Year: 2020

The Scottish Government has today announced that hardship loans for tenants will be made available in Scotland to those unable to access other forms of support for their housing costs.

A new £10 million Tenant Hardship Loan Fund will open later this Autumn, and will be part of a package to support people in Scotland struggling to pay rent due to financial difficulty associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.

It comes just weeks after the Welsh Government announced plans to introduce a similar tenant loan scheme for tenants in the private rented sector who are struggling to pay rent due to Covid-19, following NRLA campaigning.

Responding to today’s announcement that the Scottish Government has developed an interest free, hardship loan scheme to support renters to pay-off COVID-related rent arrears, Chris Norris, Policy Director for the NRLA, said:

“We welcome today’s announcement which follows similar steps taken in Wales and we call on the UK Government to introduce similar help for tenants in England. The best way to prevent repossessions is to tackle the root cause by ensuring tenants are able to pay their rent.

“Although landlords have been doing all they can to support tenants struggling to pay their rent because of the pandemic, it is not sustainable to expect rent arrears to build indefinitely with no hope of paying them off.

“Once again the UK Government finds itself trailing behind the rest of the UK. It is time to deliver a similar scheme to support tenants and landlords in England.”

Blog Post from NRLA

See details of our Guaranteed Rent Scheme here

ARLA Propertymark has hit out against last minute attempts to effectively reinstate the eviction ban which finally came to an end last weekend.

Earlier this week Letting Agent Today reported on attempts by Liberal Democrat Baroness Olly Grender and Labour peer Lord Ponsonby of Shulbredeh to delay or reverse the end of the ban.

Both were using relatively obscure Parliamentary procedures in the House of Lords.

Now Timothy Douglas, ARLA Propertymark’s policy and campaigns manager, says: “No-one wants to see anyone unfairly evicted from their homes, but where necessary access to a swift, efficient, and cost-effective justice system is a key component of a successful lettings industry.

“Calls to block evictions will do nothing to improve the situation for tenants and landlords dealing with rent arears built up because of the impact of Coronavirus.

“Efforts must be focussed on ensuring the UK Government introduce emergency financial help to tenants in England who have fallen into arrears due to the pandemic. This is the only way to support those who are struggling and sustain tenancies.”

Yesterday afternoon the Lords rejected Baroness Grender’s bid to effectively reinstate the ban but voted in favour of the Labour motion – however, this was merely expressing “regret” at the end of the ban, and does not carry any legislative weight.

Blog Post from Letting Agent Today

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NRLA local authority officer Gavin Dick explains more about new Green Homes Grants, which will soon be available for landlords in England to improve the energy efficiency of their rental properties.

Government grants that are available to the private rented sector – unusual words and as rare as hen’s teeth. Yet there are now grants, in the form of vouchers, available for landlords to do energy efficiency work to their properties.

With the targets for decarbonisation of the economy coming ever closer, government action is being ramped up. This year the UK went 67 days without coal use, new nuclear power is being debated, and wind and solar power usage is increasing.  The change in sources of energy generation has to be matched by a reduction in energy consumption.

Why does it matter?

With the residential sector accounting for a fifth of carbon emissions, we expect a consultation on increasing the minimum EPC ratings of private rented properties later this year. Government is never too far away with sticks but for once they have dangled a few carrots.

The Green Homes Grants in England are available to both owner-occupiers and landlords. They will fund up to two-thirds of the cost of installing eligible energy efficiency measures through a voucher scheme, up to a maximum of £5000 per property. This is to be delivered via companies that are registered through Trustmark. Grants will become available at the end of September and will be available for works completed by 31 March 2021.

Landlords should embrace these grants, as while there remains a cost to do the work, the upgrades will still be required when the grants are no longer available. Properties will need to get as close to an EPC A as possible potentially within the next 15 – 20 years. While this sounds a long time, it is a challenge for many properties and the cost will be significant.

How to access the grants

The government has created an easy to use tool on the Simple Energy Advice website to establish what you can do to your property and some indicative costs.

