Ben cooks supper

Yesterday was our anniversary. Frazzy and I met 2 years ago. Being an obsessive cook I celebrated by knocking up a Thai Prawn curry with these huge monsters from our local Chinese supermarket and a chocolate Mousse from an Elizabeth David book I have hanging around.

Result? A lovely romantic, candle-lit moment.

Other result? Waking up this morning to Frazzy complaining about the state I had left the kitchen in…..caution….man in the kitchen.

Time to get out the tenancy agreements audiobook

Tessa sent me her new audio book package on the ins and outs of tenancy agreements and asked for my thought on it. So I loaded it up and set to, with the bleach and scourers and immediately became engrossed.

As regular readers will know Tessa pulls off that very rare trick for lawyers of explaining things that even non- lawyers like me can understand and this welcome addition to her section 21 e-book is in the same vein.

Frazzy dipped in and out and was making comments on Tessa’s points in ways that surprised me, as she has no knowledge of properties at all, apart from how messy I can make them, so that is testament to how clear Tessa communicates complex subjects.

About the audiobook

The kit comprises 3 separate audio sections, all accompanied by a file in written format where you will have a record of the script.

I like the idea of audio books for law because trying to read law can be quite frustrating if you haven’t got the training.

And you can listen in the car, or as in my case, up to your elbows in suds and still take it all in. I kept running back to my note pad scribbling bullet points of things, I am ashamed to say, after 21 years of working in housing advice and teaching it I should have known but didn’t.

For me the big strength of the audiobook is that for each legal point established she gives a practical, everyday example of what it means in real world situations. I have never heard anyone do that before. A gold star for that alone.

Also I was soaking up the knowledge, as well as the mess, I found I had very few moments where I wanted to stop and say “Ah but what if?……” This is because it is all so clearly explained and when those moments came up 10 seconds later my questions were answered anyway.

Useful for trainers and students as well as landlords

Now I know that the main market for this is going to be landlords, with a few tenants wanting to understand things too, but as I listened to it occurred to me very early on, what a great resource it would be for housing advice teams and law students, as a sort of Brodies or York notes version of housing law.

Stick it on your iPod and go jogging and by the time you get back from a decent run you’ll be an expert.

Beyond the essentials of landlord/tenant law as set down in statutes she also goes into more of the less well known nitty gritty stuff and I couldn’t find an area of setting up, managing and ending tenancies that isn’t covered in this kit, including all the difficult points that make people’s lives a misery when they get them wrong, such as tenants taking in lodgers, problems of joint tenancies, agency law, dealing with rent arrears, enforcing breaches of contracts or unfair terms in tenancy agreements.

Essential for letting agents

Tessa and I both strongly believe that accommodation agents should be licensed and regulated. It’s not going to happen but if I owned a letting agency I would make this audio kit mandatory for all my staff and test them on it regularly.

I think many landlord/tenant disputes would not even occur if the professionals in the field knew what they were supposed to.

Better than a course (and good for kitchens too) …

For years now I have taught a training course for Shelter teaching those new to housing advice the rules on how the world works, it runs for 4 days. I would scrap that course, save your money and buy this kit.

Even if housing law is not your thing, your kitchen will at least be sparkling….as is mine……..for now………..

Ben Reeve Lewis

Note – you can buy the Tenancy Agreements Audiobook >> here.

There is a special offer running with big discounts if you buy before 10.00 pm on Monday 12 September.

• Tenants forced out of properties without due process because the landlord wants a rent increase,
• families with young children being moved into substandard and dangerous houses,
• illegal immigrants living in garden sheds.

Hats off to Jon Snow and Channel Four for making the program, we need more of this sort of thing to bring the problem kicking and screaming out into the daylight.  However we all know what the answer is.

More houses need to be built.  A lot more houses.

The program said that there was a shortage of around a million houses, the biggest housing crisis since the second world war, but house building is at an all time low.

With an increasing population (the article from the Smith Institute I reviewed last week estimated that the population is due to increase by 30% in the next 25 years) it is imperative that something be done and quickly, but whether it will or not is anyones guess.  The writer of the Pickles letter rather thought that new housing was going to be reduced as a result of the housing benefit cuts.

Legislation can only do so much

Jon Snow’s program just shows the limitations of legislation.  We have laws prohibiting ALL the problems the program found.

