Year: 2020

One of the UK’s leading student landlords has rebuffed campaigners seeking compensation for a student who was told to go home by her university but persuaded to pay the rent for her accommodation.

Prime Student Living, which operates PBSA blocks in six UK cities, has rejected calls by Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana (pictured) and campaigning group Acorn to return the rent.

University student Rebecca Wallace quit her room at Trinity View in late March, returned the keys in June but was chased for the outstanding rent for April to the end of August, when her contract was due to expire.

The company said she owed £2,141 and told her the money owed had been passed to a debt collection agency. Wallace then paid the outstanding balance after borrowing money off her parents in Northern Ireland.

“Prime Student Living’s harsh actions make them stand out amongst other student accommodation providers,” an Acorn spokesperson told local media.

“UNITE Students, the largest provider in the country, allowed all of their students to exit their contracts early, and Coventry University allowed all students in university-owned or managed accommodation to exit their contracts early.”

Concerns and difficulties

A statement from Prime Student Living says: “We appreciate that COVID-19 is causing concerns and difficulties across the United Kingdom student population.

“But the overwhelming majority of Prime Student Living tenants in Coventry have accepted the circumstances, paid for and taken up their tenancies, and have been continuing their university studies through online distance learning from their rooms at Trinity View.

“Speaking in general terms, if a Prime Student Living contract is agreed and signed by a tenant, and the accommodation is available, then the tenant is contractually bound to pay fees regardless of whether or not the tenant occupies the property.

“The tenancy agreement, as agreed and signed, does not contain any clauses allowing premature termination of a contract.

“The form of contract in question is no different from hundreds of thousands of standard student accommodation contracts currently operating across the country, whether with Prime Student Living or other providers.”

Rent guarantor firm Housing Hand agrees: “Student tenancies are further complicated by the migratory nature of those who hold them, along with the potential for further lockdowns and remote education.

“The combination of these factors has led many students to favour a “no stay, no pay” mentality. However, that ignores the fact that student renters are still legally obliged to pay their landlords under the legally binding commitments made in their Assured Shorthold Tenancy agreements.”

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A £5,000 fine has been handed to five landlords in London for failing to license HMOs.

One of the properties, a four-bedroom HMO in Greenwich, was rented to four separate tenants and was identified following a resident’s complaint.

Three of the landlords have properties in Charlton – a five-bedroom, seven-bedroom and five-bedroom HMO. The fifth landlord’s property is a five-bedroom HMO in Thamesmead.

Greenwich council investigations uncovered hazards including damp, mould and overcrowding.

One of the properties also posed a fire risk with no alarm, no fire doors and overloaded electrical sockets.

A council spokesperson says: “Our HMO licensing requirement protects tenants by ensuring landlords are held legally responsible for meeting certain standards such as fire and general safety, as well as ensuring the property is in good condition. I’m encouraging landlords to come forward and work with the council to help protect their tenants and avoid being fined a hefty sum.”

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Hamptons International has given a rental market forecast for 2021 – and it doesn’t make for happy reading.

The agency says the rental sector has recovered more slowly from lockdown than the sales market.

Current tenant numbers are down on last year in eight of the nine English regions, with few signs of any pick-up. And it adds that low income workers, particularly renters, are more likely to have lost their job or had a reduction in their income than homeowners.

This has led to a dip in rents, particularly in the South and London, the agency notes.

“We expect rents in Great Britain to fall by 1.0 per cent this year, with a similar decline of 1.0 per cent in 2021 due to a rise in the number of job losses which will constrain affordability” according to the forecast.

Rental growth will decelerate more sharply in London than anywhere else due to a combination of factors – reduced corporate demand, fewer international students, and a glut of short-let properties have been converted to long-term lets.

“As a result we expect rents in London to fall 3.0 per cent in 2020 and 2.0 per cent in 2021, before bouncing back to 3.5 per cent growth in 2022 and 4.0 per cent growth in 2023” Hamptons continues.

The subdued forecast for the rental market contrasts with Hamptons’ more upbeat long term forecast for the sales market.

It says sale prices will rise by 2.0 per cent this year but 2021 will see the wider effects of the Coronavirus-induced recession.

“Assuming a trade deal is agreed with the EU and a vaccine becomes available in the first half of next year, with no major second lockdown, we expect prices in Great Britain to remain flat in 2021” predicts the agency.

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Housing minister Christopher Pincher has rejected calls from MPs to extend the evictions ban and give tenants more financial support.

Responding to urgent Parliamentary questions kicked off by Tim Farron, the Lib Dem spokesperson for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Pincher said the Government’s measures struck the right balance between supporting landlords to evict in the most serious cases while protecting those who had fallen behind in rent payments through no fault of their own.

