Ben and I need a bit of space to re-charge our batteries before tackling 2012.  So there will be no new posts here until January 3rd.

However I leave you with our annual retrospective, looking back over the past posts of the year.  Enjoy!

January

The year started with an Urban Myth – it can’t be an HMO if all the tenants sign the same tenancy agreement. At that time I was doing a Tenants Tip most Mondays – like this one on doing repair work yourself.

One of the most popular posts of that month (and indeed of the blog generally) was Eviction – five misunderstandings about using section 21 which had garnered a massive 53 comments before they closed.  The attention caused by this post was one of the inspirations for my section 21 ebook.

One of the highlights of the month was the podcast with Kevin Firth of the DPS, and I talk a bit about the (technical) problems I experienced with this on Law Brief Update here.

Ben Reeve Lewis at that time was still writing his superb TRO Confidential posts (about which we may have some exciting news next month) such as this one on the case of the countdown and the human champagne cork.

The final post to mention for January is this one on violent landlords which also attracted a lot of comments.

February

February had Ben writing about the Emperor’s New Clothes and  me getting upset about the legal aid system and death by 1,000 cuts.

Ben launched his Homesaving Expert website based on his experience in dealing with the shenanigans of banks when dealing with borrowers in distress as part of his TRO work, and Alan Smith of Hartsmere BC gave us a sneak preview of what changes were in store for Housing Benefit.

I wondered if I ought to go on a diet after being interviewed by Property  Tribes TV, but am thankfully invisible (albeit audible) during the podcast with property expert David Lawrenson (and if you have not listened to it yet – please do so, as David is very knowledgable about the lettings industry).

This is also the month we set up our You Tube Channel and I started experimenting with creating screen shot videos.

March

A rather controversial post in March was this one on when the police unjustly support your landlord, which attracted quite a lot of comments.

Less controversial was the excellence of my March podcast guest Steve Perrins who talked about the methods his firm uses to ensure that these rentals are a success.  This turned out to be the last of the podcasts – they were enjoyable but very time consuming to do.  But many thanks to my three guests, Kevin, David and Steve for helping me with the three that we did.

This is also the month when Ben stopped doing his TRO Confidential posts (such as this one on the Cat woman and the strange coincidence).  However no need to complain as he then started his excellent Friday newsround series – this was #1.

Ben and I also started our Front Liner newsletter for housing workers which you can read about here.

Finally here is an interesting post looking at whether landlords can be liable to neighbours for their tenants from hell.

April

There were quite a few government reports to look at this week.  For example on solving disputes in the County Courts, which I looked at in two parts – part one and part two.

Then there were a couple of reports on housing conditions. This one Poor Housing = Poor Health looked at a report from POST (you’ll find out who they are if you read it!) and then another one looking at housing in Wales here.

Then there was this MOJ report on the Law Commission which made me wonder whether they were not completely wasting their time.

There were fewer posts this month as Ben and I went fishing.  However here is a news post from Ben (#3) and five things about joint tenants from me.

May

Two new series started this month.  The first was my Foundations in Landlord and Tenant Law series, which I really enjoyed doing.  Here is the first post and, my favourite, this one on Equity and the Court of Chancery.

The second series was the Blog Clinic which is still going strong today.  This was inspired by a couple of questions from tenants which I published as tenants in the firing line, see  this one here , about a tenant being evicted because of his dog.

The third ‘new’ thing was my Your Law Store service which I set up with my long term web designer Gill Bisop, which you can see here.

Other posts included Ben’s newsround #7 which was the first one with his new picture, me complaining about confusing changes with the Court websites (I do wish government would STOP messing around with their websites) and this one on what you can do if your tenant just WON’T GO!

June

From now onwards, there were more posts as I slot in the Blog Clinic posts, such as this one on birds nest removal, and this one about international students still waiting for their deposit after three months.

The Foundations series continued, for example this one on common law and statute.

I was really pleased to publish a great post from Alan Ward, Chair of the RLA, who discussed how better tenants make better landlords.

