Generation Rent, the controversial pressure group campaigning alongside Shelter and others for the scrapping of landlords’ rights to evict under Section 21, claims it has public support for its demands - including from Conservative voters.
It claims three fifths of respondents to a poll it conducted agree that tenants who pay their rent and take care of their home should have an automatic right to stay in it, while 61 per cent believe that landlords who evicted tenants in order to sell or move back in should pay the tenant's moving costs.
The group claims only 21 per cent of respondents thought landlords should be able to evict a tenant without giving a reason.
Support for controlling rents was even higher: nearly three-quarters of respondents agreed that landlords should not be allowed to raise rents by more than the rate of inflation.
There was stronger support still for the belief that landlords should be subject to even more regulation (79 per cent) and that tenants should expect the same level of consumer protection from their housing as they would from other services, such as their gas or electricity providers (81 per cent).
The campaign group - which has been consistently opposing the rights of lettings agents and landlords in recent years - says its poll reveals that these measures would be popular across the whole population and political spectrum.
A majority of owner occupiers (57 per cent) support tenants receiving compensation if evicted by a landlord selling up or moving back in, it says, while older voters are more in favour of rent caps than younger voters – 79 per cent of over-55s agreed with the statement compared with 68 per cent of 18 to 34 year olds.
Among people who voted Conservative in the 2017 General Election, support for limits on rent increases is 72 per cent; meanwhile 56 per cent agree that tenants should have their moving costs paid if evicted to allow the landlord to move in or sell on.
Some 64 per cent of Tory voters disagree that landlords should be able to evict without reason – which is more than the wider population.
There are no details of the size or dates of the polling given on the Generation Rent website.
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Wow. If they get their way there will soon be very few houses at all available to rent as landlords have had enough of being dictated to. Where are you going to put everyone then? You'll have to build a big shelter shelter!!!
"Where are you going to put everyone then?"
In the properties that landlords sell. Sorry if it is confusing for you.
Just to clarify for you Nabby in case you were confused!
The majority of tenants will still not be able to buy even at reduced prices. Not that prices will actually come down as market forces will continue to push the prices up.
Just to clarify for you, Gordon Clown, since you are definitely confused, either landlords will have to lower their asking price to the point that tenants can buy, or landlords will have to keep the properties and absolutely will have to continue to be dictated to whether Paul Singleton feels they have had enough of being dictated to or not.
It is simple. Landlords are fed up being dictated to apparently. Well, either they will have to take what is coming, or they will have to lower their asking prices enough such that they can actually be rid of the property. Either way, the property will still exist, unless the landlord chooses to demolish the property (their capital).
Keep deluding yourself with Gordon Brown level economic thinking though if it comforts you.
Cheerio.
I don't know where you live but property prices are booming where we are. I will write it slower this time so that you understand. Prices will always go up and the majority of tenants will not buy because they cannot afford it. The market dictates, not politics!
Cheerio old boy
Crash Gordon,
So you are saying landlords will keep their properties? Well that answers Paul Singleton's question of "Where are you going to put everyone then?" doesn't it? Landlords are not going to sell, rental properties are going to continue to be available, and landlords are going to continue to be dictated to, even though, according to Paul, they have "had enough" of it.
And if this is not political I take it the industry will be ceasing all lobbying efforts? And when "the market" at 10 Downing Street brings in further measures in the future, there will be no complaining from the industry about this "market" action.
Sounds like everyone is satisfied.
Cheerio.
What lobbying?
People with good jobs will still buy as there is apparently a shortage. I have 3 grown up children who have/will all want to buy a house. There are plenty of buyers out there. Most tenants will either have to pay more or put a strain on the local councils etc for housing.
Gordon Clown: "People with good jobs will still buy as there is apparently a shortage. I have 3 grown up children who have/will all want to buy a house. There are plenty of buyers out there."
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Your children who have already bought are irrelevent. Paul Singleton's question was where will the tenants go. Your children who have already bought are not tenants so they will be just fine.
