ROOF Blog

A fully licensed national register for private rented sector landlords would cost the English government £2.5 billion. Local authorities who would be in charge of implementing the scheme would face start up costs of around £50,000 each, an assessment report has found.

A report looking at how asbestos is managed and removed from people’s homes has revealed major differences in how local authorities and registered social landlords notify tenants of the likely risks. The report, from construction union UCATT, recommends that all social landlords maintain an asbestos register of properties, and conduct up-to-date house surveys.

The Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) says that landlords need incentives to drive improvements in the private rented sector as thousands of tenants were living in homes that are sub-standard and in need of modernisation. ARLA wants the government to introduce incentives such as tax relief, to encourage landlords to improve their properties, arguing that 61 per cent of their members claimed they would upgrade their properties in some way if immediate tax relief was available.

Margaret Beckett has announced a proposed amendment to the law that would give tenants whose landlords are facing repossession more time to find somewhere else to live. Under the new proposals tenants will be given two months’ notice by mortgage lenders who have taken possession of the landlord’s home. The Council of Mortgage Lenders has warned that a number of tenants will slip through the cracks, especially those renting a property unofficially.

Tenants First has outlined proposals for a public housing strategy to meet the housing crisis. It calls for the establishment of a £3 billion fund to be used for a ten-year regeneration programme that will include the setting up a board of representatives from government, tenants and those marginalised or excluded from housing. Tenants First said this type of approach guarantees that a proportion of the state resources being handed over to the banking sector will be directed back to social purposes.

Private tenants are routinely being ‘conned’ by letting agents imposing unjustified fees for providing a poor or nonexistent service, a report from the Citizens Advice said today. It said that it was dealing with 6,000 tenants’ complaints a year regarding letting agents, and that the behaviour of some is ‘out of control’. The report has found that 94 per cent of agents imposed up to seven additional charges on tenants, not counting the deposit and rent in advance, costing up to £600, and some agents were caught billing tenant and landlord for the same service. Citizens Advice wants the government to extend the recent regulation to include a ban on additional charges.

The law has been changed so that no more tolerated trespassers can be created and all existing tolerated trespassers will be given a new tenancy. Before the amendments to the Housing and Regeneration Act and the successor landlord order came into force yesterday thousands of council tenants had lost their housing rights, even if they complied with any conditions imposed by the courts. Though they continued living in their property they could not require their landlord to carry out repairs, exercise their right to buy, or ensure a spouse or family member could succeed to the tenancy if they died.

New research from the Business Development Research Consultants has found that private landlords are increasingly renting to housing benefit claimants even though they are concerned about the upkeep of the property and payments. The proportion of private landlords in Britain letting to benefits claimants more than doubled, increasing from 9 per cent in the last quarter of 2008 to 20 per cent in the first quarter of 2009. However, as many as 24 per cent of landlords said they were worried benefit claimants would not look after the property, 15 per cent said they’d had previous bad experiences, and 10 per cent said they were worried about payments.

Gwyneth Taylor from the National Federation of ALMOs (arms length management organisations) argues that if government funding dries up for ALMOs, which manage council housing on behalf of local authorities, one million council tenants would be affected. The federation has put together a paper providing examples of activities ALMOs can undertake to deliver social housing, including greater tenant involvement and adopting charitable status.

In the buy-to-let world, new lending fell for the sixth consecutive quarter, accounting for 6 per cent of all gross mortgage lending in the first quarter of 2009, down from 12 per cent in year on year figures. There were 1,700 buy-to-let repossessions in the first quarter of the year (0.15 per cent of all buy-to-let mortgages), up from 1,300 during the previous three months (or 0.11 per cent of the market). A receiver of rent was appointed in 2,400 properties – enabling tenants to stay in their home by paying rent to their lender rather than the landlord.