I looked at an interesting report from the Smith Institute about how government needs to change its thinking in view of the rise in renting and decline in home ownership.

There were also legal cases to report, such as this one where a landlord was convicted of harassment due to too many texts, and an important decision from the Court of Appeal which said that landlords are liable for plaster damage.

Then there are the usual information posts, such as this one on forwarding post, and Bens newsrounds, such as #11 here.

July

All the usual stuff this month.  Bens newsround #14 has a great picture of Frazzy, his beloved, and looks forward (in time, not with any pleasure) to the inevitable letting frenzy that will surround the Olympics next year. I get out my soapbox and ask When will government deal with the scandal of our unregulated lettings industry?  I am still waiting for the answer.

Inevitably we have a blog clinic post on condensation, others include one on tenancy deposits and one on a landlord refusing to return a deposit to ‘benefit scum‘

My Foundations series continues with me looking at law before the codes, after which I continue to take a look at the codes, such as this post on the Rent Act 1977 in context.

I take a look at the top ten health and safety issues (as identified by AIIC), and discuss the Channel  Four Landlords from Hell progamme in a post which attracted a lot of comments and did a follow up post here.  I also compare the Minister for Housing with the Ministry for Magic which was quite fun to do, although this was in fact a serious post.

Finally I look at a report which says that Local Authorities are failing to protect vulnerable tenants, and we all burst into tears at the news that the Foxtons litigation cost Foxtons £4.4 million.

August

We don’t let up at Landlord Law Blog, even in this holiday month.  I take a look at the signature of  documents in an electronic age, and discuss the five critical questions you need to ask yourself with eviction of tenants.

My Foundations series comes to an end, but having enjoyed the historical research enormously, I immediately start a new History Spot series so I can carry on doing it.

Ben rouses himself from his sickbed to bring you news about the riots in newsround #20 and I find out what help is available for tenants made homeless by riot and disorder. Remember the summer riots?

Grant Shapps pronounces that people living on boats could help solve the housing crisis, so I take a look at whether you can have a tenancy of a boat.

Questions keep coming from the blog clinic, for example on unfair checkout charges, and whether the landlord has to provide a doorbell.

I report on an article by District Judge Peter Glover on problems in the courts and how this is bad news for landlords, and report on what commentators have been saying to a Observer article on Housing Benefit.

Finally this is the month when I start doing my weekly roundups.  Here is the first one.

September

This month there was a new gas safety report which said that there was a 50% greater risk in the private rented sector.  I also took a look at three successful prosecutions (they do happen sometimes), and discussed taking in lodgers in rented properties.

What do you think of the Landlord Law Blog?  was a question I was asking on my feedback form, which you can answer now if you inadvertently forgot to do so then.

Meanwhile Ben was doing the washing up to my tenancy agreements audiobook, while continuing to write great weekly news posts, such as this one on new ideas.

Then there was the usual crop of readers questions, asking things like how do you deal with the deposit if there are rent arrears and damage, whether the landlord can charge £1,000 for a loose mantel,

Ben told the story of Scammers Ltd and so I took a look at how you can tell a good agent from a bad one.

I also wondered if tenants could assign their share of the tenancy to another person, and wrote a post (which the stats show is very popular) on rats, cockroaches, bedbugs and other infestations in rented property.  I also wrote about squatters law, misinformation and misunderstanding in support of the letter in the guardian from which appeared that month.

FInally, if you are wondering why I have not reported on any History Spot posts, it is because, after doing a few I decided I really needed to set up a whole new blog, called the History of Law Blog where I have been posted weekly ever since.

October

This month I start a new series on defences to accelerated possession proceedings,  and report on a new Student Accommodation code.  Ben meanwhile does ballet and reports on the shadow housing ministers.

The lawyers squatters letter in the Guardian last month had brought forth some amusing responses which I comment on here, and I also write about empty homes in Cornwall, along with a post on Councils planning problems for Olympic short term lets, and take a look at private rented sector statistics.