To do this you will need to know some details about your property and your tenant. The website is looking at the fabric of your properties, the type of building it is, the age of your building, where it has insulation (floor, roof and wall), the type of windows that you have (single, double or triple glazed). You may also be eligible for cladding or a new boiler or even look at renewables for your property.

You will also need to have an idea about how energy is used in the property i.e. how often the heating is used and when during the day.

Once you have completed the details for your property, you will be presented with a list of measures which you can undertake to improve its energy efficiency. The website will indicate which are eligible for the Green Homes Grant voucher. On selecting the measures you want to undertake, you will be given more details about how you can implement them, and any other financial support you may be eligible for.

You will then need to approach an accredited installer, who will apply the voucher to the cost and the Government will pay them directly.

What measures are eligible for the grants?

When you do this, there is a process that the government wishes you to follow when you improve your property. The new grant follows this process, the rational for this is a ‘no regrets’ approach and to make the biggest energy saving first. You must install at least one ‘primary’ home insulation or low carbon heating measure to be eligible for the grant. You can then use the remainder of the grant to cover a secondary measure if you wish.

If you are not eligible for any primary measures you will not be able to access secondary measure grants.

Primary measures are:

• Solid wall insulation
• Cavity wall insulation
• Under-floor insulation (solid floor; suspended floor)
• Loft insulation
• Flat roof insulation
• Room in roof insulation
• Park home insulation
• Air source heat pump
• Ground source heat pump
• Solar thermal
• Biomass pellet boilers

This is an opportunity for some landlords to make improvements to their properties. It is not often that government makes money available for the private rented sector, and those landlords that can should embrace it.

Blog Post from NRLA

See details of our Guaranteed Rent Scheme here

Late on Friday afternoon, the Government announced a significant change at short notice to the way possession works in England.

Following on from the eleventh hour extension to the ban on possession proceedings the week before, the Government has now introduced a number of changes to the required notice period for Section 8 and Section 21 notices.

After extensive lobbying from the NRLA, the changes to notice periods are far more positive than initially expected. Landlords can once again require possession in a relatively timely fashion from anti-social tenants and those in serious rent arrears – subject to the stay on possession claims being lifted and reduced capacity in the courts.

For an update on possession in Wales, please read our online guide.

When do these new rules apply?

These rules came into force on Saturday 29 August 2020 and apply to all possession notices served on or after that date. Landlords who posted a notice on Friday 28 August 2020. Or hand-delivered it to their tenants after 4:30PM should also re-serve their notices following these new rules.

These rules apply until 31 March 2021.

Blog Post from NRLA

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Striving for higher yields remains the holy grail for buy to let, and new research suggests investors could be attracted by large infrastructure projects.

Buy to let management platform Howsy has analysed 34 areas currently seeing significant infrastructure work.

Top of the league table comes Dundee Waterfront, where properties average £146,000 to buy and produce a typical rent of £881 per month – thus making a 7.2 per cent yield. Expected to bring 7,000 further jobs, it’s thought to be one of Western Europe’s most extensive waterfront projects and one of the biggest urban developments in Scotland.

Liverpool Ten Streets comes second, with homes typically costing£123,480 and producing average monthly rent of £657 – a 6.4 per cent return.

Other infrastructure projects with residential yields of between five and six per cent include Destination Bootle, Tribeca Belfast, Wirral Waters, Manchester Mayfield, Purfleet-on-Thames, South Shields 365, and Salford Crescent.

Of the 34 projects analysed the vast and controversial Earls Court development in central London comes bottom, with a yield of just 2.4 per cent and a typical property cost of £1.129m.

“There are a whole host of areas currently undergoing extensive regeneration projects which will increase rental demand in the short-term due to the construction itself, but also in the long-term, as these new developments bring more job opportunities and a greater appeal for living in general” explains Howsy chief executive Calum Brannan.

Blog Post from Letting Agent Today

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A new report demands that online rental platforms and portals allowing direct advertising by clients do more to deter fake landlords conning tenants.