However if Local Authorities do not have the manpower or the funding to prosecute, then the criminal landlords are just going to laugh and carry on regardless.

Particularly if, even when there is a successful prosecution, the fines awarded are so pathetically low.

Tenants rights

Tenants have the right to bring civil claims against their landlords for compensation, for example for breach of the repairing covenants and also for personal injury if the disrepair affects their health (as it did the daughter in one of the properties featured in the program).

However, if there is nowhere for them to go if they get evicted, and/or if their landlords are known to be violent, are tenants going to go to court to enforce their legal rights?  What do you think?

If tenants are two a penny and housing is in short supply, will they risk getting a reputation as a ‘stroppy tenant’ by making complaints?

In his recent article on this blog recently, RLA Chairman Alan Ward suggested that we needed more educated tenants who would challenge landlords thus forcing them to raise their standards.  But this won’t work if there is an oversupply of tenants and an undersupply of rented properties for them to live in.

There has been much criticism in the past of the landlords register suggested by Julie Rugg in her report a few years ago, but it would have helped local authorities keep track of landlords and assist in prosecutions.

The regulation of letting agents recommended in her report is also LONG over due.

Charity landlords

Finally, landlords as a charity.  I trust the Charities Commission are now going to investigate the charitable status of the firm mentioned in the program, the Meridian Foundation.

It might also be a good idea to check up on similar firms too.  Charities get quite a few financial advantages and I am not happy at the prospect of this sort of landlord getting the benefit of them.

However an inventory should not just be a list of furniture and other contents – it should give details of their condition, the condition of the property itself such as walls and windows, and should also provide information about meters, and certificates.

I have recently learned of a new phone app which may make creating this a lot easier, produced by a company called infuma.This allows you to create an inventory report using your phone (iphone or android), where you dictate into your phone and also take photos which are incorporated into a report.  The report is then transcribed and is available for use online.

I have to say that this looks pretty good to me (although I have not used it and have only seen the information provided by the company and the video on their website).

It will of course be useful for landlords and agents.  However it would also be useful for tenants to keep a record of the property before moving out, if their landlord refuses to arrange a checkout meeting and they are concerned about unjustified deductions from their deposit.

The app can be downloaded both from the apple app store and from android and costs £1.79.  You will get five free reports (so good value for tenants only wanting to do one!). Each report after that, which includes the full dictation, transcription and photography service, is charged at £9.50.

The company say that the report will stand up in court so it is worth a try.  £1.79 is not a lot to loose.  For more information and the video click here.

The report considers what seems to be a permanent trend – the decline in home ownership in this country.  Together with the worrying fact that this does not appear to be relected in government policy, which is still based on the idea of increasing home ownership.

Decline in home ownership

The peak of home ownership it seems was in 2003 with 70.9%. It has now slid down to 67.4% in 2009/10.

There are a number of reasons for this:

• property prices are high meaning that it is beyond the reach of most people
• Greater personal debt, in particular
• young people leaving full time education having to pay off loans taken out to pay for tuition and other expenses
• Since the financial crises mortgages have been harder to obtain, and
• Changing work patterns and increased mobility make renting more attractive

Problems for government

Heywood states that the English population is set to increase by about 30% in the next 25 years which equates to some 250,000 households per year. With house building at an all time low, this is worrying.

However government seems to be turning a blind eye. The coalition has affirmed its commitment to extending home ownership, for example  Grant Shapps ‘Age of Aspiration’ speech. To quote from the paper

Much government policy and activity is predicated on high and rising levels of home ownership. This includes economic policy, asset-based welfare policies such as elderly care in the community, revenue from taxation including stamp duty land tax, and a range of other services.

Asset based welfare policies are those which provide service on the basis that they will be paid back by the recipients from their assets – in most cases the family home.  However if people are living in rented accommodation this will not be possible – meaning in most cases that government will not get repaid.

Pluses and minuses

However it is not all bad news. Here are some positive points on a declining home ownership:

• the private rented sector is more suitable for a more mobile work force which may be needed in future.

• a contracting housing market may be less prone to ‘bubbles’ and if less volatile this may  help improve economic performance

• if less personal wealth is locked up in housing this may result in a different pattern of saving which could benefit other parts of the economy such as manufacturing

On the other hand:

• would the fact that fewer people will have access to the equity in their properties to fund purchases result in a lower level of consumption, and

• would a lower consumption in owner occupier related expenditure such as DIY products have a negative effect?