Quite a few ‘five’ posts this month, including five points on residential licenses, five ways for landlords to ensure payment of benefit, and five ways for landlords to avoid tenant defences to rent repossession claims.

Readers questions include a landlord asking how he can evict his non payment tenants, and a a tenant complaining about a landlord demanding rent up front and threatening eviction.

November

This is a momentous month for me, as my Landlord Law subscription service has its 10th anniversary.  I also do a few posts reporting on recent changes on the site, such as this one on the new +Plus membership.  This blog gets a bit of a makeover with a new home page.

We continue to report on the news, Ben looking at reactions to the governments new housing strategy, while I discuss selling off social housing again.

Readers questions include one about representative tenants, whether landlords can require tenants to take out rental insurance, whether the landlord can increase the rent mid term, and this shocking case of an agent dumping students stuff stored for the summer.

I give some advice on rent records for landlords, and the accelerated defences series continue such as with this one on saving clauses.  This post on landlords obligations regarding electricity proved very popular.

Towards the end of the month I announce my new School for Landlords, and start a series on increasing rent.

December

I report on the first case where a Local Authority has to pay compensation for recommending a nightmare tenant, and follow this up with a readers question on whether ALMOs should be more responsible when placing nightmare tenants.

I also do a big post covering nine prosecutions against landlords for breach of regulations and report on the ultimate illegal eviction (by a police officer) which attracted quite a few comments.

The Accelerated possession proceedings defences series is nearing its end with #11 on failure to comply with the tenancy deposit regulations, and the School for Landlords posts on increasing rent have reached rent review clauses.

As we are taking over a week off now, there are fewer posts, but check out Ben’s final post of the year, #39.

*****

Well thats all for this retrospective, but I have also done a short video which will be up on the Home Page until early January.  If you are reading this after then, well there will probably be another video there, unless you are reading this a long way in the future and I have changed everything around completely!

Ginormous thanks to everyone who has taken part in discussions on the blog over the past year – you have all been brilliant and the blog would not be the same without you.  Massive thanks also to the wonderful Ben Reeve Lewis who keeps us all entertained every Friday.

If you want any further property related reading over the Christmas period , then Property 118 will (I think) still be publishing the news.

I wish you all a great Christmas and New Year celebration and I will see you back in the New Year.

Ben does the ironing

I have had to do my own laundry this week. Now that isn’t as chauvinistic as it sounds. We have a clear demarcation of jobs in the household, I do all the shopping, cooking and cleaning of the kitchen, Frazzy does laundry, hoovering and cleaning the bathroom. As the man I obviously don’t clean the toilet. My modernism only goes so far.

Frazzy, who works in travel has been on a freebie jolly in California since last Thursday, speed-boating around San Francisco harbour, kayaking on Lake Tahoe and riding in cable cars at Yosemite, while I try to make sense of those little ironing symbols on the dial.

In fact trying to make sense of things also sums up my week’s surfing for housing news in a bits-and-pieces week, news-wise, where there have been some strange pronouncements and even deliberate non-pronouncements – more on this later.

Garden cities

Our erstwhile housing minister monsieur Shapps wrote an article in the Guardian  in which he lauded the concept of garden cities, based on models for Welwyn (his locality – nice bit of cross politicking there Grant) and Letchworth.

What worried me about it were the final 6 paragraphs in which he seems to be suggesting that people living in villages where several major developers hold strategic land banks hovering on the edges should be viewing developments, for which planning permission is going to be ‘Presumed’, as ‘Garden Cities’, not simply losing green belt land.

He says at one point “We need to encourage and develop partnerships bringing together the most imaginative developers and community groups who are willing to take on a visionary task of this kind”.

A visionary task? Hmmmm.

Planning blog

And with this in mind I want to alert people to a blog I have discovered this week by planning consultant Andrew Lainton  who is closely monitoring the way planning is going through at the moment. I confess I don’t understand a lot of the technical arguments but it is good to know someone is tracking the ethics and scams of it all. Give him your encouragement.