Farron urged the Government to further extend the ban for six months, amend Section 8 evictions, repeal Section 21 evictions and provide a package of financial support for those in rent arrears.

He told the House: “The virus should not bring people to their knees and dump them on the street.”

Hardship loans

Other MPs expressed fears that more action was needed amid a rise in Covid cases. Conservative MP Craig Whittaker suggested that with landlords facing severe hardship, there should be an interest-free hardship loan for tenants, similar to those in Scotland and Wales.

Others suggested more funding for local authorities to house those evicted and an increase in the local housing allowance rate.

Pincher said the Government would keep all the policies under review, and added: “We’re prepared to take further measures where they’re needed to protect landlords and tenants alike.”

Pincher said the Government had taken “unprecedented measures” to protect renters but that it was right that landlords and tenants now had access to justice, particularly landlords dealing with anti-social behaviour and tenants who hadn’t been paying rent since before the pandemic.

He also reassured MPs that there would be no evictions in local lockdown areas and added that it would repeal Section 21, “at the appropriate time – when there’s a sensible and stable economic and social terrain to do it”.

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A peer hoping to extend the notice period to six months for all tenants who have faced eviction since the Coronavirus pandemic began, rather than just those served notice after August, has lost her bid during a Lords debate.

Baroness Grender’s motion to annul or cancel Amendment 4 of the Coronavirus Rules 2020 enacted in July was defeated comprehensively during a digital vote.

She had proposed to strike out the July Statutory Instrument bringing in the extended evictions ban, but many of the peers speaking during the debate worried this would spark a constitutional crisis. The motion would have seen legislation already enacted by parliament cancelled or ‘annulled’.

Loophole

The baroness claimed that 55,000 people are trapped by this evictions loophole and will soon face eviction, while tenants given notice after August are protected for at least six months.

The government disputes these figures, claiming the total is just over 3,000.

“The winter truce has come too late for many tenants facing eviction and judges need more discretion to decided mandatory cases while the government has yet to ban Section 21 evictions,” said Grender.

“We need to give 1,000s of people a reprieve.”

A long list of housing experts who sit in the Lords spoke both for and against her motion including Lord Best, Lord Taylor, Baroness Kennedy and Baroness Altmann.

Altmann said: “Should landlords be expected to provide free social housing even to problem tenants? Most landlords are not rich tycoons – a balance needs to be struck.”

But peers did vote in favour of a second ‘Regret’ motion flagging up their displeasure at some aspects of the current evictions policy, rather than intervening directly in the legislative process, as Baroness Grender had proposed.

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A leading trade body has broadly welcomed the Winter Economy Plan outlined by Chancellor Rishi Sunak yesterday, but says this still does not do enough to help the private rental sector.

Chris Norris, policy director for the National Residential Landlords Association, says: “We welcome the government’s measures to subsidise wages. We warned that the end of the furlough scheme ran the risk of many households facing further difficulties in paying their rents.[This] announcement is an important first step to prevent this.

“That said our research still shows that private landlords across England have faced rental loses of up to £437m as a result of COVID-19.

“It is vital that the government now follows the example set in Wales and Scotland and develops interest free, government guaranteed hardship loans to help tenants pay off rent arrears built as a result of the pandemic. We cannot expect them, or landlords, the vast majority of whom are individuals without the means to absorb significant losses, to continue to struggle without support.”

Sunak’s specific measures include:

– confirmation the furlough scheme will conclude at the end of October;

– this will be replaced by a new Jobs Support Scheme (JSS), starting in November, focussing on employers who choose to keep staff on shorter hours rather than making them redundant;

– under the JSS employees must work at least a third of normal hours and be paid for those hours by employers, and the government will the contribute some of the remaining pay;

– the Treasury calculates that most workers on shorter hours should be able to achieve 77 per cent of pre-Covid income thanks to JSS combining state payments and employers’ contributions;

– JSS is aimed at firms classed as smaller and medium sized businesses, but only those larger firms that show reduced income;

– the JSS will be open across the UK and apply to firms even if they have not taken advantage of the furlough scheme;

– the Jobs Retention Bonus of £1,000 – already announced and due in late January – remains in place for companies employing staff who were once furloughed;

– those businesses that have borrowed under the Bounce Back Loan Scheme will have more flexibility on repayment terms – up to 10 yars in some cases, under a new government ‘Pay As You Grow’ initiative;

– the application deadline for all Coronavirus loan schemes, including the Future Fund, have been extended to November 30;

– businesses which deferred VAT payments will no longer have to pay a lump sum at the end of March 2021 – they will have an option of splitting it into smaller interest-free repayments over the course of 11 months;

– any self-assessed income tax payers who need extra help can also now extend their outstanding tax bill over 12 months from January;

– finally the hospitality and tourism sectors were expecting their temporary VAT reduction (from 20 to five per cent) to end in January, but it will now conclude at the end of March instead.

