[Ben Reeve Lewis regular Friday feature has been temporarily re-named – no news today, just a manifesto for world domination … (Note that Ben’s views do not necessarily reflect those of the management)]
If I Ruled the World.
I have been posting and tweeting a lot over the past week or so about rogue landlords, rogue agents and Shelter’s campaign. Plenty of others are still discussing these things so I figure it is still within the remit of a news round item……….well that’s my excuse Tessa.
But seriously I feel I am getting a reputation for slagging off when what I should really be doing is saying how I think the lettings business should be operating in the UK, rather than jeering from the side-lines. Give people the chance to jeer at me for a change.
So here is my Manifesto for a better deal for all in the renting world.
Rogue landlords.
As you all know there is no government commitment to regulating landlords. The argument being there are enough rules and regulations in place for punishing offenders. It is certainly true there is a raft of legislation in place, the chief ones being
The Protection from Eviction Act 1977 – which makes harassment and illegal eviction criminal offences.- Breach of Covenant for Quiet Enjoyment – A civil way of dealing with the same thing.
- Section 11 of the Landlord and Tenant Act – is regulation for punishing cases of disrepair.
- Compulsory HMO Licencing
There are also a bunch of ancillary things which plug various gaps, like Section 40 of the Administration of Justices Act, Section 4 of the Landlord and tenant Act, Sections 27 and 28 of the Housing Act 1988, and on and on.
In this I don’t disagree with either the government view or Shelter’s campaign to get council’s to be more pro-active in prosecuting rogues but it is not as simple as that. The theory is great but the actual execution is another matter.
TROs like me can’t act in isolation; we need the back-up of our own legal departments and the support of police and the courts. Most TROs will tell you we get none of that.
Nobody would argue with Shelter’s campaign to prosecute rogue landlords, even those not involved in housing hate bullies but they need to widen their focus, not just look to point score against hated councils. If they would call for judges to impose stiffer penalties and to simplify the prosecution system I would be the first person to sign up.
I find myself leaning towards a short sharp shock technique personally, preferably a civil matter where damages are far more punitive than criminal court and less complex to follow.
Unless you re-categorise harassment I can’t see that getting better, it is difficult to prove and often goes on out of hours where there are no witnesses. Illegal eviction however is another matter and is relatively easy to quantify and for that I think it should be a straight to court matter. A set civil penalty, like deposit protection was supposed to be, of say 3 times the annual rent, payable within 6 weeks to the unlawfully evicted tenant or face forced sale of the property to clear the debt.
That would stop it.
Rogue agents.
Mandatory licencing and compulsory, annual exams for all staff to maintain their licence. [Exams? That’ll scare off everyone! Ed]
My mate Eamonn is a plumber and every couple of years he has to sit exams to keep his right to fit central heating systems. Why not agents?
Back in the 1990s London was awash with immigration law centres, more often than not operated by some very dodgy characters with non-existent legal qualifications from god knows where. These people usually doubled as people traffickers, sweat shop owners (employing the people they trafficked for £2 an hour) and supplying accommodation that they pushed people around in because most were here illegally, on threat of bubbling them to the home office for deportation.
The government brought in proper licencing for them and they dropped away overnight. Don’t get me wrong, I am sure they just got into other lines of work but they were driven out of housing.
All good agents should have no problem with this. If they are above board and professional they would welcome the rogues being driven out of business and the professionalization of their expertise.
Courts:
Pressure should be brought to bear on the judiciary to impose maximum fines for harassment cases, £5,000 per offence, not a few hundred quid.
Tenancy agreements.
Six month Assured Shorthold tenancies should be extended to a minimum of 2 years to give some level of security and allow communities to grow. Recent figures in the English Homes Survey show a rental community in a constant state of moving, with only a small percentage of tenants being in their accommodation for more than 1 year.
Short lets might be encouraging for landlords but they disincentivise tenants to take ownership of their property and settle in. The transient nature of short lets destroys communities.
Shorten and simplify eviction processes.
An odd one for me to champion but if I am advocating longer fixed term agreements I know you will have to pick up the slack elsewhere. It takes far too long for a landlord to evict tenants.
The time alone provokes illegal evictions by desperate landlords owed money by feckless tenants. Also the cost of eviction makes many rogues weigh up the cost of doing things legally against a paltry fine for illegal eviction. [It doesn’t have to be expensive – Ed]
Housing benefit:
Get rid of bloody LHA and give tenants the choice of direct payments to the landlords. A survey this week confirmed everyone’s fears that rather than lower rents for housing benefit tenants, landlords are moving away from them in droves.
Why should landlords be expected to underwrite the government’s austerity drive? Landlords are effectively small businesses. Are they asking Lloyds or Barclays to do it? No they would tell them to get stuffed and walk off to Marbella with their million pound bonuses.