Political games

My interest was also piqued this week by reports of a reverse psychology game being played out between Shapps and shadow housing bod Alison Seabeck, also reported in the Guardian.  Normally ministers and shadow ministers will engage in trying to out-do each other with strategies, plans, ideas and manifesto’s. Alison Seabeck is taking Shapps on by not having any strategies, ideas or manifestos.

What is going on there then? What cunning plan is afoot?

Ms Seabeck appeared at the National Housing Federation conference and when asked about Labour’s plans to deal with the housing crisis she replied enigmatically . “Do you know what the economy is going to be like in six months’ time. Well neither do I, and I’m not going to make a [policy] statement that I may have to withdraw if the economic circumstances change.”

She is either being very politically savvy or I am in the early stages of Alzheimer’s because I don’t understand how a politician should avoid making statements because something could happen that might make them look daft.

I hope this doesn’t become a new phenomenon, you could imagine Newsnight in 2015, Nick Clegg, Nana Mouskouri’s missing half brother, interviews the prospective prime minister:- “And so, Minister, what does your party stand for?” ….”Well who can tell Nick, it’s a strange world”.

Nearly legal writes in the Guardian

Regular landlord law blog friend Nearly Legal, now outed as lawyer Giles Peaker [of course, I knew years ago (activate smug mode) .. Ed]  had an informative article, in the Guardian again  His article concerns the Government’s uber-knee jerk reaction to the rioting by being seen to tackle said recent social problem by making changes to the law on evictions and press-ganging housing authorities into taking on a different role.

What he has highlighted here is a subtle piece of social engineering, whereby housing associations and councils are to shift roles from being housing providers to becoming Con-Dem policy enforcers.

He excellently and astutely points to the position councils and housing associations are being placed in when he says “The question for social housing providers may well turn out to be how far they are willing to be hired muscle, the enforcers of the government’s social contract, and risk the potential financial consequences if they decide against taking on that role”. Accurately put.

Returning briefly to Shapps’s own article in the guardian and with the above in mind, where he said that government’s aim was “not to impose their ideas but to work with communities to realise their own vision for the future”.

Modern words. So how does that apply to the kind of heavy handedness being displayed by this attack on what are commonly perceived to be the underclass? The chavs? Or as Hitler called them , the Unter-mensch? Always a convenient scapegoat.

The gold rush mentality

Regular readers will know I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about the gold rush mentality of many private landlords in relation to rents. Whilst landlords ride the wave of increased income, tenants are languishing in the pit, struggling to hang on to their homes.

I freely admit my opinions are partly (but only partly) influenced by being a tenant myself. Not only a tenant, but a London one, and also one who lives in a trendy bit with a cheese shop, so rents are understandably higher. But I have been in this game long enough to be able to separate my own circumstances from the picture as a whole.

Bear in mind that I spend the vast majority of my day working with tenants and landlords, which gives me an overall picture of the current climate and I see things creaking under the strain.

Even UK Landlord News, hardly a tenant friendly e-zine even noted this week that although wages have risen 2.4% lately rents have increased 12% in the same period.  Now I am absolutely rubbish at maths, my last exam result before I left school was 9% but even I can understand those statistics.

Problems they are a coming

Homelet director John Boyle, whose research figures the article was based on, cited rising rents and fuel bills as the reason that people were moving on and tenancy periods were getting shorter, people simply not being able to meet the higher rents.He said

“This isn’t a good sign for some tenants who may struggle as winter approaches and the cost of running a home increases even more”.

So far so good, but he ends his statement by saying

“And we can expect tenancy lengths to decrease in 2012, as the level of high value short term rentals increases in 2012 during the Olympic Games, which is positive news for letting agents,”

Well, way-to-go John. As long as landlords and agents are having a great time who gives a toss about struggling tenants eh? Has it not occurred to you that if tenants cant afford these rents then landlords will suffer too? The Olympics may offer a short term bun-fest but what will happen when these short term tenants return to their native countries and new, stable tenants have to be found once the party is over?