Regarding your grown up children that will want to buy in the future, they must be tenants currently. (I assume your grown up children do not live with you.) So, by your own admission, your tenant children are waiting in the wings to buy from the landlords fleeing the market. Exactly my point. To answer Paul Singleton's question yet again for you, where are we going to put your tenant children when landlords sell up? IN THE HOUSES THAT LANDLORDS SELL!!!! YOU JUST CONFIRMED IT!!!!
Paul Singleton's propaganda is defeated. Excellent news for your tenant children that landlords are fleeing. You should be pleased.
Again, sorry if it is confusing for you. You are clearly not very good at this.
I am starting to think you might be the actual Gordon Brown.
The water just got heated up one more degree on you.
Cheerio.
Hello Nabby
Resorting to insults? Always a sign that you are wrong.
And as it happens 2 of my daughters are at home but actively looking to buy.
Gordon "no-more-boom-and-bust, prices only go up" Brown,
Not sure why it is relevant that they are daughters, but landlords fleeing the market is at worst neutral news for your adult children that are currently living with you. There is also no doubt that this is suppressing prices (Nationwide -0.5% today, also look at what the annual number has done in the last number of months.)
All good news for your daughters. You should be very pleased with what is going on.
You can say I am wrong all you like. Good luck with that. You are just not noticing the temperature of the water rising by one degree at a time on amateur landlords.
You are clearly out of touch, Gordon Brown. You clearly are not paying attention to the change in the political winds. Oh yes, but politics has no effect does it. OK.
Well, we will leave it here as I doubt anyone else is reading this old article comments section and we are clearly never going to agree on anything. If you think you have rebutted my points, good for you.
Cheerio.
Nabby you sound like a nasty piece of work. bet you hate your landlord and have been dictating to him.
If they want to scrap section 21’s then we need an alternative to be able get the property back. Ie tenants don’t pay, regularly pay late, do not keep the house to a decent standard, what if the landlord needs to sell for health or financial reasons, the list goes on and on.
I am a landlord with a large portfolio and we are now looking at selling properties as the balance is getting out of sync, both from the government and organisations that see every landlord as an evil rouge and that every tenant has a halo above their heads
If you have valid reasons for wanting your property back, there are many other alternatives to Section 21.
You can go down the section 8 route for breaches of contract, but it does mean that you need to appear in court. If section 21 is scrapped it will make little difference to getting your property back, however it will make an enormous difference to the number of landlords willing to rent property as it was before 1988 housing act. This will simply make rental property scarcer and more expensive.
Let's ban tenants from walking away from their tenancies just because they have reached the end of the agreed term. How can it be fair that, just because the tenancy has come to an end, they can walk out without compensating the Landlord for having to find a new tenant whilst having to fork out for council tax and receiving no rent in the meantime....its outrageous. Surely someone ending a contract purely on the basis that it has reached its end date as previously agreed between both parties is ridiculous!!
If these figure are true the this is really terrifying. My guess is this "survey" consisted of very carefully manufactured questions to obtain these sort of statistics. Nevertheless it really bothers me that the media have such an unbalanced view of the lettings industry, landlords and managing agents. There does not seem to be a voice for "The Minority" which in this case is landlords. In all other spheres of life the minority is deafening.
they only asked tenants. so it is a biased survey. They should asked registered landlords how they feel. It will be 95% the opposite.
Generation rant and Shelter are clueless
Have no idea of the implications of such a policy or indeed where all the tenants will live if landlords withdraw on mass, but then again they house no one so not their problem! Today’s problem is donations and keeping government on side
i believe they it is part of a plan of removing all the properties from landlords and then the council can make the profits.
I believe there is an ulterior motive to all this though. By driving Landlords out of the PRS and reducing the buy to let market as a whole there will be more sales stock which will have an impact on prices. In turn this will enable those more well off tenants to get on to the property ladder - reducing demand from tenants and driving down rents making it more affordable.