Social housing

Turning to social housing providers, Heywood makes the point that falling home ownership levels (and an increasing population) will only exacerbate the current problems of finding affordable housing for those unable to buy.

If the government wants housing to be available at ‘affordable’ sub market rates, then government is going to have to get involved.  It is not reasonable or realistic to expect the private sector to provide this. However the current government does not seem poised to take any significant action.

Conclusions

I have only been able to skim through the report and it really needs a more careful analysis than I am able to provide. However some of the main concluding points are:

• Government must come to terms with the fact that its current policy of extending home ownership is unrealistic unless it is able to provide substantial investment – which we all know is not going to happen

• It must also look at how to bring in institutional investment and expand the corporate landlord sector. Bearing in mind that a large proportion of current landlords in the private rented sector are private individuals with only few properties.

• There is also the huge problem of how to increase housing supply from its current catastrophic levels.

• Plus there are also implications for other government activities as the assumption of high and rising levels of owner occupation are embedded in policies.

The report concludes as follows

In considering a strategic response to what could prove a continuing shift in the balance of tenures, the issue of an alternative social vision will therefore inevitably be raised. Such a vision will have to encompass the role of the state, the funding of welfare, and the relationship between housing tenure and the culture of citizenship. It will involve developing new concepts, but it will also involve a clear-sighted application of those new concepts across the full breadth of public policy formation.

You will find the report online here.  What do you think about this?  Do you think Heywood is right?  What action do you think government  should take in view of falling home ownership levels?

‘Assured Shorthold Tenancies – your complete guide to section 21′

from Ben Reeve-Lewis

Nearly everyone in the country has heard of Assured Shorthold Tenancies. Most readers of Landlord Law Blog will also have heard of the Section 21 notices that are used to bring them to an end.

Working in housing advice I encounter them on a daily basis, and I probably see more than most. Either my own clients or my colleagues run them by me to see if they are valid or not.

Do you know what? 90% of them aren’t, including sometimes those issued by solicitors and even a couple of well-known online eviction specialists.

I’ll let you into a secret. When working in a busy advice or homelessness office, where hundreds of tenants every week come with tales of woe and threats of eviction, the job is to prevent the loss of the home, and do you know what the first port of call for us is? The notice. If the notice is invalid you’ve prevented homelessness straight away.

Section 21 notices have been with us for 22 years now, you would think that getting them correctly filled in, served and actioned would be a piece of cake. In reality, what seems a fairly simple process on the surface is actually fraught with pitfalls and legal details that it can be easy to get wrong.

The landlord that gets it wrong will find themselves spending a small fortune of getting problems sorted, as well as having the tenant in residence for a hell of a lot longer than they want.

Tessa Shepperson long ago spotted this problem and in response has written the definitive guide to S21s. In writing it she has also pulled off that rare trick in legal publications, making it jargon free and understandable to non-lawyers like most of us.

I have been giving advice on S21s since they were introduced in 1989, I even train people on them.  Yet just a few pages into reading Your Complete Guide to S21 I found myself repeatedly saying “I didn’t know that”.

It succinctly and logically takes you through the background laws and a little bit of rental history to set the picture for you, before walking you through the procedure from start to finish. Throughout the publication she points out the pitfalls at different stages, illustrated handily with case laws simply explained and real life examples from her clients.

Everything I have ever seen go wrong with a Section 21 is covered and you even get sample documents of S21s and Notice to Quit and a certificate of service, so no need to buy them from Oyez anymore.

• If you are a private landlord this will save you time stress and money.
• If you are a housing advice/homelessness officer this will allow you to block possession action and prevent homelessness more effectively.
• If you are a social housing officer this will prevent cases blowing up in your face further down the line and save you that unpleasant bollocking you get from your manager.

Every housing solicitor and adviser will tell you that there are a couple of ‘Industry bibles’ that are never far from reach.  For instance “Quiet Enjoyment” and the seminal “Defending Possession Proceedings”. Time to add “Your Complete Guide to Section 21”.

I now have a copy in my top drawer at work, hidden from the eyes of colleagues so they won’t realise that after 22 years I still need to look things up that I previously thought I knew inside out.

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Note that the ebook is available for sale – >> click here to find out more.