Change the rules for disrepair:
At the moment, under Section 11 of the LTA a landlord is obliged to carry out certain structural repairs. That legal obligation exists even if the tenant owes the landlord £5,000 rent and the landlord is facing repossession.
Other countries have rules whereby if the tenant doesn’t pay their rent the landlord doesn’t have to do the repairs. Similarly though, if the landlord doesn’t do the repairs the tenant can withhold rent. I quite like the give and take simplicity of that.
Grants for small landlords.
We need landlords to invest in property because there is a property shortage and people can’t afford deposits to buy. Start council departments to help people get into landlording with full support, in terms of advice and grants.
Solar panels will wipe out tenants electricity bills, provide extra income for landlords selling the excess electricity on and qualify them for tax relief for eco conversions.
I actually believe all this stuff and at the same time I know I am being provocative.
Vote me in as housing Tsar and I promise I will bring these changes in. Like all politicians, I also promise to fiddle my expenses and employ Glenn Mulcair to hack your phone if you complain.
Ben Reeve Lewis
Follow Ben Reeve Lewis on Twitter for more demented ramblings
I quite agree about shortening and simplifying eviction processes, however, in my experience (round here anyhow) the main delay’s with the Courts. Once a District Judge ordered a hearing “adjourned to the first open date after 7 days” because of the tenant’s non attendance (to be fair he had an EXCELLENT reason, being arrested) and that turned into 2 months.
On minimum 2-year ASTs, what about, though, where a tenant doesn’t want to be locked into a two year fixed term? Suppose that the property turns out to have loads of things wrong with it that are covered up and they want out early?
Also, on the idea that “arrears = no repairs,” this would need to be well thought out. Housing Benefit’s normally paid four weekly in arrears on a weekly tenancy, so 3 out of 4 weeks the tenant is technically in arrears (albeit that will be cleared up on Week 4). Does that mean that if the tenant reports repairs on those three weeks the landlord’s safe from having to do anything?
I agree totally on the idea of HB paid to tenants being daft, though. Whose brainfart was that?!
On court dates. Yeah, a recent mortgage repo case I did in June was adjourned on a slight technical problem for first available date after 7 days. The actual first available date was end of August. If you were a landlord how furious would you be?
2 year tenancies: Most people want security rather than flexibility but a second mortgage type could be created for shorter lets by mutual agreement. In Norway they have 3 year minimum lets and if the landlrod doesnt keep all in order the tenant can give 1 month’s notice and then just leave, so this pushes up standards.
Arrears/no repairs: I agree it would need some fine tuning, all of my suggestions above would, but the principal is quite apealing. I absolutely hate having to warn landlrods about damages for disrepair when their tenant, who I am usually defending, owes them a small fortune. They sound incredulous and I feel very embarassed and even think “If they owed me 5 grand I wouldnt do the bloody repair either” but the law is what it is
I had a very nice couple take up a tenancy on 1 July. At 10pm on 3 July, he rang me and said they had changed their mind and didn’t want the place. On 4 July he rang again and said yes, they would take it after all. On 7 July he was screaming and shouting down the phone at me (for 20 minutes non stop). I am stuck with this fruitcake family for six months, so I most certainly would not be in favour of two year AST’s.
On the subject of Housing Benefit. I have an elderly lady tenant whose HB is paid directly to me, because she has been my tenant since the days when this arrangement could be made. She has very little in the way of money management skills, and by virtue of going overdrawn a few times, the bank charges have rolled up and the bank now take a very large slice of her pension and pension credit every month. If her HB was paid into her bank account, they would take that as well. At least she has a roof over her head and her rent is taken care of.
Does anyone know why on earth the Government does not change the rules bakc and allow HB to be paid directly to the landlord? Is anyone in favour of the present set-up?
I’ll vote for you. Where do I sign?
Iknow Smithy it is just the daftest idea. The original aim was to empower people by not treating them like children.
Just like the coming HB cap, everyone in housing could see the problems it would bring. Housing workers hate it, landlords hate it and most tenants I meet hate it.
Most cases of harassment and illegal eviction I have to deal with are driven by rent arrears and in most cases the arrears are the result of LHA payments going to the tenant.
As for your fruitcakes…..risks of the trade I’m afraid. Maybe we could have 2 year tenancies bt with an extra ground for eviction of “Getting on the landord’s tits” haha
Ben
Is there, or are there any plans to provide, a list of rogue agents? I had a terrible experience with a very poor agent and it would be great to be able to tell others about this and let them decide if they want to use that agent.
Ric
There’s a well known website called “Rate or hate your landlord” where people put that sort of thing. And another one specifically for agents that I came across the other day but cant remember the name of.
Depending on the nature of your compaint you could try reporting them to trading standards or if they are accredited, go to the accreditation body and make a complaint.
I think what is depressing is not so much the complaints about rogue agents but the stories I hear of landlrods and tenants with normal ones who are very unhappy with the service they got, even from major high street names. I rented recently through a well known agent and the service I got was bloody appaling. Not criminal, but I got the impression, and it is commonly reported, that once they got my money they couldnt care less.