The call comes from a new report – called Journeys in the Shadow Private Rented Sector, published by the University of York and Cambridge House Research – which wants online platforms that allow direct advertising by landlords to up their game.

Specifically it calls for checks on the existence and ownership of properties listed, chiefly through Unique Property Reference Numbers  In July this year the government opened up the UPRN system to more users.

UPRN allows each address in the country to have a unique identifying number and can have ‘attached’ to that number the sort of activities and characteristics tenants and agents need to know about – for example, planning permission for when it was first built and subsequent extensions, building regulations, council tax payments, utility providers, EPCs, health and safety checks on rental properties, and so on.

The Journeys report, which covers all aspects of the private rental sector, has a key recommendation that the government should “place a legal requirement on online platforms that host private rentals adverts to police criminal activity by disabling offending accounts and give clear advice on how private tenants can protect themselves from criminal landlord and letting agent behaviour.”

The report – written by a group of housing academics including the respected Julie Rugg – says problems of illegality and unfairness are now growing rapidly in the burgeoning private rental sector.

“The shadow PRS includes letting agents who may act in concert with landlords, or defraud both landlords and tenants,” it says. “It is also evident that letting agents can also be involved…often involving some level of fraud with regard to deposit holding or rent collection.”

Rugg says: “Our current regulatory framework is failing to deal with the kind of landlords and letting agents who have no intention of complying with the law…Too often these are criminals who have no intention of operating within the legal framework, and for whom this is a business model.”

She describes many of the operators as sophisticated and ruthless.

The tone of the 67-page report can be measured by this segment of the introduction:

“Landlords in the shadow PRS aim to evade detection through the use of identity fraud, use of unconventional tenancy agreements where there may be uncertainty around tenancy rights, and often use non-standard properties or subdivided properties to increase rental yield through high-density overcrowding.

“These landlords can be distinguished from landlords who may be well-intentioned but not fully conversant with their responsibilities.

“The shadow PRS also includes letting agents, who may act in concert with landlords or defraud both landlords and tenants.

“In the last ten years, London has been a favourable context for the growth of criminality in the PRS: rents are high relative to property quality; market pressures create a tolerance for overcrowding amongst tenants; there is a growing population of economic migrants; cutbacks in enforcement; an unwieldy legal framework; poor support for tenants seeking legal recourse; low penalties for convicted offenders; and growing use of the internet where identities are harder to verify.”

Blog Post from Letting Agent Today

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A new private rental licensing regime in a London borough is being described as “a major step forward in improving living standards” – but comes with a 58 per cent rise in some fees for buy to let investors and professional landlords.

The new additional licensing scheme introduced this week by Enfield council includes most HMOs in the borough.

This extends licensing to an estimated 8,000 HMOs including shared houses, shared flats and bedsit HMOs occupied by three or more people who are not all related.

This goes beyond the mandatory HMO licensing scheme which is restricted to most HMOs occupied by five or more people.

Meanwhile the council has increased its mandatory HMO licence application fees for properties with five lettings, rising from £697 to £1,100 – that’s an increase of 58 per cent.

Larger HMOs are being charged at a higher rate according to the number of lettings.

The cost of an additional licence application is a fixed fee of £900 per property, with all application fees payable in two instalments.

A council spokesman says: “Having a licence will allow landlords to demonstrate that they provide decent quality accommodation for tenants, and we will work with landlords to support them to achieve the licence conditions.

“We believe the scheme will improve the reputation of private landlords, as well as Enfield’s reputation for providing quality housing. The scheme is a major step forward in improving living standards for many Enfield residents.”

However, it is thought that a selective licensing scheme which the council had wanted to introduce – and which it had consulted on – has yet to be approved by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

Blog Post from Letting Agent Today

See details of our Guaranteed Rent Scheme here

Pressure is building on the UK government to ensure England follows the example of both Scotland and Wales and creates a hardship loan scheme for poorer tenants.

Yesterday afternoon the Scottish Government announced that it was to follow suit with the Cardiff devolved administration and introduce an interest-free hardship loan scheme for tenants to pay off their Coronavirus-related arrears.