Of course this is the case. Property prices are way too high and are unaffordable for many first time buyers. This is a good way to drive down prices.
Agree the theory is correct but it will take a heck of a correction in house prices to make a fundamental difference to how many buyers/tenants get on the ladder .. even if prices fell 10% which would be a considerable crash it is only the deposit element of this the tenant saves on moving in costs plus a small amount of tax/fees .. I think the bigger problem is the lack of rental supply whilst such properties are withdrawn and eventually some find their way to tenants.
Battered Landlord said: "but it will take a heck of a correction in house prices to make a fundamental difference to how many buyers/tenants get on the ladder"
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Battered landlord, you are talking nonsense. You have a choice, lower the price enough such that existing tenants will buy, or keep your properties and take what is coming. What is it going to be?
If a 10% drop in prices is not enough, you will have to lower prices more. Or be stuck with the properties.
Cheerio.
Generation Rent should remember who actually owns the property. What they fail to understand is that the vast majority of section 21 evictions are down to non payment of rent but sometimes a landlords circumstances change and we have to retain that option of being able to sell a property that we own. Take that option away and the majority of accidental landlords will disappear leaving Shelter and Generation Rent with a huge problem. Or not! As all they do is slag off landlords and don't actually provide any answers!
In many instances, don't banks own the properties with landlords acting as mere intermediaries? The Housing Act 1988 allows you to serve a Section 8 notice which will inform your tenant that you intend to take him to court if he doesn't pay within a further 14 days. You can potentially claim the rent arrears and any costs incurred. You can also take out insurance to protect you in case your tenant falls into arrears.
Sorry Sue - this seems like a very naive comment to me.... have YOU ever succeeded in regaining possession via a s.8? You'll find it's not even valid to APPLY, i.e. START the process, until there is a minimum of 2 months rental arrears (if that's the sub-section of s.8 you're relying on). and then you'll need to wait for a hearing (depending on where you are in the country that could be weeks or even months), THEN you'll probably find the judge or magistrate is sympathetic to the tenants and decides they can't be made "homeless" and have just been "silly" or "unlucky" so instead of granting you the possession order (which is NOT mandatory but discretionary) decides they can have another few months, or even a year, to "try and catch up" and that will be that. All other sub-sections are for various breaches of the tenancy agreement and are very hard to prove to the satisfaction of a judge, even if glaringly obviously blatant and appalling....
The ONLY safe option for a landlord is a MANDATORY and NO-FAULT (i.e. nothing needs to be proven beyond any doubt) method for recovery of a property. The s.21 is ridiculously slow, long-winded and problematic enough as it is and then has been undermined and under attack on top of that. Even so it is the landlord's only safety net and ultimate sanction. Without it the whole private rental sector will be plunged back into the dreadful dark-old days of a 1950s-type regime. Rental properties (and the portfolios made from them) will collapse in value and finance for "buy-to-let" will vanish quite literally overnight, never to be seen again unless a new 1988-like Act is somehow brought into being.
PS. you also seem mistaken about the mechanisms: if you apply for the so-called "accelerated" process under s.8 then you are not also able to recover rental arrears, if you don't apply for it then it's an even slower and more cumbersome process that is very likely to end in failure for the landlord and a wind-fall for the nearly always favoured tenant.
It will also drive down the prices of all those Tory owner occupiers who already own their home Sue. And it's not just about one big arrears situation where yes a section 8 would suffice. It's about those tenants who are persistently late or irregular with their payments or who fail to look after or care for the property in a way that is reasonable to expect, or that perhaps act in an anti social or aggressive way to their neighbours or indeed their Landlord etc etc. Pareto's law would now doubt apply to this problem as it does to every other aspects of our lives. On this basis 20% of all the tenancies will cause Landlords 80% of all their problems, We all know this and we must always have the right to a divorce when things just aren't working out. If we don't then the market will return to where it was pre 1988. Let's not forget why the S21 was introduced in the first place.
