract, leaving you with a damaged apartment and unpaid bills. Such claims are difficult to enforce and a bird in the hand is worth more 10 in the bush.
If I understand correctly, you believe that England is a special flower and that regulations which would be considered the bare minimum in a great many other countries around the world (including such exotic and remote locales as Scotland) somehow cannot function here.
I’d be happy to point out any fallacies in your argument for that conclusion – if it weren’t for the fact that you’ve presented no argument for it whatsoever.
This is the only conversation-legislating statement in the thread.
> If I understand correctly, you believe that England is a special flower and that regulations which would be considered the bare minimum in a great many other countries around the world (including such exotic and remote locales as Scotland) somehow cannot function here.
I don't think this, no. I certainly haven't said it.
> I’d be happy to point out any fallacies in your argument for that conclusion – if it weren’t for the fact that you’ve presented no argument for it whatsoever.
I don't know the purpose of your entire comment, then.
You don't fix a broken real estate market with not enough supply, by adding more regulations on top (try moving in Berlin right now, see how regulations "help" you the tenant trying to rent something), you fix it by building enough supply such that the market becomes in their flavor that most people can afford to buy their own home where they can keep as many animals as they want, turn it into a zoo if they want.
The issue of pets that you've picked up on seems a minor one, in all honesty. I was thinking more generally about any increased costs for landlords resulting from these reforms.
I rent in London, so Berlin doesn't really work for me as a comparison case. I'm sure it has its issues too, but it's not obviously worse. If someone were to ask me rhetorically "would you like the rental market in London to end up like the rental market in Berlin?" then I'd probably respond "err, yeah, probably".
Berlin housing issues: it's not too expensive but there's zero supply because of rent control
So which is best? Or, the least worst.
I know very little about UK property issues, but would speculate that any housing shortages are caused by regulations.
Don't let that stop you!
>but would speculate that any housing shortages are caused by regulations.
Which regulations? The UK rental market is almost entirely unregulated. It is less regulated than the rental market in many US states/cities, for example. Landlords can charge whatever rent they like, evict people for no reason, and put up rents without limit when renewing rental contracts.
If any regulations are to blame here, they're likely to be the regulations that prevent building new houses in green belt areas, not regulations on rentals.
>Any increase in expenses will need to be generated through the rent of the property.
You say this as if it's obviously inevitable, but of course one possibility is that landlords will simply make a bit less money on rentals than previously. This is why regulations do have something to do with it: if there are limits on how much landlords can raise rents, then they can't simply defray any increased expenses via arbitrary rent increases. At present, however, there are no such limits.
"I lost money doing business"
Protecting against such events in the future would mean extra expenses passed on to the other tenants. There is no free lunch here. If the tenants are causing extra damage, then it will cost them more in the end, pushing the market prices up.
[0]: https://www.mygov.scot/private-tenant-eviction/grounds-for-e...
Basically they "advise" the Queen or King not to grant "assent" which is a formal part of the legislative process, so now the law is dead.
Now, it would likely prompt a straight up constitutional crisis and calls to declare independence unilaterally if they did this to some Scottish law about what is clearly a Scottish competence widely understood to be a matter for Scots, like rent reform, but they can do it anyway, they just haven't.
Isn't it fair to say that there are no restrictions on what the UK parliament could decide to do - they could do anything they just mostly haven't yet?
I just wanted to highlight that the observed asymmetry isn't as significant as it appears, but the consequence of trying this out, in both cases, might be a constitutional crisis. If you care to learn about this specific topic, look for the "West Lothian Question". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Lothian_question
That’s poverty with extra steps.
Still, it is extremely bad to not be able to buy a house. I am much happier as a renter here in Germany than I was in the UK however. Much simpler law and contract, much less exploitation. However, this is mainly because I am white. Here in Germany, racism is far more extreme, and it is often far more difficult to get an apartment if you don't have a white name.
That's not true. They can refuse your pets with a reason.
> that you mentioned in maligned in another comment
How was that "maligned"?
> I am much happier as a renter here in Germany than I was in the UK however.
You're happy now, but you might not be when you'll retire and earning much less and having to pay market rates on rent. Will your pension cover that?
Owning your own home can shield you from old age poverty.
>you don't have a white name
There's no such thing as a "white name". White people come from so many countries each with completely different sounding names.
Funny, how we focus on landlords being against against pets but not focusing on landlords discriminating non whites which is an objectively much worse problem.
Also, unreasonable is the antonym of “with a reason”
Mind you, the last parts of the feudal system were only abolished by the Scottish Parliament in 2000!
Well, it literally hasn't; as fellow Scot arethuza points out, Scotland finally abolished the feudal system once the Scottish Parliament was reconstituted and able to do so, but England has not. It did abolish the "feu burdens", but there's a whole load of weird holdovers still in the system. "Chancel repair liability" is a "fun" one.
You might object that few renters earn that much, but even people earning $35k in the UK are still probably renting if they're younger that 35. Whilst that income might be tight against living expenses, it's not poverty.
Even after paying rent, bills and saving - such a person would likely have tens of thousands of dollars to spend on holidays, video games or sneakers.
Poverty describes people who have to use food banks not people who have $100 brunches at Cedric Grolet.
The Median salary in the UK is around £34000 last I checked on the ONS website. Anyone in London on the Median income is struggling at the moment due to high rents, energy bills and food costs.