Letting agents, landlords and property investors of all kinds will probably want to clear their diaries for the edition of Inside Out on BBC One in the London and south east this evening at 7.30pm.
Called Buy To Let Pitfalls, the show will focus on landlords who entered the sector to provide a pension for themselves, but then ran into difficulties.
The show will feature a landlord, Brian Nixon, whose portfolio of housing benefit tenants is causing him to scale back his investments following the need to instruct Landlord Action to handle two of the cases.
One of Nixon's tenants is in £6,000 arrears because she failed to fill out the necessary housing benefit forms and did not inform the landlord. Despite numerous warnings of eviction, the tenant makes the bailiff - who had 14 other cases that day - wait while she collected some of her belongings, leaving the rest to be dealt with by the landlord.
The programme also shows the state of the property on departure of the tenant who, after being evicted, went to the council to be re-housed.
Paul Shamplina, founder of Landlord Action, says: A system where landlords do not receive housing benefit directly from the council is simply not working. Years ago, renting to social housing tenants gave landlords a steady guaranteed flow of income, in return for supporting this sector by propping up the limited accommodation the council could offer. Everyone benefitted.
Now, we are seeing fewer landlords wanting to rent to housing benefit tenants because of cuts being made, the uncertainty with regards to Universal Credit and non-direct payment, particularly in the South-East where landlords could achieve far higher rent if they let to the private sector.
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