Sue Kelly, I assume that you don't understand why a section 8 notice is not worth the paper it is written on. A section 8 notice is defendable and in many cases will get thrown out by the judge when the tenant 'promises' to pay a bit extra each month. This of course never materialises and the whole process goes back and forth which is why you see people who are owed thousands of pounds and have spent thousands of pounds on programmes like 'Don't pay and we'll take it away'. There are too many people out there who have 'action' and 'landlord' in their company name who are wrongly advising on the best way to get your property back. That way is the Section 21.
Agree. Persistent non payers and antisocial tenants Must be evicted immediatly. No excuses acceptable.
Those that disagree Must be made to house these types of low lifes. They are not wanted in a hard working respectful society and are the reason along with the "do gooders" that we are heading for the cesspit.
why always pick on landlord who are trying to make an honest living and making ends meet whilst tenants are taking the easy way out not having to repair nor have any responsibility to pay. we have been doing our very best and yet keep being suppress with more laws, more licencing, more payment, even our rental property is more updated than our own house with upvc windows as required by the local hmo department. no wonder the economy in uk is against capitalism. you dont find many willing to work harder to make life better because the taxation and the rules and regulations is not worth working hard for. therefore like dominoes, it crumbles. even decisions made should have seen the financial impact eg immigration law etc
Would love to see all their faces if this becomes law and almost 90% of them are evicted shortly before their new law comes into effect!
Obviously without the s.21 they'd all become sitting tenants (or the equivalent) and, as we know, any property occupied by a sitting tenant is effectively blighted and worth at least 40% less than its open market value with full vacant possession.
I'm sure an awful lot of "accidental landlords" and landlords with just one or two properties would rather sell, even at 10% below market value, than be stuck forever with sitting tenants and an ever more hostile anti-landlord legal regime being steadily trundled out to appease these fools (and even though it will all ultimately work heavily against the very people currently demanding it).
Oh well... all as predicted by me long ago (check through some of my older posts if you doubt me).
Depressing but me-thinks 'tis only a taste of more, and worse, to come.
Correct Barry X, there will definitely be a burst of Section 21s when this is announced .. these tenants and generation rant shout in agreement for it but have no foresight to the knock on effects on themselves .. even if they themselves don’t get a notice next time they move they will find a big shift against them in supply / demand / rent levels .. #clueless
Clearly most or some writers here are not landlords and dont have a clue how to run a portfolio of rented properties and that includes the councils and government. Section 8 is a worthless and Very expensive piece of paper. Sec21, 6A, is the way to go and if the clueless ones agree to remove sec21 all my tenants just under a hundred, will recieve section 21 6A notices, simple. And I will choose to serve a new TA with notice of termination of tenancy at month 5..
Also I will be seeking to sell, making a very nice profit which i will reinvest in properties to sell to HA via councils so they can re house all the tenants left homeless by the forced action we professionals have to take.
Forgive me if this is appearing as a naive remark but if you Lease a car, for a period likely similar in length to a tenancy, then are you not obligated by the prevailing conditions throughout the term of the contract?
Whilst I am sure the supplier would be perfectly happy for you to enjoy its use and convenience; the lessee would have to be mindful that they must give it back to the owner at some point and with the minimum of damage.
Now like a Landlord, I am sure there must be mechanisms within that contract allowing the supplier to recover the vehicle, and possibly their costs, if its payments or contract terms are breached?
I have been a letting agent for 20+ years. We very rarely used the S21 for ‘defaulting’ reasons (though there were some instances), but more for ‘end of use’ reasons where Landlords had been offering the property form many years and had retired; or died.
Whilst the S8 is a very useful ‘prod’ to assist tenants in addressing some obligation issues, for the persistent late/non-payers who can afford other lifestyle preferences over paying the basic ‘roof over their head’ obligation, there needs to be a ‘termination’ instrument and the S21/Form6 is it.
Whilst the Charities are cognisant and campaign on behalf of some tenants’ troubles; landlords are not charities nor funded by donation.
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