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It appears that the Renters Reform Bill – a key measure in the 2019 Conservative General Election manifesto – has been pushed into the long grass.

The pledge was for this Bill to include the scrapping of Section 21 eviction powers and the start of the concept of lifetime deposits transferable from one property to another when a tenant moves.

No date has been made available in Parliamentary business for the Bill to be introduced, although it was announced in the Queen’s Speech last December as being a measure that would be initiated in 2020.

However, housing minister Christopher Pincher has now told the Commons: “We will do that at the appropriate time when there is a sensible and stable economic and social terrain on which to do it.”

The Bill is one of dozens of proposed pieces of legislation to have been pushed back as Parliamentary and civil service time is increasingly occupied by Coronavirus and Brexit.

Labour housing spokeswoman Thangam Debbonaire opposes the delay and says: “The situation facing renters couldn’t be more urgent. Lifting the ban on evictions as we head into a second Covid spike is irresponsible and a betrayal of their promise that no renter will lose their home because of Coronavirus.

“Renters are being served Section 21 notices, leading to automatic evictions, as we speak. This legislation cannot wait.”

Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter adds: “This pandemic has plunged over 300,000 private renters into arrears and brutally exposed the chronic insecurity of privately renting. With the evictions ban over and this deadly virus on the rise again, the government must give struggling renters the lifeline of emergency funding to clear Covid-arrears and stay in their homes.

“The government should be creating stability now by passing this legislation, not putting it off. It needs to urgently bring forward its Renters Reform Bill and honour its promise to scrap ‘Section 21’ no fault evictions. Otherwise, struggling renters across the country will feel betrayed as they continue to suffer.”

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The government has revealed the dates of its so-called Christmas eviction truce.

Agents will not be able to instruct bailiffs to complete evictions between December 11 and January 11.

The dates were revealed by housing minister Chris Pincher in the Commons earlier this week, responding to a written question.

Pincher wrote: “In addition [to the Christmas dates] guidance will also be issued to bailiffs highlighting that they should not enforce possession orders in places where local public health restrictions have been introduced by government through legislation.”

This means there can be no evictions staged where there are local lockdowns – and at the moment the list includes parts of Leicester, Bolton, Greater Manchester and the North East, North West, West Midlands and West Yorkshire.

Pincher added in his response: “Under the Coronavirus Act 2020, landlords serving notice of their intention to seek possession between August 21 and 29 would have been required to give their tenants at least three months notice.

“Where possession cases do go to court, new court rules mean that landlords are now required to set out any information they are aware of in relation to how their tenant, or any dependant of their tenant, has been affected by the Coronavirus pandemic. Where this information is not provided, judges have the ability to adjourn proceedings until such information is provided.”

In the early spring the Coronavirus Act extended the notice landlords had to issue from two months to three.

The eviction ban’s third and final extension – until last weekend – was accompanied by a new provision requiring agents and landlords to give tenants a six-month notice period, meaning that no tenant would find themselves evicted before March next year.

The exception to this would be for tenants who had not paid rent for more than six months, and “the most egregious cases” cited by the government, such as anti-social behaviour.

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Nearly half of prospective home buyers have delayed their plans because of the Coronavirus crisis, a mortgage company says.

Research by Aldermore shows the average delay as 11.4 months.

Since the start of the pandemic 17 per cent of prospective FTBs have had a purchase collapse and 20 per cent say they had to pull out of buying a property because of the spring lockdown.

Perhaps unsurprisingly many are now worried about their financial security and 41 per cent say the pandemic has made it harder for them to buy.

Lockdown has prompted 39 per cent of prospective buyers to reconsider what type of property they are looking for – having a garden, balcony or other open space is a priority for 42 per cent, while 33 per want homes near countryside or parks.

At the same time, however, 38 per cent say there are now fewer properties on sale that tick their boxes.

Around 50 per cent of prospective FTBs wanting to purchase by late 2021 say that the stamp duty holiday is likely to help them and a quarter say the tax cut has brought forward their home buying plans, in order to meet the March 31 deadline.

Aldermore head of mortgage distribution Jon Cooper says: “First time buyers experience strong financial and emotional challenges at the best of times as they go through the home buying journey, but it appears now this has been heightened by Covid-19.

“The wider economic recovery will be the real determining factor for how the first time buyer market performs this year.

“First time buyers need job security if they are to feel confident in taking the plunge in what is one of the biggest financial investments of their lives.”

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