Also, what will happen to homelessness figures during the feeding frenzy when ordinary London tenants cant find anywhere to rent because properties are being hawked out to the Bulgarian Kayaking team for 6 grand a month?
Who can tell, it’s a strange world!

Ben Reeve Lewis

Ben has started Home Saving Expert, to share his secrets to defending people’s homes from mortgage repossession Visit his blog and get some help and advice on mortgage difficulties and catch up with him on Twitter and check out his free report “An Encouraging note on Dealing with your Mortgage Lender” and have it sent right to your inbox.

Letchworth picture by  Robin Hall, gold mine picture by Marcian Wichary

Lets start off with a post from July 2008 where I quoted a report from the DPS that 62% of landlords were flouting the tenancy deposit rules

Then in October 2008 the DPS answered a number of questions which had been raised by people commenting on the blog

In January 2009, following on from various rumours, I was able to report that the DPS is open to to all landlords

In March 2009 I reported on still more complaints received about the DPS arbitration system  and the fact that the complaints system cannot be used for the arbitration itself.

In May 2009 I reported on the problem of agents having run off with the deposit money and landlords being asked to refund the schemes after they had paid out the deposit money to tenants.  I suggested that the Deposit Protection Service , where this cannot happen as the they hold the deposit money, may often be best after all

In July 2009 I reported on a new blog set up by Kevin Firth which you can visit here.

In September 2009, just over a year after the 62% failure post, I blogged that the figure had now gone down to 30% of landlords

In October I commented on a circular I had seen which suggested that in tenancy deposit arbitrations, more weight is given to the evidence of inventory clerks as landlords themselves are not considered independent

I also reported on a readers story telling how the DPS had failed to pay the deposit money to her after getting a CCJ in her favour because the court order did not mention them

I also reported on the sad case of a tenant in despair after the DPS had paid her deposit money to her landlord.  This was because she had not sent her evidence to the arbitrator in time, because she had not received the letter telling her what to do

Then finally there is my interview of Kevin Firth in my Notable Propety Persons series.

I will be discussing with Kevin next week many of the issues raised about by these posts. But do YOU have any questions? What is your experience of dealing with the DPS. Please use the form on >> this page to let me know.

As you some of you may have noticed, three of my recent posts had the same picture and were in fact a short series.  Here is an index (the headings are links):

• Rent claims in eviction proceedings

Is it worth bothering about pursing evicted tenants for their rent arrears?

• Interest claims in eviction proceedings

Its difficult enough to get the rent arrears out of defaulting tenants, they’re never going to pay interest are they?

• Costs in eviction proceedings

You may claim them in your tenancy agreement, but are you ever going to get them in real life?

Whats your view – visit the posts and leave a comment!

NB Read about the Landlord Law Eviction Service.

OFT Victory in Foxtons unfair contract terms case.
This is my initial report on the case, and explains the judgment.

The OFT v. Foxton case – commission on renewals
This item looks specifically at what the judgment says on the question of commision on renewals, with reference to the status of these clauses now, and quotes extensively from the wording of the Judgement.

Letting agents – instead of renewal fees
This post discusses what some dishonest agents are doing to replace the renewal commission they are losing, and discusses also the ‘fiduciary duties’ of agents (which seem to have been forgotten by many agents).

Advice for landlords seeking to recover commisison post OFT v. Foxtons
This post gives some guidance to landlords on what they can do now (ie as at July 2009 to the date of this post) if they think they may have a claim against their agents as a result of the Foxtons case.

Foxtons to appeal decision in OFT unfair terms case
This announced the news that Foxtons intended to appeal the decision.

Foxtons withdraws appeal
Looking at the reasons why Foxtons decided not to proceed

Foxtons case concluded – now is the time for agents to review their agency agreements
Summing up and final comments.

An interesting case. It is shame that we could not have the benefit of the Court of Appeals views, as cases on the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations are rare and it is always good to get some guidance. However this is a very useful decision, and not just for agents contracts.