Just before moving in we hit a glitch that only lasted a couple of hours. I went to the agent and asked him if the landlord would be amenable to us moving in 1 week later. The manager wouldnt even look me in the eye and just flatly refused to run it by the lanldord saying he just knew he would agree and there was no point, and that was it, I was going to lose my holding deposit. I felt like he was treating me as a criminal, not a valued customer whose money he was holding. And when we signed up there were quite a few questions about the contract that we wanted clarifying. On each occasion the staff said they would phone the landlord to ask but they didnt.
There are some great agents out there. I had particularly good and friendly service from Bushells of East Dulwich last time. Why can’t all agents be like that?
Okay, thanks, Ben.
I will try and find that agent website.
In light of the report Tessa blogged on 18th July about the lack of enforcement of the existing laws, I don’t see how one can conclude that the legislation in place is insufficient or inadequate.
You say: “Pressure should be brought to bear on the judiciary to impose maximum fines for harassment cases, £5,000 per offence, not a few hundred quid.” This simply isn’t proportional to the penalties meted out for other offences. You can’t have £5K for harassment, and £100 (or less) for physical assault. Nor can you do away with the burden of proof for a criminal offence and make it a “set civil penalty” like a parking ticket.
“Six month Assured Shorthold tenancies should be extended to a minimum of 2 years to give some level of security and allow communities to grow.” For a start, there’s no minimum term for an AST. And in my experience as a landlord, it’s tenants who want to retain the option to move (i.e. I’ll often grant a one year term with a break clause after six months, but only because that’s what the tenant wants). Personally, I’d be delighted to have tenants commit for two years or more, but they never do.
“It takes far too long for a landlord to evict tenants.” Yes, but that’s mostly because of the burden on the court service, and consequent delays, not an inherent problem with the legislation. Two months is fair for a s.21, as is two weeks for a s.8 citing grounds 8, 10 & 11. The unacceptable delays come after that, with courts and bailiffs.
“Get rid of bloody LHA and give tenants the choice of direct payments to the landlords.” I don’t take tenants on benefits, but AFAIK, the landlord can apply for payments to be made direct to him after non-receipt of rent over a certain period. If it’s the case that the tenant can’t opt for this from the outset, then I’d agree it’s a nonsense.
“Other countries have rules whereby if the tenant doesn’t pay their rent the landlord doesn’t have to do the repairs. Similarly though, if the landlord doesn’t do the repairs the tenant can withhold rent. I quite like the give and take simplicity of that.” The two wrongs do make a right approach? Yes, it might work, until a tenant died due to disrepair. So, to avoid this, you’d have to make it a cast iron defence if the tenant hadn’t paid rent for, say, two months. Wonderful loophole if you’re a rogue landlord – get your unsuspecting tenant to pay you in cash, and no repairs necessary, ever.
And there is already a procedure, established by case law, whereby a tenant may arrange repairs himself and deduct the cost from the rent. (Lee Parker v Izzet [1971] 1 WLR 1688).
“Vote me in as housing Tsar and I promise I will bring these changes in.” No thanks!
So that’s my tsar vote and subsequent knighthood up the swanny Westminter haha.
Drilling down into how my suggestions may work is entirely appropriate. The point of the aricle was to provoke just such debate.
I was being fanciful with the fines but the serious point is that judges dont levy anywhere near what they are allowed to under the PFEA. Many people write to me saying that prosecution would deter rogue landlords but if the fines are as puny as they generally are I thik it would have the opposite effect.
ASTs: I was thinking about this just last night. I appreciate that in your experience the tenants you have met didnt want a longer let but this is not born out by my experience. Most hate the disruption and expense of moving all the time. Also it is not in my experience as either a housing advice worker or a tenant myself that landlords are prepared to grant tenancies of longer than 12 months max. I would suggest that you are unusual in this respect. In my recent move I asked my agent for a 2 year contract with a 12 month break clause. What I was presented with was simply a 12 month AST without any negotiations. Their view was it is the same thing. No it isnt.
The recently published English Homes Survey highlighted the problems with the constant fluidity of the AST market. Tenants are at the mercy of the landlord’s wishes with no defence to possession. In Shelter’s recent report they found that a high percentage of tenants were reluctant to complain about anything to their landlord in case it resulted in eviction. That is no basis for an equal relationship between customer and provider.
Repairs: Lee-Parker simply provides an example of the procedure for ‘right of Set off’ but it has always been tricky to invoke in practice. disreair is a huge problem, again born out by numerous surveys and reports. If you try to understand how to calculate damages for it you could easily drive yourself mad. Tenants often simply withold rent for disrepair and landlords often dont do repairs when rent is owed. I think it would help everyone if this problem were equalised and made eaiser for all parties. The system I propose obviously works in the various countries it is used ( I only heard about Norway and Texas) But I would like to now more about it.