“We welcome today’s announcement which follows similar steps taken in Wales and we call on the UK Government to introduce similar help for tenants in England. The best way to prevent repossessions is to tackle the root cause by ensuring tenants are able to pay their rent” says Chris Norris of the National Residential Landlords Association.

“Although landlords have been doing all they can to support tenants struggling to pay their rent because of the pandemic, it is not sustainable to expect rent arrears to build indefinitely with no hope of paying them off.

“Once again the UK government finds itself trailing behind the rest of the UK. It is time to deliver a similar scheme to support tenants and landlords in England.”

Blog Post from Letting Agent Today

See details of our Guaranteed Rent Scheme here

The average rent across the UK is now £985 per calendar month, up some 2.1 per cent on four weeks ago and 1.5 per cent higher than a year ago.

That’s the headline from HomeLet’s latest rental market snapshot.

When London is excluded, the average rent in the UK is now £825.

Eleven of the 12 regions monitored show an increase in rental values between August last year and two, with two of those regions seeing an increase of more than five per cent.

The South West is the strongest, showing a yearly increase of 5.5 per cent.

However, average rents in London are down 2.1 per cent year on year; even so, the average rental value in London (£1,653) was still double that of the rest of the UK excluding London.

HomeLet chief executive Martin Totty says: “Throughout the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, private landlords must feel that they alone are shouldering much of the burden to support those tenants who have been financially impacted. Property owners are having to dig deep to find the requisite reserves of resilience and resolve to ‘stay the course’.

“The situation has been exacerbated further by the last minute and very material amendments to government policy, when landlords have shown the flexibility demanded of them to help their tenants’ bridge their contractual obligations.

“Whilst there are many stories of constructive dialogue between landlords and tenants on existing tenancy terms, it’s encouraging that rents agreed on new tenancies in August, in every region outside London, are up on the same month last year and, in almost all regions, ahead of where they were only one month previously.

“London may be experiencing a correction of sorts in supply versus demand and the sharp reversal of price growth from positive four per cent pre-Covid to negative two per cent now, represents a significant swing.

“Elsewhere, average monthly rents are edging up on both a monthly basis and also on a long-term smoothed trend which removes the month on month fluctuations to provide a clearer trend line over time.

“Outside the capital, the rental sector still appears to offer sound fundamentals and, for committed landlords able to manage through the current challenges, having access to a wide range of financial protection solutions via professional letting agents, there are some bright spots to add into the mix.”

Blog Post from Letting Agent Today

See details of our Guaranteed Rent Scheme here

Rents are higher for Londoners living near busy high streets – for the moment at least.

Research by rental platform Spotahome has looked at each London borough based on the high street population as a percentage of total.

The research shows that in all nine boroughs where more than 50 per cent of the population is located on or near the high street, people pay above the London average rent of £1,644.

For example, the City of London has some 82 per cent of the population living on or near a high street and an average rental cost of £2,274.

In Camden and Hackney, the typical rent is £2,302 and £1,842 respectively, with 63.1 per cent and 53.2 per cent of the population found living around the high street.

Despite this trend of people paying more to live in urban areas, COVID-19 could cause a shifting of priorities, resulting in more demand and correspondingly high rents in areas where there’s more green space.

In areas where less than 34 per cent of the population live on the high street, average rents are all lower than the London average of £1,644 per month.

For renters seeking some distance from the high street in London, Bexley (£1,169), Croydon £1,140), Sutton (£1,151), Havering (£1,169) and Hillingdon (£1,200) are the cheapest places to live, while they all have a low proportion of people renting around the high street.

A spokeswoman for the platform says: “After spending months inside, many tenants are prioritising green spaces over the busy high street, especially as they look to avoid being exposed to the virus in the event of a potential second wave.

“Therefore, we may see a rebalancing of the cost of renting, as demand shifts from the high street to parks and greenery, with these currently more affordable boroughs climbing in cost as a result.”

Blog Post from Letting Agent Today

See details of our Guaranteed Rent Scheme here