Agency slams four councils for policies which directl...

G romit
30 October 2023 07:43 AM

..and soon to join the growing list of councils teetering on bankruptcy due to massive rises in temporary housing costs due to a lack of rental properties.

You couldn't make this up! To call it a farce would be a gross understatement.

Barry X
30 October 2023 10:10 AM

The council pretends it wants to "....improve standards and avoid overcrowding by rogue landlords....." but really just sees this market sector as another sort of safe, lucrative, perennial bunce for them to safely and increasingly milk, fleece, bleed etc... obviously without much effort or real attempt to actually "improve" anything....
....the unintended but very predictable consequence is in the process they drive away the good landlords - not the "rouge" ones who ignore these things - and reduce choice and access to accommodation for the tenants who need it, plus increase the cost of the reduced supply they must increasingly compete for....

Councils seem to do such a great job.... especially socialist ones claiming to be "for the people" when really they work for themselves and against everyone else's best interests.

Nothing new here... same old same old....

Yawn.

Jonathan Sandford
30 October 2023 10:17 AM

Why linit the criticism to just these councils? Waltham Forest and Newham to name just two more have form for this.

As an agency, we been introduced to a number of prospective new landlords this year who were previously self-managing and in too many cases for our liking, the first thing we have to tell them is that their current occupancy is non-compliant.

For example, a 2 bed flat in Waltham Forest occupied by a couple who then let the other bedroom to a friend who was made redundant is now a non-mandatory HMO. The definition is a property that that is occupied by three or four unrelated people which form two or more households.

Planning permission is required to change the use from C3 to C4 and we have repeatedly been told that permission will not be granted.

Similarly, in Newham, where there is a large student population attending UEL, 3 students who can’t afford to rent singly are prevented from sharing for the same reason. To make these properties compliant, the tenants in the 2 bed flat will have to be given notice to leave and be replaced with either a couple or multiple tenants but all from the same family. The same applies with the 3 students.

The consequence of this is that many otherwise good tenants will have to be made homeless; in many cases, 3 people are needed to share the rent – even on a 2-bed flat - because for just two sharers, the rents in London are unaffordable but under the requirements driven by the Article 4 Declarations, this sharing will not be allowed and the penalties for non-compliance can be severe.

If ever there was one, this surely is an example of the law of unintended consequences

Does Waltham Forest, Newham and the other councils cited want to see perfectly good tenants renting perfectly good properties from perfectly good landlords having to be evicted through no fault of their own?

Our prospective new landlords were not happy to be told this even though our intention was simply to help them avoid financial penalties

Dare I say that the Renter’s Reform Bill would do more good if it sought to remove the artificial, policy-driven barriers to sharing.

Barry X
30 October 2023 17:48 PM

I fully agree with all you're saying here, @JS....

I well remember when all this started long-long ago... everything was different then, with a huge amount of flexibility and trust between good landlords and tenants, plenty of choice for everyone and bargains galore for the tenants while it was paradoxically a very profitable time for us even so....

As well as several suburban properties we self-managed close to where we lived, we used to own several large 3-bedroom (2 doubles and 1 single) ex-council flats in Westminster (Churchill Gardens and Lillington Gardens) - they all had large living rooms, balconies and reasonable kitchen diners.

We typically rented them out to flats sharers - usually two couples but sometimes two couples and a single person (normally an old university friend or perhaps a work colleague), i.e. 5 in total.

Sometimes there were already 5 people - perfectly reasonably - in the 3 bedroom flat designed for 5 people, with "5 bed spaces" - when it happened that between them they wanted to squeeze an extra person in for some reason, e.g. because the single person was suddenly in a relationship, didn't want to move out (and anyhow probably couldn't afford to) and so after agreeing it with the others, begged us to let his/her new partner join their happy, incredibly affordable, well run and perfectly respectable flat share....

...whatever the arrangement, we found that usually one of the couples chose to use the big living room with a door to the balcony (and also usually another door to it from the kitchen) as a sort of "studio" and pay a higher share of the rent, which we were fine with. And then they might all share and use the single room as a kind of communal office, or diner or whatever they liked.

....sometimes we cautiously even allowed the 6 person to move in - after going round for a proper meeting with everyone to check they were all happy and agreed it and understood the practical and domestic compromises involved.... we've always been highly ethical, caring landlords doing our best to look after our tenants' interests and trying to keep them happy - as well looking after our own interests, i.e. our properties and running our business properly and legally.

Usually it turned out they were excited to give it a go plus liked the idea of splitting the bills even further and perhaps putting the saving towards some sort of "club fund" they'd all share... so it, i.e. ending up with 6 people in a 3 bedroom flat - but only 1 bathroom, however of these flats had separate toilets and we usually had tiny wash hand basins installed in them for added flexibility.

Then with the The Housing Act 2004 properties with 5 or more people with one or more unrelated to the others could technically become a "large HMOs" requiring mandatory licensing... technically there may have been an exemption unless the property was also over 3 or more floors but Westminster City Council decided to interpret it as any flat-share comprising 5 or more tenants, even if only over a single floor... and they were investigating whole estates and threatening enforcement action...

....so, with great reluctance we had to split a few excellent longstanding friends up who'd enjoyed living together for several years by then, loved the lifestyle, were having fun, saving money, living very conveniently right in the center of London, looking after our properties immaculately, paying the rent on time without fail and generally on excellent terms with us as well as their neighbours....

Absolutely nuts! But that's how it was....

Doing the same to smaller units of just 3 people is even more nuts.... intrusive, unnecessary "nanny-state" interference into people private lives and potentially messing those people around, screwing up perfectly respectable arrangements that they want to chose for themselves and are happy with - not forced on them by "evil" people they need "protection from" - and of course NOT "improving standards" or "driving our rouge landlords" - only driving our respectable tenants!!!!!

I wholeheartedly agree, @JS, with your closing suggestion that "....the Renter’s Reform Bill would do more good if it sought to remove the artificial, policy-driven barriers to sharing" but sadly its never going to happen.... the idiots behind all this legislative pollution are 100% fixated on intervention, interference and worst of all their extreme arrogance in believing they know best about everything - when in truth they seem to have next to no understanding or practical experience of any of it - and their obsession of trying to run other people's lives and businesses for them when the less they get involved the better off the vast majority would be....

They should look hard for something that is GENUINELY broken and concentrate on fixing JUST THAT without trying to make a name for themselves by breaking everything else around it that had all by itself been magically working just fine!